Health

Global health is primarily about public health, medical and research efforts aimed at assisting poor countries.

Key topics in this category:

RECENT POSTS

February 3, 2012 | 10:41 AM | By

Highest levels ever of drug-resistant TB found, in Europe

Tom Paulson

tuberculosis patient, El Salvador

People are always surprised by this one basic fact about tuberculosis: One out of every three people on the planet are currently infected with this airborne bacterium.

That’s why the problem of increasing outbreaks of drug-resistant strains of TB is so worrisome to health officials. Tuberculosis spreads a lot easier than many other diseases globally and we are losing our ability to fight it.

Perhaps equally surprising to some will be the new reports that the highest rates ever recorded of multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) are not in Africa or the developing world but in Eastern Europe — Russia and Moldova. Sarah Boseley in The Guardian writes:

It shows the highest-ever recorded levels of MDR-TB. In some countries, 65% of patients who have previously been treated for TB end up back in hospital with a drug-resistant strain. The clear message is that their TB was not sufficiently well treated the first time around.

Of all the big killers out there on the global health landscape, TB has always been one of the biggest. But it seldom gets anywhere near the same attention as HIV, malaria or even less deadly threats (in terms of mortality numbers) such as, say, maternal mortality or malnutrition.

This stunning finding, that E. Europe is home to the highest rates of drug-resistant TB ever found, is getting some attention, but not much.

FILED UNDER: Health, drug resistance, Europe, tuberculosis, World Health Organization
February 2, 2012 | 3:30 PM | By

Study: Malaria death toll nearly twice the official count, kills many adults

Flickr, ACJ1

A new global estimate of malaria deaths by researchers in Seattle has revealed the death toll is much greater than most experts had thought — and is not, as had been universally assumed, mostly a killer of children.

The study found more than 1.2 million people died from malaria in 2010, nearly twice the official estimate put out by the World Health Organization, and more than a third of the deaths were in adults.

The common wisdom has been that 99 percent of malaria deaths are in young children because adults develop immunity.

“This radically changes the picture,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, lead author of the study and director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Chris Murray, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, malaria, mortality, World Health Organization
February 1, 2012 | 12:43 PM | By

How Jimmy Carter became a serpent slayer and global health pioneer

Tom Paulson

President Jimmy Carter speaks at World Affairs Council 60th Anniversary event

Former President Jimmy Carter is in Seattle, having spoken last night at the World Affairs Council’s 60th anniversary celebration and speaking today at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about Guinea worm.

Mike Urban, mikeurbanart.com

A Nigerian woman with Guinea Worm

Guinea worm is a human parasite that eats its way through the human body and emerges a year later, incapacitating people with the pain of completing its life cycle. It’s horrible.

I’ve seen people with Guinea worm in Africa. Over the years, I’ve also seen what Jimmy Carter and his team at the Carter Center have done to come close now to completely ridding the world of this horrific disease.

It’s a great story, and perhaps of much broader significance to global health than many might realize.

Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation, major pharmaceutical companies and others announced a major $$785 million push against “neglected tropical diseases.” This was celebrated by Bill Gates, World Health Organization chief Margaret Chan and others as a critical turning point in global health. The Carter Center got some of the loot, $40 million of it, to finish off Guinea worm.

But in one sense, this push against neglected diseases got a good first shove nearly 30 years ago by Jimmy Carter. One look at the Carter Center’s website shows they got to this point, of recognizing the need to fight neglected diseases, decades ago.

Diseases like river blindness, Guinea worm, parasitic (lymphatic) elephantiasis and schistosomiasis have been in Carter’s cross hairs since the mid-1980s. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Foege, Bill Gates Sr., Donald Hopkins, guinea worm, Jimmy Carter, neglected diseases
February 1, 2012 | 12:42 PM | By

Guinea Worm in Nigeria, 2001

In 2001, photographer Mike Urban and I went to Nigeria as part of a report we did for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the early days of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation global health program.

One of the world’s biggest health problems is dirty water. One of the most horrific illnesses you can get from drinking dirty water is guinea worm, aka dracunculiasis. We visited a village where Carter Center health workers combined treatment of the affliction with prevention education and water supply improvement projects.

Here’s a link to the story on guinea worm we did back then and a slide show of Mike’s photos:

FILED UNDER: Health, guinea worm, Mike Urban, Nigeria
February 1, 2012 | 12:42 PM | By

Grace: Nigeria’s last case of guinea worm

After my first visit to Nigeria in 2001, when I saw more than my fair share of guinea worm infections, I returned to Nigeria for a book project I claimed to be working on. It was 2009 and I was a freelancer.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I asked the Carter Center if I could go meet the last person — a woman named Grace Otubo — to have guinea worm in Nigeria. After a long and frequently bumpy drive from Abuja, we arrived at the village of Ezza Nkwubor, outside of Enugu.

Based on the greeting I received, I think they must have assumed I was someone more important.

Here, in their own words, and song, they celebrate no longer having guinea worm to deal with. They still have health problems, emphasizing that they still need basic health services such as maternal and child care. They still deal with malaria and pneumonia. But they do have one thing to get up and dance about. I later decided I had to join in the dancing, but deleted that part from the video:

FILED UNDER: Health, Carter Center, guinea worm, Nigeria
February 1, 2012 | 9:21 AM | By

Report: Obama’s Global Health Initiative lacks initiative, clear strategy

A new report by the Center for Global Development‘s Nandini Oomman and Rachel Silverman says that the Obama Administration’s once much-celebrated (though always vague) Global Health Initiative appears to suffer from a severe case of bureaucratic anemia:

At its launch, the GHI was met with great excitement and showed much promise as a coordinating mechanism to streamline U.S. global health funding and improve aid effectiveness. Thus far, however, the initiative has been plagued by problems with transparency, leadership, coordination, funding, and implementation, leading to deep skepticism both within and outside the U.S. government.

You can read their short, incisive report here as a PDF.

Oomman and Silverman don’t just whine about it. They present options to help GHI ‘regain the promise it held’ beginning with getting past vague generalities to clarify what it is and how it is supposed to work .

CGD colleague Connie Veillette also weighs in with Where Oh Where has the GHI Gone? The Whole of Government Approach Hangs in the Balance.

Veillette partly blames the lack of initiative and confusion at GHI on the political jockeying now plaguing our approach to foreign aid due to infighting between Sec. Hillary Clinton’s folks at the U.S. State Department and Raj Shah’s gang at the U.S. Agency for International Aid over ‘reforming’ foreign aid. Here’s my own, semi-serious, look at the tussle back when it started in early 2010.

Also see Global Post’s series on the Global Health Initiative over the past year.

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Global Health Initiative, Nandini Oomman, Obama Administration
January 31, 2012 | 2:29 PM | By

NPR: More than a million condoms recalled in South Africa

By Scott Hensley / NPR

Denis Farrell / AP

Condoms like this one were given out during the African National Congress party's centenary celebrations in early Now a South African health official says that 1.35 million of them are being recalled amid charges some broke during sex.

The party may be over, but the trouble may just be starting in South Africa.

The health department in Free State province is recalling 1.35 million condoms that may not be up to snuff.

The affected condoms — a government brand called Choice — were distributed early this month as part of the festivities marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress.

The ANC, the ruling political party in the country for the past 17 years, is known for its pivotal role in the ending of apartheid and its longtime leader Nelson Mandela’s message of equality.

But quite a few of the “revolutionary rubbers,” as the City Press newspaper called the freebies, reportedly broke during sex. “People would claim that the condoms burst,” AIDS activist Sello Mokhalipi, of the Treatment Action Campaign, told the paper. “When we investigated the complaints it turned out the condoms are porous.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, condoms, NPR
January 30, 2012 | 12:14 PM | By

Gates initiative on “neglected diseases” advances cause, but neglects key questions

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced, together with more than a dozen drug makers and others, a new initiative aimed at fighting a select group of mostly developing world ailments called “neglected tropical diseases” such as river blindness, parasitic elephantiasis and others.

Uniting to Combat NTDs

These diseases affect an estimated 1.4 billion people, killing perhaps half a million a year, but have not been high on the global health radar screen. As Dr. Peter Hotez writes for Huffington Post, for only 50 cents per child many of these diseases may now be eliminated.

The new public-private initiative aims to rid the world of 10 of these diseases by 2020.

It’s widely regarded as a positive step forward for global health, but there are some important questions that went unanswered:

  1. What is a neglected disease? This is actually a hotly debated question in global health circles right now.
  2. Many think the solution to fighting diseases of poverty should be to focus on poverty as much as on disease. Will this initiative get at the root problem or just address symptoms?

We’ll get back to the neglected issues of neglected diseases in a bit. First, more on the news:

For this initiative called the London Declaration on Neglected Diseases, the Gates Foundation pledged $363 million to support research into new treatments. Drug makers like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Johnson & Johnson and others have likewise pledged to step up research as well as to expand donation programs of medications to poor countries.

Others involved in the initiative include the World Bank, the United Arab Emirates as well as the U.S. and U.K. governments The total estimated commitment is $785 million. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, elephantiasis, GlaxoSmithKline, guinea worm, Jimmy Carter, leischmaniasis, Medicins Sans Frontieres, Merck, neglected disease, Schistosomiasis