Global Health | Blog

Global health news, views, research, and resources that caught our eye this week. News & Views Protection of Health Care in Armed and Civil Conflict | Center for Strategic & International Studies Infographics: In Focus: Future of Aid | AlertNet Rwanda: To Improve Quality of Health Services, We Must Build Trust | AllAfrica .com Truvada, Foster City Drugmaker's HIV Prevention Pill, Draws Concern from Experts | Huffington Post USAID Introduces Strategic Framework for Global Health | Fogarty International Center at NIH Maternal Mortality and Human Rights: Landmark Decision by United Nations Human Rights Body | Bulletin of the World Health Organization U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator Touts Progress in HIV Prevention in PEPFAR Countries and NIAID Announces Funding Ops for HIV Clinical Trial Networks, Including TB and Hepatitis | Science Speaks: HIV & TB News WHO Estimates 40% of Global Population at Risk for Dengue | End the Neglect Why the Global Fund Matter s | The New York Times* How Jimmy Carter Became a Serpent Slayer and Global Health Pioneer | Humanosphere Building a... Read More »

Posted by Heather Valli at 0 Comments

I heard about Aimable, * a smiling eight-year-old boy who loves soccer, from a health provider at Rwanda’s Rubungo Health Center. He is one of 40 children who receive HIV treatment and care at the center’s pediatric palliative care ward. Five years ago, Aimable’s mother died from an AIDS-related condition. He was tested and found to be HIV-positive. Aimable’s father assumed his son would soon die like his mother, so he took Aimable’s siblings and moved to Uganda. Aimable’s grandmother took him to the Rubungo Health Center, where he was diagnosed with malnourishment, rashes, a respiratory infection, and other health complications. He was also immediately started on antiretroviral therapy (ART), and his condition quickly improved. Today Aimable is as healthy and energetic as many of his peers. He has not yet been formally told, however, that the medication he takes every day is for HIV and what this means for his life.   “When I ask the children to explain in their own words why they are taking medicine, they say it is because of a cough, intestinal worms, or some other ailment. It’s not time to explain the real... Read More »

Posted by Christine Spetz at 0 Comments

This blog was crossposted at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum. Last week, NPR ran a story that made me cringe, describing a major humanitarian group’s decision to stop treating patients from detention centers in Misrata, Libya. According to the report, “torture was so rampant that some detainees were brought for care only to make them fit for further interrogation.” 1 On the one hand, I thought, it must have been heart-wrenching to walk away from the detention centers, where the organization had been working since last August, knowing some detainees would die without care. But then I thought, there really was no other option; these health workers were being used as pawns of warfare. In a press release last week, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) stated that MSF workers had treated at least 115 people with torture-related injuries and reported these cases to relevant local and national authorities, but, in case anyone doubted the human capacity for violence or cruelty, their pleas to stop the abuses went unaddressed. Instead, they received four more patients with torture-related injuries. Médecins... Read More »

Posted by Susanna Smith at 0 Comments

Global health news, views, research, and resources that caught our eye this week. News & Views Braving Birth: Zambian Women Forced to Deliver at Home | Radio Netherlands Worldwide Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis: What It Is, Why It’s Here, and How We Should Respond | Center for Strategic International Studies Working Together on Global Health | The Hill 2012 Annual Letter from Bill Gates | Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Areas with Low Malaria Rates 'Need Mass Vaccination' | SciDevNet A Day of Social Media at the United Nations | Socialbrite The Global Fund—Saved and Wrapped in the US Flag? | The Guardian eHealth Critical for Developing Countries’ | The Express Tribune In Facebook Game, Indian Women Reject Dowry | Voice of America Gates Urges Support for Global Health Programs | The Wall Street Journal The True Burden of Cancer | IRIN Research & Resources Mobile Technology Improves Health Worker Knowledge Retention: Results from a Pilot Project in Uganda | USAID ICT4Health Adherence to Antiretroviral Therapy: Supervision or... Read More »

Posted by IntraHealth at 0 Comments

Despite firm standards rooted in the Geneva Conventions to protect health facilities, health workers, and the patients served during armed conflict, and to enable health professionals to act consistently with their ethical obligations, assaults on and interference with health functions are all too common in war. Aside from the human toll they take, these attacks often compromise the ability to deliver care to populations in great need, impede efforts to reconstruct health systems after war, and lead to the flight of health workers whose presence in a time of great social stress is essential. The international community has taken few steps to provide guidance to promote compliance with the law, or to assess and report on violations in a uniform and comprehensive manner. Sound methodologies for data collection about these assaults have not been developed. The lack of systematic reporting and documentation of these violations contributes to continued disregard for an established and internationally recognized legal framework of protection. Mechanisms to encourage compliance with these international norms are needed as a first step in preserving critical health services in... Read More »

Posted by Leonard Rubenstein at 0 Comments

Global health news, views, research, and resources that caught our eye this week. News & Views 'In 10 Years' Time, Ghana May Not Require Any Aid at All' | The Guardian India Marks A Year Free Of Polio | National Public Radio For Intrigue, Malaria Drug Gets the Prize , Time to Face the Pain , and After Years of Decline, Polio Cases in Afghanistan Triple in a Yea r | New York Times * Alliance Formed to Address Critical Shortage of Human Resources for Health Sector in Nepal | Nepal News 120 year old Method of Fetal Monitoring where there is no Electricity | maternova Celebrate Solutions: A Commitment to the Health and Livelihood of India’s Women | Women Deliver Patient-Centered Design: Maternity Care Designed by Women, for Women | Maternal Health Task Force Nigeria: Health Care in States—Gaps to Fill in 2012 and Rwanda: Care and Respect Is a Right for Every Expectant Women at Childbirth | AllAfrica.com Surgical Robots: The Kindness of Strangers | The Economist Research & Resources Mobile Technology Improves Health Worker Knowledge Retention: Results... Read More »

Posted by IntraHealth at 0 Comments

This blog entry was originally published at ONE Blog. Berthé Aissata Touré is a health worker in Mali, where women have an average of six children. In this country’s vast rural areas, childbirth complications are life-threatening. Touré is a frontline health worker, someone who’s often the only link to health care for people who live beyond the reach of hospitals and clinics. Referring her patients to a hospital in cases of hemorrhage isn’t much use—the trip is simply too long. “There is too much time to lose blood on the way,” Touré explains, and in the past “many women were lost.” She received training in a WHO-recommended technique to prevent excessive blood loss and was authorized to administer uterotonic drugs, a critical component of this lifesaving practice. Childbirth should be miraculous, not deadly, a colleague once said. Skilled health workers like Touré save lives, yet access to them remains difficult or impossible for millions of people. According to the WHO, there is a global shortage of at least one million frontline health workers.  Their absence means... Read More »

Posted by Maurice Middleberg and Sarah Dwyer at 0 Comments

Global health news, views, research, and resources that caught our eye this week. News & Views Advancing the Global Health Agenda | UN Chronicle Haiti’s Health System, 2 Years after the Earthquake and What Drives You in Global Health? | Global Health Hub Melinda Gates Answers Your Questions and Malnutrition Widespread in Indian Children, Report Fin ds | New York Times * India Reports Completely Drug-Resistant TB | Wired Passionate Ugandan Midwife Takes Maternal Health Message Abroad | Daily Monitor Text4Baby: Maternal Health Messages Via SMS | MobileActive “Canaries in the mine”—Heeding the Call for Childhood TB Research | Science Speaks: HIV & TB News A Simple Recipe to Save 40% of Newborns and 50% of Mothers | maternova Promoting Frontline Health Workers Helps in Disease Prevention | Dialogue 4 Health New Coalition Promotes Investment in Health Workers | Voice of America A New Day for Frontline Health Workers | AMREF USA Research & Resources What Will It Take to Eliminate Pediatric HIV? Reaching WHO Target Rates of... Read More »

Posted by IntraHealth at 0 Comments

Recently, Advanced Development for Africa released a report, “ Scaling Up Mobile Health: Elements Necessary for the Successful Scale Up of mHealth in Developing Countries ,” which details the work of nine projects that are deploying mobile technology to achieve specific global health goals. The report crossed my desk at the same time as another study, “ Cell Phone Use among Homeless Youth: Potential for New Health Interventions and Research ” from the Journal of Urban Health. I was also finishing an article profiling some of IntraHealth’s work in India, including a pilot project called mSakhi (meaning mobile friend in Hindi), which uses mobile phones to guide community health workers in offering basic care and health education. From these studies, there were several take-away messages. First, and perhaps most commonly repeated, cellphones are everywhere, and nearly everyone has one. There are “5.3 billion mobile subscribers across the globe,” 1 which may include more than 60% of homeless youth in Los Angeles, 2 I was surprised to learn. In developing countries, 3.8 billion people have mobile subscriptions,... Read More »

Posted by Susanna Smith at 0 Comments

To read about Dr. Papadakos foray into guest blogging with IntraHealth click here . As technology and the access to medical information have exploded worldwide, we may be ill-prepared to balance the technologic aspects of care with those of the art of medicine. At the core of all patient care is a personal bond between patient and caregiver. This relationship plays an important role in the process of both trust and healing.  With the introduction of computer-based electronic records (EMRs), online libraries, electronic imaging, and non-verbal communication such as texting and email, health care workers may be overwhelmed by technology and break from that human bond. As illustrated by a recent New York Times article, “ As Doctors Use More Devices, Potential for Distraction Grows ” and its resulting commentaries, patients sometimes believe that their caregiver is more concerned with their data, the so-called i-patient, rather than the patient in the room.  Recently, I wrote “ Electronic Distraction: An Unmeasured Variable in Modern Medicine ” in Anesthesiology News proposing that the key to addressing this problem of electronic... Read More »

Posted by Peter J. Papadakos, MD, FCCM at 0 Comments