Tag: World Bank

Global Health News Last Week

by ihsection, posted in News

POLICY

  • Assistant Senate Majority Leader Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) introduced the Water for the World Act of 2011, a bill in the Senate which will make providing safe and clean drinking water around the world a priority for US foreign aid.
  • More than 60 world nutrition experts met at WHO headquarters last week to revise guidelines and to identify solutions to tackle the growing problems of both malnutrition and obesity around the world.
  • Ministers of health and other high-level health officials from throughout the Americas called for a series of actions to reduce the toll of chronic noncommunicable diseases, in a declaration issued last week in Mexico City.
  • The Global Fund announced that former President of Botswana Festus Mogae and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt have agreed to lead a high-level panel of experts that will conduct an independent and thorough review of the Global Fund’s financial safeguards.
  • UN agencies are concerned that reduced donor funding due to the recession, combined with free trade agreements, will reduce the availability of low-cost HIV medications in developing countries.
  • The United Nations General Assembly will convene a high-level meeting in September this year to discuss the financial burden caused by non-communicable diseases (NCD) on countries.

RESEARCH

  • A study done is Malawi by the World Bank attracted attention (and criticism) from Businessweek. Young women were given to stay in school and deter them from accepting money and gifts from “sugar daddies” in exchange for sex. The study found that HIV infection rates were 60% among schoolgirls who received cash compared to those who received nothing.
  • A recent review of malaria treatment clinical trial results, published in the Chochrane Library, shows that artesunate was more effective that quinine at treating severe malaria.
  • A personalized text messaging reminder service significantly boosted antiretroviral (ARV) adherence over a six-week period compared with a standard beeper reminder system, according to a study published in the March issue of AIDS Patient Care and STDs.
  • About 600 people gathered at the Global Health Metrics and Evaluation conference in Seattle to discuss issues surrounding the evaluation of effectiveness of health programs.

PROGRAMS

  • Global health blogger Alanna Shaikh discusses how micro-credit and the Green Revolution, two of international development’s biggest successes, are being re-evaluated.
  • The Nepalese government is planning launch a large vaccination campaign against elephantiasis in 40 high-risk districts.
  • Dubai’s Ministry of Health introduced Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine PCV13, a vaccine that protects young children from the worst effects of illnesses including pneumonia, blood infections and meningitis.
  • The National Influenza Center of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been designated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, making China the first developing country to house such an institution.

DISEASES AND DISASTERS

  • Europe is concerned by the growing incidence of drug-resistant TB, particularly in children.
  • The world continues to follow the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, including the unfolding situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The WHO has assured that there is no danger to individuals being exposed to radiation in nearby nations (e.g. China).
  • As if Haiti needed any more bad news, a study published in the Lancet says that the UN estimate of 400,000 cholera cases in Haiti this year is nearly half of what the real projection should be for the recovering nation. Meanwhile, health officials in Lagos have called on residents to observe high standards of personal and environmental hygiene and have designated emergency numbers to call in case of suspected cases; the Ghana Health Service has set up cholera centers in Accra to deal with the outbreak there; and the interim federal government of Somalia on Tuesday denied reports of an outbreak of cholera in the country, responding to an Associated Press story over the weekend that Somali doctors had reported that more than 20 people had died from the disease.
  • In the February 2011 issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Disease Journal, contributing editor Serap Aksoy discussed the triumphs behind the control of human African trypanosomiasis, or African Sleeping Sickness.
  • Although women get diagnosed for tuberculosis (TB) later than men, treatment outcomes among women are better than men with higher TB treatment success rate and lower default (drop-out) rate in the female patients. The finding was announced at a meeting on TB and women in New Delhi, India.
  • While the total number of newly reported HIV positive people and AIDS patients are still low in Japan compared with other countries, the number of newly HIV-infected people in Japan has doubled in the past decade due to public complacency and lower awareness.

Global Health News Last Week

by ihsection, posted in Information and Social Media, News

The 13th Triennial World Congress on Public Health, to be hosted by the Ethiopian Public Health Association and held from April 21-29, 2012 in Addis Ababa, will bring together leaders in health from across the globe. The conference, “Towards Global Health Equity: Opportunities and Threats,” is currently accepting abstracts; the deadline is Friday, October 21, at 12 a.m. PT (3 a.m. ET). More information can be found here.

International Women’s Day was March 8.

On March 11, a 9.0 earthquake rocked Japan’s Chiba prefecture, followed by a colossal tsunami that washed entire villages away.


The world, of course, stands ready to help, but it is unlikely that most of the assistance will be needed, as Japan is one of the most disaster-ready countries in the world. Unfortunately, the explosions in several of the country’s nuclear plants means that the threat of radiation poisoning looms heavily.

POLICY

  • A panel of independent experts has released a report harshly criticizing the World Health Organization’s handling of the 2009 epidemic of H1N1 swine flu.
  • UN officials expressed concern that rising food and energy prices could compromise or even reverse progress toward the MDGs in developing nations.
  • UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has instructed senior managers to cut 3%, or US$5.4 billion, from budgets.
  • The Kenyan government has moved to strip HIV/AIDS of its special status and begin treating it as a chronic medical condition. It has begun implementing a disease integration model that will do away with emergency response measures and dismantle parallel administrative structures set up to manage the disease.

RESEARCH

  • HealthMap, a project that aggregates health and surveillance data from sounces such as the WHO, Google News, and Eurosurveillance, was launched recently to “[bring] together disparate data sources to achieve a unified and comprehensive view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on human and animal health.”
  • According to a study done by Tuberculosis Research Centre in India, alarming numbers of women with TB become homeless after they are diagnosed. Approximately 100,000 women are abandoned by their husbands due to TB every year in India.
  • A group of researchers from EPFL’s Global Health Institute and Inserm (Institut National de la SantĂ© et de la Recherche MĂ©dicale, the French government agency for biomedical research) has discovered that a class of chemotherapy drugs also kills the parasite that causes malaria.

PROGRAMS

  • Oxfam recently released a report criticizing the World Bank for its praise of Ghana’s healthcare system. Amanda Glassman of CGDev disagrees, arguing that Oxfam ignored surveys indicating the system’s success in improving health indicators and beneficiaries’ satisfaction with the quality of service.
  • On March 9, Saving Lives At Birth, a global partnership between USAID, the Government of Norway, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada, and the World Bank, was launched. The partnership “will seek innovative solutions to reduce maternal and newborn mortality in developing countries.”

DISEASES

  • Rwanda is on track to completely eliminate malaria, the first country in its region.

Global Health News Last Week

by ihsection, posted in News

STUDENTS AND NEW PROFESSIONALS: The Chatham House (formally known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs), a London-based think tank, is looking to fill two internship positions to begin in mid-April. They are looking for individuals who can work four days per week. The closing date is February 25, and interviews will be held on March 3 or 4. The position is unpaid.

End the Neglect is calling on global health bloggers to contribute guest posts for consideration. Read more about this opportunity here.

A study done at UCLA has apparently revealed that winning an Oscar may be a risk factor for stroke.

The International Vaccine Institute announced the launch of the Dengue Vaccine Initiative, which will “accelerate the development and untilization of safe, affordable and broadly protective vaccines to combat dengue.” The initiative will be funded by a $6.9 million grant from (surprise!) the Gates Foundation.

The World Bank reports that, despite the region’s robust economic development, South Asia is facing a health crisis as rates of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity rise. Meanwhile, the WHO released a report on alcohol and health, which found that alcohol is responsible for 4% of deaths worldwide (more than AIDS, TB, or violence), and that alcohol control policies are weak in most countries.

Mosquito-borne diseases are experiencing a comeback in Europe: in 2010, there were incidences of West Nile virus, dengue, malaria, and chikungunya. Some researchers predict that this may be an ongoing trend, as one study found that malaria may re-enter Europe by 2080.

A growing number of hospitals and medical businesses in the U.S. are implementing smoke-free hiring policies, barring employees from smoking and making smoking a reason to turn away applicants. The move is controversial, perhaps because the fact that the WHO has been doing this for years is not common knowledge.

In a surprising development, the Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool announced that it is in negotiations with F. Hoffman-La Roche, Gilead, Sequoia, and ViiV (a joint venture of GSK and Pfizer) to begin sharing their patents for AIDS drugs. Unfortunately, Abbott, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, and Tibotec/Johnson & Johnson will not be joining the party.

The Kaiser Family Foundation released a (rather depressing) report on the state of global health journalism, which found that global health coverage is decreasing due to lack of funding in media outlets, among other reasons. Sarah Arnquist, who manages the Global Health Hub, reflects on what that means for us global health bloggers.

Holy cow – the AIDS rate in Zimbabwe has actually gone down?!

George Clooney has teamed up with Nicholas Kristof to raise awareness about malaria. After catching it himself while he was in South Sudan for the independence referendum, he fielded questions from readers via Kristof’s NYT column.

Cholera continues to make the rounds, this time appearing in Venezuela and New York City. Global health professor Karen Grepin points out that this “epidemic” has been going on for four decades, and that our inability to control it indicates a a major failure in global health.

The WHO is investigating claims from 12 different countries that the swine flu vaccine may be linked to narcolepsy.

February 7 marked the 11th annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in the U.S.

Brett Keller, a Master’s student in global health and international development, also does a weekly news round-up on his blog called “Monday Miscellany.”

The Danger in Overlooking Environmental and Occupational Health

by Jessica, posted in Environmental and Occupational Health
A black-and-white photo of a gold mine in the 19th century.
Flickr, U.S. National Archives

I often get quizzical looks from public health professionals when, after explaining that I am interested in international health, I tell them that I got my MPH in Environmental Health. For example, while riding the shuttle from the airport to the Convention Center for the APHA Annual Meeting this past November, I struck up a conversation with an Environmental Health professor. She seemed puzzled when I told her that I was a member of the International Health section and then explained that my MPH focus (and my current job) was in environmental and occupational health. She then (very politely) invited me to the Environmental Health Section’s social hour.

While I certainly appreciated the invitation, I remain puzzled (and slightly frustrated) that there is relatively little discussion of environmental and occupational health issues in international health. The field is dominated by discussion of the Big Three diseases (HIV/AIDS, malaria, and TB), sanitation, tropical worms, MCNH issues, malnourishment, and poverty. While these are all very important issues deserving of attention and funding, EOH should by no means be left out: after all, every human being is affected by the environment around him or her, and nearly all of us hold some kind of occupation to put food on the table.

One story in particular caught my eye a few weeks ago. Nearly 300 children in Zamfara state in northern Nigeria have died from lead poisoning due to mining activity over the last two years; another 742 are currently being treated for high blood lead levels. Lead poisoning fall squarely under environmental health – my cubicle neighbor is a nurse for the Texas Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program – but this story had all of the trappings of a “classic” IH scenario: poor people in small villages in a developing country, Doctors without Borders, and sick African babies.

Mining is a significant issue, and a heated debate, in the field of development. Proponents of mining include the World Bank, which maintains that mining provides jobs, government revenues, and local economic benefits, and that it can provide sustainable development to communities with appropriate regulation. Critics argue that the pollution and environmental damage generated by mining operations outweigh the benefits, that it exploits local communities, and that the revenues are largely kept by local elites and foreign shareholders. And we all know that resources are too often followed by bloody conflict: civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Liberia, and armed conflict in the DRC, are just a few examples that come to mind. There are a number of health ramifications as well: constant exposure to rock dust makes miners more susceptible to tuberculosis, which they can spread to their families. Artisanal gold mining in particular, which supplies at least one fourth of the world’s total gold supply, is one of the most significant sources of the release of mercury into the environment.

Despite the hazards and health risks, however, the issue gets relatively little attention compared to the traditional global health villains of sanitation and infectious disease. This is unfortunate because all of the same factors play into mining in impoverished communities: residents and farmers take up mining and mineral extraction to improve their livelihoods because it pays better and provides more security than subsistence farming. There are issues of sustainability, ownership, exploitation, and corruption. Somit Varma, director of the Oil, Gas, Mining & Chemicals Department of the World Bank/IFC, has said that “the social and economic characteristics of small-scale mining fully reflect the challenges of the Millennium Development Goals, including: health, environment, gender, education, child labour, and poverty eradication.”

Advocates are becoming more vocal in drawing attention to “non-typical” international health issues, including cancer and mental illness. We should add environmental and occupational health issues to that list as well. While these issues are inevitably more complicated to prevent, screen for, and treat than the Big Three or NTDs – after all, you can’t pass out condoms or implement DOTS for lead poisoning or silicosis – they still impact the world in a major and often devastating way and are still deserving of our attention.