Tag: video

MNCH Innovations: Video Review

by nsoleye, posted in APHA IH Section

This new video from UNICEF starts with the story of an Indian woman who safely delivered a healthy baby in a clinic, under medical supervision, thanks to a partnership between UNICEF and her local government. Prior to their intervention, the majority of women in her district in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh were delivering babies at home because health facilities were few and far away, and there was no transportation available.

Over five years, UNICEF worked with the Madhya Pradesh government to make major changes, including:

  • Upgrading health centers
  • Providing new equipment
  • Hiring new nurses
  • Improving hospitals with a newborn care units
  • Funding an ambulance service
  • Creating a call center to coordinate ambulance trips

Now, five years after UNICEF began their work, the woman’s district reports the lowest maternal mortality rate in the entire state. Every year, half a million women use the ambulance service to ensure safer deliveries, and 50,000 newborns are saved in the newborn care units. UNICEF’s work has been so successful that the Madhya Pradesh government is scaling up and replicating it elsewhere in the state and other Indian states are also interested in implementing the programs.

One of the newborns in the video had a lung problem and was also underweight because his mother had not been eating properly. The narrator mentioned that many babies in the unit were underweight. While the video focused on the help the new care unit was able to provide to these newborns, my thoughts went elsewhere. UNICEF’s work has made a big difference, but the small fact about the prevalence of underweight newborns reinforced the fact that there are many larger underlying factors and social determinants at play that will continue to challenge progress and positive changes in developing countries. UNICEF’s innovative programs were definitely successful in tackling the delivery and newborn care issues in the region, but the video also (unintentionally) illustrated the general complexity of global health and development challenges.

“Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.”
– Bill Gates

Eliminating Rabies: WHO Video Review

by nsoleye, posted in APHA IH Section

Did you know that rabies kills more than 60,000 people each year? About half of all victims are children. This year on World Rabies Day, September 28, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) declared their promise to eliminate human rabies, a neglected tropical disease.

Rabies is a viral disease, spread from animals to humans through saliva. The most deaths from rabies occur in Africa and Asia, with the majority of cases transmitted by dogs. But rabies is preventable! Education and awareness, animal and human vaccinations, and community surveillance are some strategies for prevention and elimination. With lots of attention on the usual global health priority areas, it’s nice to see these three international organizations coming together to raise awareness and fight a neglected tropical disease.

Read their statement and watch this short video for more information. 

Guinea-Worm Disease & Eradication: WHO Video Review

by nsoleye, posted in APHA IH Section

Guinea-worm disease, or dracunculiasis, is a neglected tropical disease (NTD) with no vaccine or medication for treatment. The disease is caused by a parasitic worm known as the Guinea-worm and is transmitted through contaminated drinking water. Guinea-worm disease is the first parasitic disease set for eradication and this short World Health Organization (WHO) video shows the progress of eradication efforts to date.

When someone drinks water from a source contaminated with water fleas that carry the Guinea-worm larvae, the larvae are released in the stomach and pass into the body cavity. Over the course of 10-14 months, the larvae mature and turn into worms. At this point, a painful blister forms on the outside of the body (usually on the lower legs and feet) as the female worms try to exit the body. The blister causes an intense burning sensation which often leads people to submerge their legs/feet in water for relief. While the blister is submerged, the female worm comes out and releases thousands of larvae into the water, thus contaminating the water and completing the cycle of infection. 

I find it amazing that Guinea-worm disease is on the verge of eradication because in this case, eradication has nearly been achieved through preventive measures alone. From health education and increased detection to water filtration and water treatment, the prevention efforts put forth have decreased the number of reported cases from 1,797 in 2010 to just 90 between January and June 2013.

This is a great accomplishment for the global health community. Congratulations to the WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Carter Center, UNICEF and all others supporting the eradication of Guinea-worm disease!

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.

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.