Category: Information and Social Media

The Many Paths Towards Universal Health Coverage: WHO Video Review

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media

This post was written by Niniola Soleye.

Universal health care (UHC) is a hot topic in global health right now. The United Nations, World Health Organization (WHO), and World Bank have all endorsed UHC. Further, UHC has played a prominent role in discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals, which will build on the Millennium Development Goals and support the post-2015 development agenda. The WHO put together a video to explain UHC and show how some countries are providing universal access to basic health care services.

As Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO said in the video, “Universal health coverage is the most powerful concept that public health has to offer.” The key to UHC is that it allows for equity within a health system. It guarantees health care to all members of a population and overcomes the challenges of unavailable or unaffordable services, which is often the case in modern health care settings.

The video highlights UHC in six countries – China, Oman, Mexico, Rwanda, Thailand, and Turkey. It shows how each country is addressing their health care system and making progress towards UHC.

I found it very interesting to see the differences between each country. It really drove home the point that there is no single UHC approach or model that will work for every country. The journey towards UHC is unique and varied. For example, in China the emphasis is on how to cover as many people as possible. In Oman, the focus is on access because their population, while small, is widely dispersed throughout the country. Mexico, Thailand, and Turkey are working on expanding the type and quality of services provided, while Rwanda has increased coverage from 7% to 97% in the last decade.

The main takeaways from the ten-minute video are the importance and benefits of UHC, the challenges in implementing it, and the various models that allow countries to work towards providing basic primary care to everyone.

Innovative Malaria Research in Southeast Asia: a UCI GHREAT Initiative (Video Review)

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media, Research, Stories from the Field

by Niniola Soleye

The University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) recently released the first video in their four-part series showcasing the success of their Global Health Research, Education and Translation (GHREAT) Initiative. The initiative is headed by IH section member Dr. Brandon Brown. The goal of the video series is to demonstrate how GHREAT projects are enhancing health and saving lives all over the world. This first video was shot in Thailand and focuses on malaria research in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar has the largest number of malaria cases in Asia. Due to the poor economic conditions in the country, people immigrate to neighboring countries, including Thailand, to look for employment opportunities. Additionally, there has been an increase in drug-resistant malaria and an influx of counterfeit drugs. That, coupled with poverty and people not having funds to travel to the hospital or buy medicine, has resulted in malaria becoming a major public health problem in the region.

UC Irvine faculty, staff, and students partnered with the ministry of health, hospital workers, local health workers, and academic researchers in China, Myanmar, and Thailand to study malaria control in the border regions, and develop solutions for containing the malaria outbreak.

The video shows the UC Irvine team observing local health workers as they perform diagnostic blood-tests for malaria in Thai villages. Their observations led them to focus their efforts for this project on developing an innovative, non-invasive diagnostic test using saliva instead of blood.

Untreated, malaria can lead to death two to three weeks after infection, so early diagnosis and treatment are key. Blood testing requires workers to send samples away daily, delaying the start of treatment. Using saliva would allow for a fast, portable, low-cost diagnostic tool, all critical factors in a developing country setting.

One scene that stood out showed a young child getting tested for malaria. She was crying because she didn’t want to get her finger pricked, and also because she was afraid of the health worker. In situations like that, the new test would be quite beneficial.

Overall, the video does a good job of emphasizing how direct, firsthand experiences and observations are important when trying to innovate and solve problems in global health. I would have liked to hear more about the technique behind the saliva test, their border control efforts, how they plan to deal with the counterfeit drug problem, and how they’ll address drug-resistant malaria but the video doesn’t go into detail on those topics.

Click here to watch the video.

Review: “EXPOSED” Film Series by Aeras

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media

EXPOSED: The Race Against Tuberculosis (video review)

This post was written together with Niniola Soleye.

EXPOSED: The Race Against Tuberculosis is a series of four short films (about ten minutes each) about the global epidemic of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The series was produced by Aeras, a biotech company working toward a tuberculosis vaccine. It features personal stories from patients, as well as commentary from physicians, researchers, policymakers, and experts around the world.

The global health community has seen TB morph from a death sentence to a treatable disease with antibiotics to an increasingly drug-resistant (and persistent) monster – thus completing the cycle and essentially bringing it back to a death sentence in the case of XDR-TB. Even more terrifying is the emergence of totally drug-resistant TB (that’s TDR-TB) in Iran, India, and Western Europe.

From testing and treatment costs to lost wages and productivity costs, TB, especially DR-TB, is also a very expensive disease. The first video, which features a woman from Tennessee, really drives the point home. She went on a short mission trip with her church to South Africa, where she contracted a strain of TB that was resistant to seven drugs, and wound up in isolation for two years. The total treatment course cost the health department over $1 million – a case in point of how the uninformed desire to “do something” can do more harm than good.

The purpose of the video series, in addition to raising awareness about drug-resistant tuberculosis, is to build support for Aeras’s mission to develop a TB vaccine. Currently, there is no effective vaccine against the most infectious form of tuberculosis, pulmonary TB. The BCG vaccine which was developed 90 years ago does not prevent the majority of TB cases. While the movies play to the emotional side to a certain extent, and I wasn’t crazy about the fact that they opened the series with a profile of a Westerner who “just wanted to help,” I felt that the series did an overall good job of giving voice to individuals in the developing world who are most immediately affected by the disease – both a survivor of treatment and a woman who is volunteering in a clinical trial for a vaccine candidate.

You can watch the films here.

US Partnership with Africa: Economic Growth and Global Development – Rajiv Shah (CGDev Video)

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media

This is another (fairly long) video from the Center for Global Development featuring a high-profile speaker, USAID Director Rajiv Shah. This hour-long dialogue between Shah and Nancy Birdsall, CGDev president, focused on President Obama’s recent trip to Africa and covers a wide range of topics. Obviously, it can be difficult to get government officials – especially high-level ones – to deviate from the official line and get out of bureaucratic-speak, but Birdsall does try to push him a little bit, I think. They also take audience questions during the second half of the video. The first video, of the entire dialogue, is about an hour long; the following videos are clips of the interview focusing on specific topics.


The Center for Global Development was pleased to host USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah for a discussion of the US partnership with Africa. Shah was just back from accompanying President Obama in Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, where the president outlined a vision for US-Africa relations that puts a premium on economic opportunity, democracy, and African-led approaches to development.

At the event, Shah discussed the administration’s new commitments and USAID’s role in doubling electric power in Africa, working with young African leaders, boosting food security and global health, and attracting trade and investment to the continent.

Short Clip: Trade and the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)

Short Clip: Update on Feed the Future

Short Clip: Energy as Constraint to Economic Growth

Short Clip: USAID and the Future of Development

Short Clip: Prospects for Food Aid Reform

QUAMED and OFDA Joint Briefing on Quality of Medicines in Humanitarian Assistance Programs

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media

Wednesday, July 10, 2013
2:30-4:00 pm

InterAction
1400 16th St., N.W., Suite 210
Washington, D.C. 20036
Call in available: 202-667-8227; ask for the QUAMAD briefing

Please join us on Wednesday, July 10 at 2:30 for a joint presentation on QUAMED and OFDA activities to assure the procurement of safe, effective, quality pharmaceuticals in low income / developing countries.

Christophe Luyckx from QUAMED (www.quamed.org) will discuss the extent and dangers of substandard and counterfeit medicines in developing countries and the measures being implemented to address this health menace. QUAMED is a program of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (Antwerp, Belgium) that seeks to improve access to quality medicines in developing countries by establishing a network of non-profit organizations involved in supplying medicines.

QUAMED members include both humanitarian non-governmental organizations and non-profit procurement centers in developing countries. The QUAMED network currently includes 29 partners in more than 13 countries. These QUAMED members are responsible for providing services to more than 90 million patients all around the world.

Alexandr Kosyak, USAID / OFDA Pharmacist, will present on USAID’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance OFDA’s pharmaceutical approval procedures and the pharmaceutical wholesaler pre-qualification program. The discussion will address the need for assuring that only safe, effective, quality pharmaceuticals are purchased from procurement centers (pharmaceutical wholesalers) that conform to GDPs and GSPs.

Participants will gain a better understanding of the problems surrounding the procurement of pharmaceuticals in low income / developing nations and how NGO partners may avoid harming the very beneficiaries they are trying to aid.

Please RSVP to
Danielle Heiberg, dheiberg@interaction.org