Tag: TB

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.

IH News Global Health Weekly News Round-Up

by Vaani, posted in News

Politics and Policies:

  • Somalia signs its new Healthcare Plan. It has moved away from the emergency-level health provision towards more mainstream national health systems.
  • Kenya’s President elect promises much needed free primary healthcare for the citizens and raising the financing from 6-15%
  • Five memorandums of understandings has been signed by Egypt with South Sudan in the healthcare, livestock and agriculture sectors.
  • Tanzania and Japan sign Sh802 million project grant. It will help Tanzania in various sectors including health, education and water supply.
  • Kansas, United States, doctors may be required to tell patients that abortion causes breast cancer.

Programs:

  • The World Bank will help Cameroon to build safety net system aimed at reducing poverty and vulnerability. Households will get training to improve their health.
  • Solar power in Africa helps people to grow nutritional vegetables and improve their basic needs including health.
  • The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) calls for more reproductive health resources.
  • UNAIDS and other health organizations support new TB and HIV initiative in Africa.  It will include a package worth more than US$120 million to be used to expedite this process.
  • South Sudan through its community health workers detect and treat tuberculosis. This strategy is helping to fight tuberculosis draws communities themselves to detect and treat cases of tuberculosis.
  • UC San Francisco receives $2 million from billionaire Li K-shing for transforming its medical care by integrating data from the human genome and disease research with information from patient’s records and environmental data.

 Research:

  • According to a study about 570 United Kingdom children start smoking every day. This has made the UK government to consider whether to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products.
  • According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine physiotherapy results are as good as knee surgery.
  • According to a study, as part of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV virus, antiretroviral therapy has to be initiated before the last trimester of pregnancy to achieve an undetectable RNA plasma viral load before delivery.
  • A report of United Nation states that about four and a half billion people have access to toilet (as compared to six billion people who have access to mobile phones) of the world’s seven billion people.
  • Researchers are working to tackle obstacles to medical aid.
  • According to the World Health Organization and Global Fund Africa and Europe has not yet reached the millennium tuberculosis goal. They say that strains of tuberculosis with resistance to multiple drugs could spread widely.
  • According to a report by the UNICEF, about 66 million Nigerians are without portable water.  It is the leading cause of diseases and deaths especially among under five aged children.
  • Doctors have discovered a women’s mysterious bone condition due to drinking a pitcher of tea every day for past 17 years.
  • Reports indicate that only 28% of Ugandans have access to hand-washing facilities. Statistics from the Uganda Demographic and Household Survey show that 190,000 Ugandan children die every year due to diarrhea.
  • A report publish by the World Health organization (WHO), among South-East Asia Region, Indonesia has achieved an amazing 90% success rate for TB treatment.
  • Scientists from the John Hopkins University have developed a new innovative method known as Predicting Infectious Disease Scalable Model (PRISM) extracts relationships between clinical, meteorological, climatic and socio-political data in Peru and the Philippines.
  • According to a study flu sufferers can spread the virus by sneezing, while talking, breathing by at least 6 feet.
  • A new method to treat blinding cornea diseases in children is now available in Singapore.
  • According to a study breast cancer radiation therapy increases a women’s risk of suffering a heart attack or other heart problems.
  • A study indicates an increase in the number of parents who won’t vaccinate daughters against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV).
  • A study shows that parents seem to be increasingly worried about the vaccine’s safety.
  • Low-GI protein blends have been designed to be eaten about 30 minutes before meals to reduce satiety is being marketed by a Swedish form Indevex. It increases release of incretin hormone which can provoke insulin release before blood glucose levels due to meal consumption.
  • A research done by Lund University in Sweden shows that we can modify the function of genes through epigenetic changes that can take place over the course of time.
  • United States tuberculosis rates reach all-time low but resistance of bacteria is a continuous threat.
  • Researchers have indicated that menstrual blood cells can be used to treat heart failure patients.
  • Researchers say that females with ovarian cancer too often get insufficient treatment.

Diseases and Disasters:

  • Chinese Public call for tackling water pollution.
  • Reports indicate that about 40 patients have lost their lives in drug trials in Maharashtra, India.
  • According to a report released by the CDC, from early December, 2012 to mid-February 2013, the Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak linked to ground beef had sickened a total of 22 people.
  • Natives of United States call for increased HIV testing per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations.

Global Health Weekly News Round-Up

by ihsection, posted in News

From December 4 to 10, the US Centers for Disease and Control (CDC) celebrated National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW). It was an effort to spread the message of the importance of continuing flu vaccination through the holiday season and beyond. (Source: http://www.cdc.gov/Features/FightTheFlu/?s_cid=fb1293)

On December 10, 2011, Human Rights Day was observed . (Source: http://www.un.org/en/events/humanrightsday/2011/index.shtml)

Politics and Policies

Programs

Research

Diseases and Disasters

These headlines were compiled by Vani Nanda, MPH Candidate at West Chester University PA.

Global Health News Last Week

by ihsection, posted in News

Note: There will be no news round-up next week, as the IH section will be conducting its usual array of activities during APHA’s Annual Meeting.  Please tune in for updates on section sessions and activites at the conference.  Meanwhile, you can get your global health news fix from the DAWNS digest, Humanosphere, or the Healthy Dose.

October 16 was World Food Day.
October 17 was International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

POLITICS AND POLICY

  • Scientists are warning officials negotiating a global treaty on mercury that banning the deadly chemical completely would be dangerous for public health because of the chemical’s use in vaccines. 
  • The Washington Post runs an editorial critical of the GOP presidential candidates’ hostility toward foreign aid.
  • An influential panel of MPs warned that changes in UK aid policies may make overseas aid more prone to corruption and misuse.
  • Attendees at the Asia Pacific Conference on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights have called on countries in the region to introduce comprehensive sexuality education in schools.
  • The Kaiser Family Foundation has released a report which finds that global HIV/AIDS funding dropped by 10% in 2010.

PROGRAMS

  • HP Signed a Memorandum of Understanding with USAID to collaborate in the fight against global poverty through initiatives directed at issues such as public health.
  • GAVI CEO Seth Berkley pens an op-ed in Huffington Post on the economic value of childhood vaccines.
  • The Pan African Parliament has passed a resolution that urges African nations to prioritize maternal, newborn and child health programs.
  • USAID is initiating research to find out whether developing world families will adopt a new cooking technology and adapt their cooking methods to save their health.
  • At an event in Washington, the Aspen Institute’s Global Leaders Council called for increased accessed to contraception worldwide. 
  • Microfinance initiatives to fund development could benefit from reinvigorating their aims and taking on new, integrated approaches, according to experts at the 2011 International Forum on the Social and Solidarity Economy in Montreal.

RESEARCH

  • A new study, by researchers from the National Institutes of Health, Gilead Sciences Inc. and universities in Belgium and Italy, suggests that a microbicide gel, which was originally developed to fight AIDS in Africa, could lower the incidence of herpes in many women.
  • RTS,S a malaria vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline, is showing great of promise in the early stages of its huge clinical trial.  The American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Council Member and Science Director at the PATH Malaria Control Program, Rick Steketee, explores the impact of the new RTS,S clinical trial results and what this breakthrough means for science and neglected tropical disease research. On the other hand, Sarah Boseley wonders where the money will come from once the vaccine has passed its trials, and Karen Grepin is not as excited about the new GSK malaria trial results as many others.
  • Adults who have fallen behind on mortgage payments exhibited higher rates of depression and are skipping meals and medications because they cannot pay the bills, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health found.
  • Teenage drivers have fewer crashes after they’ve been driving for a while, but new research in the American Journal of Public Health suggests that a few months behind the wheel do not improve their driving skills much.
  • A recent study finds that the best way to fight TB in patients with HIV is to treat as early as possible.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

  • The famine in Somalia isn’t getting much public attention, but not because things are improving. Aid workers predict things will get worse before they get better. Much-needed rain is coming, but the rainfall could deepen the crisis for the four million people there who need help.
  • Numerous UN agencies are ready to be deployed if Southeast Asian nations ravaged by flooding request for assistance.
  • A report by Roll Back Malaria Partnership released at the start of the Gates Foundation’s Global Malaria Forum says that the world is making positive steps towards eradicating malaria. Specifically, 29 countries are on track to stop malaria within a decade.
  • Environmental hazards sicken or kill millions of people — soot or smog in the air, for example, or pollutants in drinking water. But the most dangerous stuff happens where the food is made — in peoples’ kitchens.
  • World Health Organization officials say the rapid and extensive globalization of food production has increased the incidence of food contamination worldwide.
  • Speculators in the agricultural commodities markets are forcing grocery prices to rise too quickly and erratically, according to some top economists marking World Food Day Sunday.
  • Climate change poses an immediate and serious threat to global health and stability, as floods and droughts destroy people’s homes and food supplies and increase mass migration, experts warn.
  • A survey of 87 countries showed more than half the countries reported more or much more awareness of mental illnesses in the past three years. Unfortunately, there is not a whole lot of new money behind that awareness.

Global Health News Last Week

by ihsection, posted in News

October 10 was World Mental Health Day.
October 15 was Global Handwashing Day.

POLITICS AND POLICY

  • The U.S. Army has proposed major cuts to its work on HIV, especially in the vaccine field. Leaders of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and other biomedical research organizations oppose the cuts.
  • The WHO plans to recommend tighter nutritional standards in food aid for young children, a move activists say is necessary to improve donations from countries such as the United States.
  • The US Department of Defense is funding platforms that will completely rethink how malaria drugs are developed.
  • Former Bush Administration official Andrew Natsios argues the case for foreign aid: “Singling out foreign aid for disproportionate cuts—which is exactly what has happened—is a serious mistake the United States as a world leader will pay for in the future.”
  • A survey of 507 Americans at the end of September sought to capture what, exactly, Americans know about the foreign aid budget. Particpiants were asked four questions about their impressions of foreign aid and opinions on why it is important to American interests.  Go here to read the full fact sheet that also includes more details about the study’s methods and see below to review the results in more detail.
  • The World Health Organization’s chief on Monday urged governments to unite against “big tobacco”, as she accused the industry of dirty tricks, bullying and immorality in its quest to keep people smoking.

PROGRAMS

  • Berk Ozler examines some recent reports about the challenges surrounding male circumcision. In the World Bank Development Impact blog, he offers two suggestions for how to improve the programs.
  • A partnership between Pampers and UNICEF to deliver neonatal tetanus vaccines is on track to eliminate the disease by 2015.
  • A $258 million initiative sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at preventing AIDS in India appears to have paid off overall, researchers say, resulting in more than 100,000 fewer new HIV infections over five years. Many aren’t quite ready to judge this project, Avahan, a success, however. The project failed in three of the six Indian states where it was tested.
  • Are the Millennium Villages an intervention that can reach scale? Supporters say yes and detractors are skeptical. Madeline Bunting covers the debate in the Guardian Development.
  • A report on the MGDS by United Nations Development Program, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank and the African Union Commission says that social protection programs can have a wide positive impact.

RESEARCH

DISEASES AND DISASTERS