For much of 2014, the Ebola outbreak in Sub-Saharan Africa dominated headlines as the virus spread and eventually made its way to the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, while the world focused on graphic images of people dying from Ebola on the street, little attention was paid to other infectious diseases that continue to plague much of the developing world.
As media coverage of the Ebola outbreak slowly started to decline, however, news of a new strain of drug-resistant malaria started to catch the public’s attention. Drug-resistance is a silent but serious threat to public health. And, if drug-resistant malaria were to spread from its current location in Myanmar to the nearby nations of India and China, it could easily become the world’s next big global health emergency.
More generally, every year millions of people die from malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDs – aptly named neglected diseases. This fact invites the following questions: What efforts to combat these neglected diseases are working? Where is help still needed? And, what initiatives are actually making a difference?
A new Global Health Impact index, supported by a collaboration of university-based researchers and civil society organizations around the world, helps provide answers to these questions. The index evaluates the global health impact of particular drugs. This information can be used to increase awareness about particular diseases, and create national and international demand for drugs to treat these diseases.
A drug’s global health impact is determined by compiling information about: (1) the need for the drug; (2) access to the drug; and (3) effectiveness of the drug. In this way, the Global Health Impact index makes it possible to estimate the impact of each drug in each country, as well as the global impact of particular drugs on specific diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
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[Reblog] The Global Health Impact Index
From the 30 January 2015 post by Nicole Hassoun and Priya Bhimani at Impact Ethics
[Press release] Equation helps identify global disparities in cancer screening and treatment | EurekAlert! Science News
From the 20 January 2015 press release
Disparities in cancer screening, incidence, treatment, and survival are worsening globally. In a new study on colorectal cancer, researchers found that the
Age-standardised death rates from Colon and rectum cancers by country (per 100,000 inhabitants). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) can help identify whether a country has a higher mortality than might be expected based on cancer incidence. Countries with lower-than-expected MIRs have strong national health systems characterized by formal colorectal cancer screening programs. Conversely, countries with higher-than-expected MIRs are more likely to lack such screening programs.
The findings suggest that the MIR has potential as an indicator of the long-term success of global cancer surveillance programs. “The MIR appears to be a promising method to help identify global populations at risk for screenable cancers. In this capacity, it is potentially a useful tool for monitoring an important cancer outcome that informs and improves health policy at a national and international level,” said Dr. Vasu Sunkara, lead author of the Cancerstudy. Senior author Dr. James Hébert, who had used the MIR previously at the state and national level within the US, added that the use of the MIR internationally opens new possibilities for testing the relationship between this important indicator of cancer outcome and characteristics of countries’ health care delivery systems.
Related articles
Global Health: Time to Pay Attention to Chronic Diseases
From the 1 Ju;ly 2014 blog post
…While infectious diseases remain a significant problem in the developing world, cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and other non-communicable diseases are now among the fastest growing causes of death and disability around the globe. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the 38 million people who died of chronic diseases in 2012 lived in low- or middle-income countries [1].
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The good news is that many NCDs can be prevented by making lifestyle changes, such as reducing salt intake for hypertension, stopping smoking for cancer and heart disease, or venting cookstove fumes for lung disease. Other NCDs can be averted or controlled by taking medications, such as statins for high cholesterol or metformin for diabetes.
Related articles
Global Health and Human Rights Database
Global Health and Human Rights Database.
- A free online database of law from around the world relating to health and human rights.Offers an interactive, searchable, and fully indexed website of case law, national constitutions and international instruments
- Features case law and other legal documents from more than 80 countries and in 25 languages.
- Provides 500 plain-language summaries and 200 original translations of case law previously unavailable in English.
- Developed by Lawyers Collective and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, in collaboration with over 100 partners from civil society, academic, and legal practice worldwide.
- Links to Additional Resources
Related articles
New Report: Call for President Obama Urged to ‘Remove Public Veil of Ignorance’ Around State of US Health
View larger map at http://gamapserver.who.int/mapLibrary/Files/Maps/PerCapitaUSD_2011.png
From the 29 August 2013 Science Daily article
In a call to action on the sorry comparative state of U.S. health, researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health are urging President Obama to “remove the public veil of ignorance” and confront a pressing question: Why is America at the bottom? The report, published in the journal Science, appeals to the President to mobilize government to create a National Commission on the Health of Americans. The researchers underscore the importance of this effort in order for the country to begin reversing the decline in the comparative status of U.S. health, which has been four decades in the making.
This is not a challenge that can be left to private groups, no matter how well meaning. Drs. Ronald Bayer and Amy Fairchild, both Professors of Sociomedical Sciences, argue, “The health status of Americans is a social problem that demands social solutions.” More is at stake than the U.S. healthcare system, which fails to provide needed care to millions of Americans. “There is a need for bold public policies that move beyond individual behavior to address the fundamental causes of disease,” Bayer and Fairchild conclude.
A January 2013 report by the U.S. National Research Council (NRC) and Institute of Medicine (IOM) ranks the United States last among peer nations in health status and compares it unfavorably to 17 peer countries at almost every stage of the life course. The report, titled “U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health,” emphasizes that socioeconomic causes are the drivers of these outcomes and details the categories in which the U.S. has the worst or next-to-worst results:
- The U.S. has higher rates of adverse birth outcomes, heart disease, injuries from motor vehicle accidents and violence, sexually acquired diseases, and chronic lung disease.
- Americans lose more years of life to alcohol and other drugs.
- The U.S. has the highest rate of infant mortality among high-income countries.
- The U.S. has the second highest incidence of AIDS and ischemic heart disease,
- For decades, the U.S. has experienced the highest rates of obesity in children and adults as well as diabetes from age 20 and up.
Related articles
Society must come to a conclusion on how important human suffering is
Society must come to a conclusion on how important human suffering is
Very interesting thoughts on the goals of Western medicine. Should medicine be about alleviating suffering? Totally eradicating disease through industrializing medicine (thing drug companies)? If global health is indeed largely affected by socioeconomic factors, should medicine drive policies?
The Global Burden of Disease 2010
On Social Justice, Sociology & Global Health
The massive collaborative project known as The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) has just been published. The GBD is a comprehensive assessment of mortality and loss of health due to diseases, injuries and risk factors in all regions of the world.
From the Executive Summary:
The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) is the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors. The results show that infectious diseases, maternal and child illness, and malnutrition now cause fewer deaths and less illness than they did twenty years ago. As a result, fewer children are dying every year, but more young and middle-aged adults are dying and suffering from disease and injury, as non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, become the dominant causes of death and disability worldwide. Since 1970…
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[Reblog] Maternal Health and the Status of Women
[Reblog]
Maternal Health and the Status of Women
Both globally and domestically, maternal health and the standing of women are inextricably linked. If women do not have the means and access to give birth safely, with trained and educated midwives, physicians and nurses, with appropriate prenatal education and care, it is often indicative of the standing of women in their communities and countries overall. Women’s inequality is also linked to the soaring population growth in developing countries, which will pose a range of new challenges for the next few generations.
Some may point to the United States as an anomaly, citing women’s increasing economic and financial independence, education, and leadership roles in America, while in terms of maternal health rankings, we remain pathetically far down the line for our resources (49 other countries are safer places to give birth than the U.S. – despite us spending more money on healthcare than anywhere else). Of course, the recent and incessant attacks on allowing women to access credible, accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and services makes this statistic not entirely…surprising, shall we say.
So, I found the incredibly detailed and visually impressive infographic by the National Post, pulled from spectacular data and research done by Save the Children to be particularly fascinating. What they did was combine information on the health, economic, and education status of women to create overall rankings of the best and worst countries for women, splitting the countries into categories of more developed, less developed, and least developed, and the countries were ranked in relation to the other countries in their category (the divisions were based on the 2008 United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects, which most recently no longer classified based on development standing). While these divisions and the rankings can certainly be contentious and may incite some disagreement (nothing unusual there, these kind of rankings usually are), I thought the results were interesting. Some highlights – Norway is first, Somalia is last. The United States was 19th, and Canada was 17th (Estonia fell in between us and the Great White North) in the most developed. Israel is first in the less developed category, and Bhutan is first in the least developed category. The full report with data from Save the Children is also available, if you want to learn more about the information combined to make this image. Take a look:
[larger image at http://larkincallaghan.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/best-and-worst-places-to-be-a-woman.jpg]
A Woman’s Place – Courtesy of the National Post
One thing that I thought was particularly great was that the researchers combined women’s health and children’s heath data to create rankings specific to being a mother, when that category is sometimes only assessed based on access to reproductive care.The specific rankings of maternal health highlights largely mimics the overall standing of women, as seen here – Norway is number one, again, and Niger falls into last place:
Mother’s Index, Courtesy of Save the Children
I think these images and graphs are particularly moving given one of the top health stories coming out of the New York Times today, which showed that a recent Johns Hopkins study indicated meeting the contraception needs of women in developing countries could reduce maternal mortality (and thereby increase the standing of women in many of the nations doing poorly in the above ranking) globally by a third. When looking at the countries in the infographic that have low rates of using modern contraception and the correlation between that and their ranking in terms of status of women, it’s not surprising what the JH researchers found. Many of the countries farther down in the rankings have rates below 50%, and for those countries filling the bottom 25 slots, none of them even reach a rate that is a third of the population in terms of contraceptive use – which of course in most cases has to do with availability, not choice. Wonderfully, the Gates Foundation yesterday announced that they would be donating $1 billion to increase the access to contraceptives in developing countries.
Also of note, and in relation to maternal and newborn health, is a new study recently published by Mailman researchers that showed PEPFAR funded programs in sub-Saharan Africa increased access to healthcare facilities for women (particularly important for this region, as 50% of maternal deaths occur there), thereby increasing the number of births occurring in these facilities – reducing the avoidable (and sometimes inevitable) complications from labor and delivery, decreasing the chance of infection and increasing treatment if contracted. This has clear implications for children as well (and why I think this study relates to the National Post infographic and the NY Times article), since newborns are also able to be assessed by trained healthcare workers and potentially life-threatening conditions averted – including HIV, if the newborns have HIV+ mothers and need early anti-retroviral treatment and a relationship with a healthcare worker and system. And it goes without saying that if a new mother is struggling with post-delivery healthcare issues, including abscesses and fistulas, or was dealing with a high-risk pre-labor condition like preeclampsia, the child will have an increasingly difficult early life, perhaps even a motherless one.
Related articles
- The Best And Worst Places In The World To Be A Woman (fastcoexist.com)
- Maternal health: India likely to miss milennium goals, says UN (thehindu.com)
- Contraceptive Use Averts 272,000 Maternal Deaths Worldwide (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
- Mothers lose out (thehindu.com)
- 100,000 Women’s Lives Could Be Saved By Expanded Access To Contraception (thinkprogress.org)
- Rich countries pledge $2.6bn for family planning in global south (guardian.co.uk)
- Melinda Gates challenges Vatican by vowing to improve contraception (guardian.co.uk)
- Fulfilling Contraception Needs Could Lower Maternal Mortality Drastically, Study Says (nytimes.com)
- Maternal Mortality Rates Could Tank If We Meet Contraception Needs in Developing Countries [Contraception] (jezebel.com)
2012 Global Ranking of Countries by Environmental Performance
The 2012 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) (99 page pdf, Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, Yale University, Center for International Earth Science Information Network, Columbia University, 2012)
Also discussed here: New Rankings on Environmental Performance (The Dirt, ASLA, Jun. 5, 2012)
The Environmental Performance Index assesses the relative progress of 132 countries with 22 performance indicators. The 2012 ranking showed Switzerland, Latvia and Norway at the top, Canada in 37th position and the USA, 49th. Rising greenhouse gas emissions are a particular challenge for developed countries while safe drinking water is the biggest one for developing countries. Major data gaps exist for monitoring air pollution and greenhouse gas with the notable exception of the European Union(which had 20 of the top ranked 22 countries overall).
To see Key Quotes and Links to key reports about this post, clickHERE
Journal launches big series on “Big Food” and public health
English: Montage of images used to illustrate mission of PLoS Medicine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From the 25 June 2012 post by Gary Schwitzer at HealthNewsReview.org
The journal PLoS Medicine has begun to publish a series of articles – “a multidisciplinary approach to exploring the role in health of Big Food, which we define as the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power.” Excerpt of an editors’ note:
“The time is ripe for PLoS Medicine to shine a light on Big Food. Foremost, large food and beverage companies now have an undeniably influential presence on the global health stage. Whether it’s food company executives providing expertise at major conferences and high-level UN meetings or major global health funders lecturing on what nongovernmental organizations can learn from Coca-Cola, the perspectives and experiences of Big Food are shaping the field of global health. At the same time that their expertise is elevated in global health debates, food companies are rebranding themselves as “nutrition companies,” offering business acumen and knowledge in food science and distribution, and asserting authority over solutions to problems not just of food production but of malnutrition, obesity, and even poverty. The legitimization of food companies as global health experts is further fueled by the growing number of private-public partnerships with public health organizations, ostensibly designed to foster collaborative action to improve people’s health and wellbeing. And yet food companies’ primary obligation is to drive profit by selling food. Why does the global health community find this acceptable and how do these conflicts of interest play out?
Indeed, while problems of obesity and associated disease are dominating discussions and debates in health around the world, there’s a concomitant gulf of critical perspectives on the food industry’s role and competing interests. Despite PLoS Medicine‘s longstanding interest in the tobacco, pharmaceutical, and other industries in health, for example, we have paid relatively little attention to the activities and influence of food and beverage companies.”
Here are links to two pieces:
Related articles
- Food industry needs more scrutiny from the public health community (eurekalert.org)
- Food Industry Needs Closer Monitoring By Public Health Authorities (medicalnewstoday.com)
- Food industry needs more scrutiny from the public health community (medicalxpress.com)
- Does Big Food Contribute to Bigger Bodies? (blogs.plos.org)
- Soda pop ad campaigns called misleading (cbc.ca)
- Soda Marketing Campaigns Undermine Public Health (medicalnewstoday.com)
- How should public health advocates engage with Big Food? (blogs.plos.org)
- New PLoS Medicine series will focus on best practice in global mental health (eurekalert.org)
- Soda companies’ PR campaigns are bad for health (eurekalert.org)
- Grasping and even celebrating uncertainty ( How Journalists Can Aid Critical Thinking in Healthcare Decisions) (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
- PR Campaigns By Soda Companies Are Bad For Health (medicalnewstoday.com)
WHO: Urgent action needed to prevent the spread of untreatable gonorrhoea
6 JUNE 2012 | GENEVA – Millions of people with gonorrhoea may be at risk of running out of treatment options unless urgent action is taken, according WHO. Already several countries, including Australia, France, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom are reporting cases of resistance to cephalosporin antibiotics – the last treatment option against gonorrhoea. Every year an estimated 106 million people are infected with gonorrhea, which is transmitted sexually.
Dwindling treatment options
“Gonorrhoea is becoming a major public health challenge, due to the high incidence of infections accompanied by dwindling treatment options,” says Dr Manjula Lusti-Narasimhan, from the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO. “The available data only shows the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate surveillance we won’t know the extent of resistance to gonorrhoea and without research into new antimicrobial agents, there could soon be no effective treatment for patients.”
Correct use of antibiotics needed
In new guidance issued today, WHO is calling for greater vigilance on the correct use of antibiotics and more research into alternative treatment regimens for gonococcal infections. WHO’s Global Action Plan to control the spread and impact of antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoea also calls for increased monitoring and reporting of resistant strains as well as better prevention, diagnosis and control of gonococcal infections.
Health implications are important
Gonorrhoea makes up one quarter of the four major curable sexually-transmitted infections1. Since the development of antibiotics, the pathogen has developed resistance to many of the common antibiotics used as treatment, including penicillin, tetracyclines and quinolones.
“We are very concerned about recent reports of treatment failure from the last effective treatment option – the class of cephalosporin antibiotics – as there are no new therapeutic drugs in development,” says Dr Lusti-Narasimhan. “If gonococcal infections become untreatable, the health implications are significant.”
Antimicrobial resistance
Antimicrobial resistance is caused by the unrestricted access to antimicrobials, overuse and poor quality of antibiotics, as well as natural genetic mutations within disease organisms. In addition, gonorrhoea strains tend to retain genetic resistance to previous antibiotics even after their use has been discontinued. The extent of this resistance worldwide is not known due to lack of reliable data for gonorrhoea in many countries and insufficient research.
Gonorrhoea
Untreated gonococcal infection can cause health problems in men, women and newborn babies including:
- infection of the urethra, cervix and rectum;
- infertility in both men and women;
- a significantly increased risk of HIV infection and transmission;
- ectopic pregnancy, spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and premature deliveries; and
- severe eye infections occur in 30-50% of babies born to women with untreated gonorrhoea, which can lead to blindness.
Gonorrhoea can be prevented through safer sexual intercourse. Early detection and prompt treatment, including of sexual partners, is essential to control sexually transmitted infections.
For more information please contact:
Tarik Jasarevic,
Communications Officer
Mobile: +41 793 676 214
Telephone: +41 22 791 5099
E-mail: jasarevict@who.int
Better urban planning is essential to improve health of the 60 percent of the global population that will be living in cities by 2030
From the 29 May 2012 EurekAlert
The proportion of the world’s population that lives in cities has been steadily rising, so that three in five of all people globally will live in a city by 2030. The University College London/LancetCommission on Healthy Cities explores the many issues other than health services that contribute to population health in a city environment.
The Commission has been prepared by lead author Professor Yvonne Rydin, UCL Bartlett School of Planning, and colleagues at UCL and worldwide. The authors address issues that apply globally and use specific examples from cities as diverse as London, Bogota, Accra, and Toronto to illustrate the issues.
Just as London’s first modern, large-scale, urban sewage treatment system resulted in a 15-year increase in life expectancy between the 1880s and the 1920s, so other large-scale planning initiatives can radically change the health outcomes of city-dwellers – especially for the poorest. In this report the authors recommend focussing on the delivery of a variety of urban projects that have a positive impact on health.
Examples from the report include community-led sanitation infrastructure programmes in the slums of Mumbai, India; action for urban greening to protect against heat stress in London summers; and transportation initiatives that encourage physical activity in Bogota, Colombia….
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The Commission authors looked at cities as complex, interactive entities in which changes in one part of the system can have impacts on others. They use five case studies to illustrate important themes for healthy cities.
Each case study supports the argument for a new way of planning for urban health. Planners need to recognise that conditions of complexity make it difficult to capture all the necessary information about the links affecting urban health in one plan or strategy. Unintended consequences of policy action are likely to persist. Instead planners should be working with all urban health stakeholders, including local communities, particularly vulnerable communities.
Professor Rydin says: “There should be an emphasis on experimenting with and learning from diverse urban health projects. This can mean supporting communities in their own urban health projects, as with community latrines in Mumbai slums or urban food projects in London and Detroit.”
The Commission concludes with five recommendations:
- City governments should build political alliances for urban health.
- Governments need to identify the health inequalities in cities.
- Urban planners should include health concerns in their plans, regulations, and decisions.
- Policy makers need to recognise that cities are complex systems and urban health outcomes have multiple causes.
- Experimentation and learning through projects involving local communities is often the best way forward….
Related articles
- How cities can become healthy places (bbc.co.uk)
- Urban parks offer breath of fresh air for improved health (cbc.ca)
- Public Health + Urban Planning (planforthepublic.com)
- Detroit plans to shrink by leaving half the city in the dark [Urban Planning] (io9.com)
- U.N. project looks to organize urban planning (dailystar.com.lb)
- Better urban planning essential to improve health of 60% of global population that will be living in cities by 2030 (medicalxpress.com)
- What is Urban Planning? (planforthepublic.com)
- The urban age: an interview with P.D. Smith (3ammagazine.com)
- How Urban Farming Can Transform Our Cities – And Our Agricultural System (ecowatch.org)
- Sprawling cities pressure environment, planning (reuters.com)
- Let immigrants come and Britain will boom (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
- How Urban Farming Can Transform Our Cities – And Our Agricultural System (thinkprogress.org)
- Pacific Challenges: Urbanization Brings Change and Opportunity to Island Nations (newswatch.nationalgeographic.com)
Infection Causes 1 in 6 Cancers Worldwide: Study
From the 9 May 2012 Medical News Today article
WEDNESDAY, May 9 (HealthDay News) — One in six cancers worldwide is caused by preventable or treatable infections, a new study finds.
Infections cause about 2 million cancer cases a year, and 80 percent of those cases occur in less developed areas of the world, according to the study, which was published online May 8 in The Lancet Oncology. Of the 7.5 million cancer deaths worldwide in 2008, about 1.5 million were due to potentially preventable or treatable infections.
“Infections with certain viruses, bacteria and parasites are one of the biggest and most preventable causes of cancer worldwide,” lead authors Catherine de Martel and Martyn Plummer, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said in a journal news release. “Application of existing public-health methods for infection prevention — such as vaccination, safer injection practice or antimicrobial treatments — could have a substantial effect on future burden of cancer worldwide.”…
Related articles
- Infection Causes 1 in 6 Cancers Worldwide: Study (news.health.com)
- Infection Causes 1 in 6 Cancers Worldwide (health.usnews.com)
- One in Six Cancers Are Caused By Treatable Infections [Medicine] (gizmodo.com)
- One in six cancers worldwide caused by infections that are largely preventable or treatable (medicalxpress.com)
Epidemiology: What Is It and Why Should Adult Children Know About It? With Link to a Related Supercourse
From the 14th January posting at As Our Parents Age – Timely Topics for Adult Children
It happens over and over again as I listen to the radio or read the news. I hear about an aging parent issue or a disease that is increasing in magnitude. Or sometime it’s a health issue that is affecting certain groups of people or a new bit of research the describes problems with an intervention — one that I thought was working well. Invariably these stories make me ask why? Sometimes I ask a more personal question, “If that seems to work for me, how come researchers say is isn’t effective?”
In just about every case, I answer my question by learning more about the study of epidemiology — a field that explores and collects data about how diseases specifically and health issues in general occur and affect people and in certain places. Epidemiology measures by some period of time. This short video from the Centers from Disease Control explains more.
Epidemiology can be difficult to understand, especially because people, including me, tend to personalize the issues. Here are just a few questions to illustrate this personalization.
- What risk factors for exposure to hazards contribute to aging parent falls as individuals age (in fact we are talking here about people over 60)? Why don’t people worry environmental health problems and do things early on to prevent falls?
- How come after years and years, I’m suddenly told that yearly mammograms are less important?
- Why are men being cautioned to reconsider using prostate tests for routine cancer screening?
- Why are older seniors now being told to consider getting fewer screening tests such as colonoscopies as they age?
Click here to read the rest of the blog item
Related Resource
Supercourse: Epidemiology, Global Health, and the Internet
Supercourse is a repository of lectures on global health and prevention designed to improve the teaching of prevention. Supercourse has a network of over 56000 scientists in 174 countries who are sharing for free a library of 5050 lectures in 31 languages.
Related articles
- 10 (strongly suggested yet humorous) commandments for physicians when prescribing treatments (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
- New guidelines for reporting epidemiological studies that involve molecular markers (eurekalert.org)
- Geographical Epidemiology (danielgillis.wordpress.com)
- Epidemiology: Type 2 Diabetes – Rising obesity and aging populations are driving diabetes trends (onlineindustryresearch.wordpress.com)
‘Transending Borders Towards Global Health’
From the Eureka News Alert (December 20, 2011)
Transcending Borders Towards Global Health is a thought stimulating conference, convening leaders, changemakers, and participants from all areas of global health. The conference is set to engage stakeholders through a critical and integrated assessment of the state of global health as well as the policies and actions taken to reduce disparities in global health and unacceptable levels of poor health framed within five key themes: international health, ecohealth, marginalized communities, education, and advocacy and activism.
###The conference is sponsored by the Office of Global Health in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario. It takes place April 27-29, 2012 at the London Convention Centre in London, Ontario, Canada.
The agenda, speakers list and registration details can be found at http://www.transendingborders.ca .
The Durban Platform on Climate Control
Source below ***
Excerpt from the Brookings Institute article by Nathan Hultman
After extending negotiations nearly two days beyond their originally scheduled deadline, negotiators at the climate change meeting in Durban have agreed on a set of agreements, including a high-profile deal called the “Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.” As discussed in my earlier post, the agenda at Durban was unusually complex, as it encompassed both relatively narrow discussions about how to implement earlier decisions as well as broad discussions about the future climate regime under complementary (and some might say competing) visions for international action. There were essentially three big questions at Durban, and all have been addressed, although not all in a meaningful manner.The first question concerned the future of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends in 2012, and some supporters argued that without a second commitment period, the agreement would cease to be relevant. As such, some countries—particularly developing countries—expressed their hopes that developed countries would agree to targets under a second commitment period. While many important developed countries did not sign up for second commitment periods (Japan, Russia, Canada) or were never part of the agreement (United States), the European Union did agree to implement its own targets for emissions reduction under the aegis of the Kyoto Protocol. This was a concession for some of the more vocal developing country parties and was tied to an understanding that there would likely not be a third commitment period. Thus, the Protocol was granted an extension, but it is also clear even to its supporters that its days are now limited. This decision was clearly linked to discussions on the second major question. …
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The outcome of these protracted and contentious discussions was the Durban Platform, a compact, two-page document that sets out a motivation and process for reaching a new agreement by 2015.
This Platform contains three important elements. First, it notes a goal of keeping global temperature increases to “1.5 or 2.0 degrees C” above preindustrial levels—repeating targets from earlier agreements in Copenhagen and Cancun—and notes that current commitments are insufficient to reach that goal. This statement reinforces the developing norm that 1.5 or 2 degree warming is the appropriate target to balance risks versus costs in addressing climate change. Second, the Platform asserts that countries should “launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change applicable to all Parties.” ….
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Third, it states that this agreement should be finished by 2015 and that any resulting reductions should begin by 2020. The 2015 deadline is relatively quick by international negotiations standards, putting pressure on parties to conclude a deal within the next few years. …
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There were some other conclusions as well – for example, delegates agreed on procedures to incorporate carbon capture and sequestration projects into the Clean Development Mechanism and to guide projects that seek to reduce deforestation. Most of the attention, however, has focused on the Durban Platform. Unfortunately, the Platform itself is little more than an agreement to discuss a treaty. ..
RELATED CONTENT
The Durban Climate Talks: Making the Technology Mechanism Useful
Nathan Hultman
The Brookings Institution
December 09, 2011
Nathan Hultman
The Brookings Institution
December 06, 2011
Nathan Hultman
The Brookings Institution
December 05, 2011
Related Resources
- Climate Change Resources (Library Guide at Santa Clara University)
- Climate Change-What’s the Issue? (Library Guide by Lavonne Jacobsen at the San Francisco State University)
- Climate Change (Library Guide by Ed Weilant at Bowling Green State University)
- Global Climate Change (Library Guide by Kristen Lindquist at the University of Wisconsin- Superior)
- Climate Change and Global Warming (Library Guide by Eric Kallas at the University of St. Thomas)
Related articles/blog items
- Durban Platform deal postpones necessary global climate action to uncertain future (3eintelligence.wordpress.com)
- India lost the plot at Durban (thehindu.com)
- Major Outcome Of Durban Climate Talks (chimalaya.org)
- You: Durban climate conference agrees deal to do a deal – now comes the hard part (guardian.co.uk)
- Canada: First out of a sinking Kyoto ship? (cnn.com)
- Climate Talks End with Small Steps Forward (livescience.com)
- Durban climate deal: the verdict (guardian.co.uk)
- Durban Summit (hameso.wordpress.com)
- What happened in Durban? (blogs.berkeley.edu)
- Forest Carbon And The Durban Climate Conference (chimalaya.org)
Global Peace Index 2011 « Vision of Humanity
From the Main Web Page
KEYFINDINGS
- The world is less peaceful for the third straight year
- Due to an increased threat of terrorist attacks in 29 nations
- A greater likelihood of violent demonstrations in 33 countries
- Arab Spring unrest heralds biggest ever change in rankings, Libya tumbles 83 spots
- Iceland bounces back from economic woes to top ranking
- Somalia displaces Iraq as world’s least peaceful nation
- Violence cost the global economy more than $8.12 trillion in 2010
- US peacefulness shows minimal change
See the results and interactive map
About the Global Peace Index (GPI)
The GPI, produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace, is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. It gauges ongoing domestic and international conflict, safety and security in society, and militarisation in 153 countries by taking into account 23 separate indicators.
See the Downloads section to the right to download the full GPI Report, Fact Sheet, Discussion paper and other materials.MOREFROMTHE2011RESULTS
Impact of Arab Spring Unrest
The 2011 Index dramatically reflects the impact on national rankings of the Arab Spring.Libya (143) saw the most significant drop – falling 83 places; Bahrain (123) dropped by 51 places – the second largest margin; while Egypt (73) dropped 24 places.Index influenced by internal conflict & not warfare between countries
The fall in peacefulness in this year’s Index is strongly tied to conflict between citizens and their governments rather than conflicts with other nations.Threat of Terrorism Climbs
Despite the decade long War on Terror, the likelihood of terrorist attacks has increased in the past year in 29 countries.Spend on Weapons falls
While the overall level of peacefulness was down, this year’s data did show increased peacefulness in some areas – most notably levels of military expenditure as a % of GDP and relations between neighbouring states.
Novel Index For Tracking Drug Resistance – Drug Resistance Index
Image via Wikipedia, A schematic representation of how antibiotic resistance is enhanced by natural selection,
From the 17 November 2011 Medical News Today article
Ramanan Laxminarayan, Director of Extending the Cure, and Keith P. Klugman, Professor of Global Health at Emory University describe a novel index for tracking resistance in a report published in this week’s British Medical Journal Open.
Similar to a Consumer Price Index (CPI) but for drug resistance, the tool accumulates information of resistance trends andantibiotic use into one single measure of antibiotic resistance over time. The DRI is designed for application at any level, from local hospitals to national healthcare system surveillance. It can be used by hospitals to track their own resistance levels and to measure their own success of interventions, such as antibiotic stewardship and infection control programs.
The researchers explain how the index can be applied to evaluate trends in resistance linked to two disease-causing microorganisms, namely Escherichia coli and Acinetobacter baumannii. It is also able to highlight how physicians adapt to resistance trends. In this analysis for example, the index displayed how physicians were able to use other drugs for treating resistant strains of E. coli infections, and how very few options remained for treating Acinetobacter, a super bug, which is more and more resistant to all available antibiotics. Laxminarayan declared: ……
Related articles
- Alarming pattern of antibiotic use in the southeastern United States (eurekalert.org)
- Overprescribed: The problem with antibiotics (junkscience.com)
- Contrasting patterns of malaria drug resistance found between humans and mosquitoes (medicalxpress.com)
- Drug-resistant infections: A new epidemic, and what you can do to help (medicalxpress.com)
- Different Paths To Drug Resistance In Leishmania (medicalnewstoday.com)
- FDA Denies Petitions to Ban Certain Antibiotics in Livestock (thechefstableblog.com)
- FDA To Reject Antibiotic Ban (treehugger.com)
How Text Messages Could Change Global Healthcare
This October 24th Popular Mechanics story includes
- How text messaging is used to coordinate health care by health care professionals in rural areas across long distances
- How text messaging in Haiti was used to locate victims in search and rescue efforts despite language barriers
- Camera phones as diagnostic aids
The notion that SMS could revolutionize healthcare first entered Nesbit’s mind in 2007, when he was still a Stanford undergrad. He’d just met Dickson Mtanga, a community health worker in rural Malawi who was walking 35 miles to deliver handwritten patient charts to the nearest hospital. Nesbit biked out to Mtanga’s village one day, only to discover that his cellphone got a better signal there than it did on Stanford’s campus in Palo Alto, Calif. All those bars of service jumped from the phone’s screen and slapped him across the face: These far-reaching GSM networks, he realized, could connect doctors and patients like never before.Armed with a $5000 grant, a backpack full of old phones, and a laptop running a GSM modem and the open-source group-texting software called FrontlineSMS, Nesbit started working with the hospital and community health workers to coordinate patient care. The system they put in place allowed Mtanga and others to text in the information on those medical charts rather than making the hours-long trek. Patients could text their symptoms to doctors, cutting down on unnecessary visits for minor ailments and freeing up space for those in need of serious care. Within six months of the system going live, the number of patients being treated for tuberculosis doubled, more than 1200 hours in travel time were eliminated, and emergency services became available in the area for the first time. The operating costs in those six months: $500, Nesbit says
The explosion of cellphone use around the world has inspired a flood of new ideas about how to use that tech to improve healthcare. Besides Nesbit’s Medic Mobile, there are also ideas to turn camera phones into cheap diagnostic tools for vision problems or malaria, for example.Patty Mechael, executive director of the U.N. Foundation’s mHealth Alliance, keeps tabs on these new techs. They all face major infrastructure hurdles, such as the lack of reliable energy sources to power phone chargers in some developing countries. But another, less tangible challenge is figuring out what mobile health programs are actually working and worth scaling up, and which ones aren’t. “What we have in mHealth are millions of flowers blooming, in many ways. Lots of pilots are being done throughout the world, many of which are reaching populations of a few thousand each,” Mechael says. “We’re at a tipping point where people are starting to say, ‘Okay, we need to be a bit more strategic, collaborative, cohesive.’”
Nesbit is among the voices calling for a more focused approach to mobile health. A wave of angst washes over his face when I ask if there’s too much hype surrounding mobile health, if it’s too saturated of a field. Hype is good, he says. What’s bad is hype that’s disconnected from implementation. All the media coverage and promises made about mobile health in recent years, he says, make it seem as if millions of health workers in developing nations have already integrated their phones into their daily practice. In reality, only about 20,000 have done so. Medic Mobile has SMS systems operating in 14 countries, and that number will jump to 20 in the next six months. Only a few thousand people are using Medic Mobile’s programs today, but the nonprofit just rolled out its first SIM card application, which can be used on virtually every mobile phone in existence. By 2015, Nesbit expects to have 500,000 community health workers using SMS applications to link patients with doctors.
If he hits those numbers, ubiquity really will be the killer app.
5 Ways Your SmartPhone Can Diagnose You >>>
Read more: How Text Messages Could Be the Future of Healthcare – Popular Mechanics
Related articles
- How Your Discarded Phone Can Improve Global Health (newser.com)
- BellVoz Launches a New Communication Service, Direct SMS, Allows Customers to Send International Text Messages from their Mobile Phone, at a Lower Cost (prweb.com)
- Mobile Medicine (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
- How Mobile Phones Are Saving Lives in the Developing World (mashable.com)
Global Obesity Pandemic – Lancet articles & related articles (including press coverage)
From the 26 August edition of The Lancet
This four-part Series critically examines what we know about the global obesity pandemic: its drivers, its economic and health burden, the physiology behind weight control and maintenance, and what science tells us about the kind of actions that are needed to change our obesogenic environment and reverse the current tsunami of risk factors for chronic diseases in future generations. …
Series Papers**The global obesity pandemic: shaped by global drivers and local environmentsBoyd A Swinburn, Gary Sacks, Kevin D Hall, Klim McPherson, Diane T Finegood, Marjory L Moodie, Steven L GortmakerHealth and economic burden of the projected obesity trends in the USA and the UKY Claire Wang, Klim McPherson, Tim Marsh, Steven L Gortmaker, Martin BrownQuantification of the effect of energy imbalance on bodyweightKevin D Hall, Gary Sacks, Dhruva Chandramohan, Carson C Chow, Y Claire Wang, Steven L Gortmaker, Boyd A SwinburnChanging the future of obesity: science, policy, and actionSteven L Gortmaker, Boyd A Swinburn, David Levy, Rob Carter, Patricia L Mabry, Diane T Finegood, Terry Huang, Tim Marsh, Marjory L Moodie
Related articles
- Half of UK men could be obese by 2030 (guardian.co.uk)
- Government-led efforts targeting eating habits of children needed to curb worldwide obesity epidemic (eurekalert.org)
- The diabetes pandemic: 1 in 4 US adults now has diabetes (casesblog.blogspot.com)
- Obesity deterrents by governments called for (cbc.ca)
- Shocking report says half of Americans will be obese by 2030 (cbsnews.com)
Turning toys into cheap, effective medical gear
At a TB hospital in Leon, Nicaragua, Jose Gomez-Marquez tests patient samples. Instead of using a pipette, he uses a drinking straw.
(Credit: Jose Gomez-Marquez)
From the 17 August 2011 cnet news article
Jose Gomez-Marquez is like the MacGyver of medical devices, hacking toys and turning them into gadgets that can be used to diagnose conditions such as diabetes and dengue fever. By taking everyday items like Legos and bike pumps and turning them into replacements for expensive medical devices, he’s attempting to save lives on the cheap.
“Most of the devices that get donated to developing countries fail because they were not designed to be used in these environments,” Gomez-Marquez said during a visit to CNET this week to show some of his creations. “We need to make the Land Rover version of medical devices for these countries. Right now we are sending the Ferrari versions and they fail.”….
Gomez-Marquez is program director for MIT’s Innovations in International Health initiative, which aims to teach medical professionals in the developing world how to hack ordinary objects to make their own medical devices. With a degree in mechanical engineering and a love of design, Gomez-Marquez wants to level the playing field in health care.
“One of the ways to empower better designs is by empowering users who are everyday users of the devices,” he said. “So we made these kits to do that.”…
Violence in the City: Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence
From the summary at the World Bank
Violence in the City: Understanding and Supporting Community Responses to Urban Violence” is the first global study of urban violence conducted by the World Bank, and incorporates case studies from urban communities in Brazil (Fortaleza), Haiti (Port-au-Prince), Kenya (Nairobi), South Africa (Johannesburg) and Timor-Leste (Dili).
For millions of people around the world, violence, or the fear of violence, is a daily reality. Much of this violence concentrates in urban centers in the developing world. Cities are now home to half the world’s population and expected to absorb almost all new population growth over the next 25 years. In many cases, the scale of urban violence can eclipse those of open warfare; some of the world’s highest homicide rates occur in countries that have not undergone a war, but that have serious epidemics of violence in urban areas. This study emerged out of a growing recognition that urban communities themselves are an integral part of understanding the causes and impacts of urban violence and of generating sustainable violence prevention initiatives.
Click here for the full report
Related articles
- LA story? (bbc.co.uk)
- Urban riots: tough love | Editorial (guardian.co.uk)
New global health delivery curricula
From the 28 July 2011 Eureka news alert
Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Jim Kim and professor Michael Porter
Boston, Mass. (July 28, 2011) –Today, the Global Health Delivery Project and Harvard Business Publishing released 21 teaching case studies examining the principles of health care delivery in resource-poor settings. The multidisciplinary body of work spans 13 countries and addresses the complexity of delivering life-saving health care technologies and care. These 21 teaching case studies are available to global health educators, students and practitioners at no cost through Harvard Business Publishing. To access the case studies, visit: www.ghdonline.org/cases.
Dr. Paul Farmer, chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, “The publication of these cases—online, and freely accessible to the practitioners, students and educators who will benefit most from them—is an important step toward closing the know-do gap in global health. Increasingly, our feedback loop of research, teaching and service is directly strengthening the care we deliver on the ground and our ability to replicate and scale successes.”……
Related articles
About
This blog presents a sampling of health and medical news and resources for all. Selected articles and resources will hopefully be of general interest but will also encourage further reading through posted references and other links. Currently I am focusing on public health, basic and applied research and very broadly on disease and healthy lifestyle topics.
Several times a month I will post items on international and global health issues. My Peace Corps Liberia experience (1980-81) has formed me as a global citizen in many ways and has challenged me to think of health and other topics in a more holistic manner.
Do you have an informational question in the health/medical area?
Email me at jmflahiff@yahoo.com
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This blog is a companion site to my Health and Medical News and Resources Web site with…
- Great places to start (locating health information)
- Links to help from others (as health care providers and support groups)
- Interactive tools (as health calculators and apps)
- Select related news sites and blogs
My professional work experience and education includes over 15 years experience as a medical librarian and a Master’s in Library Science. In my most recent position I enjoyed contributing to our library’s blog, performing in depth literature searches, and collaborating with faculty, staff, students, and the general public.
While I will never be be able to keep up with the universe of current health/medical news, I subscribe to the following to glean entries for this blog.
- Science Daily – Your source for the latest research news
- MedlinePlus email updates from the US National Institutes of Health
- Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce – a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries
- US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) news now with updates on the agency’s efforts to “improve the quality, safety, efficiency, and effectiveness of health care for all Americans”
- Research Buzz, “news about search engines, digital archives, online museums, databases, and other Internet information collections since 1998”
- Scout Report, a “weekly publication offering a selection of new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators”
- KevinMD.com -“Social Media’s leading physician voice”
- EurekAlert-Medicine and Health
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