Urgent Need To Fight Diseases Affecting The World’s Poor

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From the 22 June 2011 Medical News Today article 

Despite significant advancements in increasing distribution and development of vaccines against childhood killer diseases – including pneumococcal disease, rotavirus, and Haemophilus influenzae Type B – global efforts to reduce the burden of infection from neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) has greatly lagged, argues Sabin Vaccine Institute (Sabin) President Dr. Peter Hotez in an article for the June edition of Health Affairs.

[Above link is abstract only, for suggestions on how to get this article for free or at low cost, click here]

NTDs, a group of 17 parasitic infections, represent a significant contributor to global poverty, and have well documented chronic and disabling effects. Yet efforts to develop vaccines for NTDs have not benefitted from larger ongoing initiatives to combat major childhood diseases.

In his article, “A Handful of ‘Antipoverty’ Vaccines Exist for Neglected Diseases, But the World’s Poorest Billion People Need More,” Dr. Hotez cites three critical reasons for the lack of interest in “antipoverty” vaccines:

• Though NTDs disable, they do not typically cause high levels of mortality leading some in the public health community to misleadingly conclude that NTDs are not a significant public health threat;
• NTDs predominately occur in rural settings and are largely hidden diseases unknown to the public and infrequently documented; and,
• Pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to make an investment in NTD vaccines because there is no financial incentive.

Related articles

• ‘Decade of vaccines’ has potential to save lives, but challenges ahead (eurekalert.org)
• Cumulative Health Risks Faced By Returnee Migrants (medical news today)
• Bill Gates’s plea: help me save four million lives (independent.co.uk)
• Measles are back as parents refuse vaccines (sfgate.com)

Dawn of Agriculture Took Toll On Health

 

Amanda Mummert led the first comprehensive, global review of the literature regarding stature and health during the agriculture transition. (Credit: Image courtesy of Emory University)

From the 18 June 2011 Science Daily article

 

ScienceDaily (June 18, 2011) — When populations around the globe started turning to agriculture around 10,000 years ago, regardless of their locations and type of crops, a similar trend occurred: The height and health of the people declined….

…”Many people have this image of the rise of agriculture and the dawn of modern civilization, and they just assume that a more stable food source makes you healthier,” Mummert says. “But early agriculturalists experienced nutritional deficiencies and had a harder time adapting to stress, probably because they became dependent on particular food crops, rather than having a more significantly diverse diet.”

She adds that growth in population density spurred by agriculture settlements led to an increase in infectious diseases, likely exacerbated by problems of sanitation and the proximity to domesticated animals and other novel disease vectors.

Eventually, the trend toward shorter stature reversed, and average heights for most populations began increasing. The trend is especially notable in the developed world during the past 75 years, following the industrialization of food systems.

“Culturally, we’re agricultural chauvinists. We tend to think that producing food is always beneficial, but the picture is much more complex than that,” says Emory anthropologist George Armelagos, co-author of the review. “Humans paid a heavy biological cost for agriculture, especially when it came to the variety of nutrients. Even now, about 60 percent of our calories come from corn, rice and wheat.”…

An abstract of the article may be found here.

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World Health Statistics 2011 now available online

The WHO (World Health Organization) World Health Statistics 2011 is now available online.

It contains WHO’s annual compilation of health-related data for its 193 Member States, and includes a summary of the progress made towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and associated targets.

Click here to download the full report, sections, or data tables only.

From the press report

13 MAY 2011 | GENEVA – An increasing number of countries are facing a double burden of disease as the prevalence of risk factors for chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart diseases and cancers increase and many countries still struggle to reduce maternal and child deaths caused by infectious diseases, for the Millennium Development Goals, according to the World Health Statistics 2011 released by the WHO today.

Noncommunicable diseases such heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and cancer, now make up two-thirds of all deaths globally, due to the population aging and the spread of risk factors associated with globalization and urbanization. The control of risk factors such as tobacco use, sedentary lifestyle, unhealthy diet and excessive use of alcohol becomes more critical. The latest WHO figures showed that about 4 out of 10 men and 1 in 11 women are using tobacco and about 1 in 8 adults is obese.

In addition many developing countries continue to battle health issues such as pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria that are most likely to kill children under the age of five. In 2009, 40% of all child deaths were among newborns (aged 28 days or less). Much more needs to be done to achieve the MDGs by the target date of 2015, but progress has accelerated.

Child mortality declined at 2.7% per year since 2000, twice as fast as during the 1990s (1.3%). Mortality among children under five years fell from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009.
Maternal mortality declined at 3.3% per year since 2000, almost twice as fast in the decade after 2000 than during the 1990s (2%). The number of women dying as a result of complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased from 546,000 in 1990 to 358,000 in 2008.
“This evidence really shows that no country in the world can address health from either an infectious disease perspective or a noncommunicable disease one. Everyone must develop a health system that addresses the full range of the health threats in both areas.” says Ties Boerma, Director of WHO’s Department of Health Statistics and Informatics.

The report also shows that more money is being spent on health and people can expect to live longer (life expectancy in 2009 was 68 years, up from 64 years in 1990); but the gap in health spending between low- and high-income countries remains very large.

In low-income countries, per capita, health expenditure is an estimated US$ 32 (or about 5.4% of gross domestic product) and in high-income countries it is US$ 4590 (or about 11% of gross domestic product).
High-income countries have, per capita, on average 10 times more doctors, 12 times more nurses and midwives and 30 times more dentists than low-income countries.
Virtually all deliveries of babies in high-income countries are attended by skilled health personnel; but this is the case for only 40% of deliveries in low-income countries.

Editor Flahiff’s note....This is certainly born out by my Peace Corps experience. In 1980/81 Liberia, I remember attending the funeral of a well to do area woman who died in childbirth. And I remember how heartbroken one of my students was at the death of her month old child. Malaria and diarrhea were epidemic.

I am now sponsoring a Liberian who wants to be a nurse. I cannot begin to imagine what the Liberian health care system is facing. Many of the infectious diseases will probably continue to decrease  at least partly due to better sanitation (as more pump wells as opposed to open wells). But these diseases will remain and she will be facing increasing populations with non infectious diseases. I only hope that countries with resources (as the US) will work to empower Liberians and others to meet these challenges. It is not only a matter of global security, but of respecting human dignity.

Related articles
 

• Nurses addressing access, quality & health (blog item at the Center for Health Media and Policy at Hunter College)

  “The first week of May, 2300 registered nurses from 123 countries attended the International Council of NursesConference in Malta. We left challenged and charged to act on the innovative ideas presented by this year’s 70 expert presenters. The topics covered were extensive including the massive increase of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), primary care, climate change, disaster nursing, and gender violence.  CHMP’s co-director, Diana Mason, delivered the keynote focusing on the conference theme, nurses driving access, quality and health,addressing social determinants of health. She provided insights into how mobile health creates access to health care and selected innovative models of care designed by nurses globally challenging us to think broadly on how we can impact change to increase access and quality care. Mason crafted a powerful visual presentation that provided the backdrop to her engaging, thought-provoking presentation which earned her a standing ovation.”….

• Chronic diseases now leading global killer: WHO (ctv.ca)
• WHO Warns of Enormous Burden of Chronic Disease (nlm.nih.gov)

HHS Launches New Consumer-Focused Immunization Website

From the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) Public Health Partners listerv

HHS Launches New Consumer-Focused Immunization Website
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2011pres/03/20110330a.html

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has unveiled a new
website, Vaccines.gov, to help parents and other consumers learn about the
most effective way to protect themselves and their children from
infectious diseases and learn about immunization.

“Vaccines.gov puts the power of prevention at the fingertips of all Americans,” said Dr. Howard K. Koh, HHS Assistant Secretary for Health. “We urge everyone to visit this site and learn more about how vaccines can protect the health of each family member as well as the entire Nation.”

Vaccines.govis the first cross-government website devoted to providing consumer information about vaccines and immunization, combining content and expertise from agencies across the Department. It is the result of unprecedented collaboration among federal health and communications experts to offer online content about vaccine and immunization based on consumer needs.

The site includes content about vaccine recommendations, the diseases that vaccines prevent, important information for getting vaccinated, and tips on travel health. It also links consumers with resources in their states to learn about vaccine requirements for school or child care entry and local community information.

“This website will help ensure that Americans have accurate, Web-based information on immunizations,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office at HHS, which led the creation of Vaccines.gov. “It was developed with significant consumer input based on the public’s feedback and is remarkably easy to navigate. It is designed to answer consumers’ questions, educate them about diseases that vaccines prevent, and connect Americans with resources to keep themselves and their families healthy.”

In the coming year, Vaccines.gov will be expanded to include information from other government Departments, grow to include a Spanish version of the site, offer new content on vaccine recommendations and infectious disease outbreaks, and be continually tested to ensure Vaccines.gov addresses the needs and questions of consumers.

Related Articles

• HHS.gov Update: New National Vaccine Plan (blondescribe.wordpress.com)
• Parents Trust Doctors Most When It Comes To Information About Vaccine Safety (Medical News Today)
• Childhood Vaccinations/Immunizations (NCAAM Clinical Digest, April 2011 issue )
• Where an adult can get low cost vaccines (KevinMD.com)
• An advance for a newborn vaccine approach (physorg.com)
• HHS Awards Contracts To Develop New Flu Vaccine Technology (bioresearchonline.com)
• Frequently Asked Questions: Immunizing Your Child (education.com)

PBS NewsHour’s Global Health Watch : Diseases, Conditions, Medical Advances and Related Policies

PBS NewsHour’s Global Health Watch features news and on-the-ground reports exploring the diseases, conditions, medical advances and policies affecting the health of people around the world.

Earthquake victims gather at the evacuation center in Kamaish
(Kamaishi.Perawongmetha/Getty Images)

BLOG  MARCH 24, 2011 Slideshow: TB a Silent KillerJust 22 countries contribute 80 percent of the global burden of tuberculosis.

A sampling from the March 25 2011 contents.
Each section includes Browse, Subscription, and Related Information options.

• Global Health
  • Recent Global Health Trips – Guatamala includes videos, a blog, and news updates
  • Blogs and reports on emerging news from Tokyo, Bangladesh, and Haiti
• The World’s Most Destructive Diseases
  • Information on the top 5 non-communicable diseases and also top 5 infectious diseases
  • Each disease or condition has information in these areas: global impact, causes, symptoms, prevention, and treatment
• From the Field (Archive) has links to current and past postings. There is a drop down menu organized by country.
• The For Teachers link  has the heading For Teachers and Students. It includes lesson plans.

Related Articles

• Japan Crisis: What’s next for nuclear energy in the U.S.? (boingboing.net)
• PBS Newshour: Wind Turbines and Health (windconcernsontario.wordpress.com)

Headway is being made fighting communicable diseases globally, research suggests

Headway is being made fighting communicable diseases globally, research suggests

From the March 14 2011 Science Daily news item

ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2011) — Those working for healthier humans around the globe are making headway in fighting communicable diseases such as AIDS, malaria and diarrheal illness, according to research from the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures in the University of Denver‘s (DU) Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

The center recently released the third in a series of five volumes [full online text of all 3 volumes]  that focus on human progress in which researchers explore topics such as education, poverty, infrastructure and governance. The latest book is Improving Global Health: Forecasting the Next 50 Years [full online text] (Paradigm Publishers and Oxford University Press India, 2011).

The latest volume sheds light on a transition the authors see occurring in global health — a transition of disease burdens from communicable diseases to chronic ones such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease….

 

 

 

Related Articles

• Non Communicable Diseases Hit The World’s Poorest People (medicalnewstoday.com)
• In Africa, cancer is a burden that can no longer be ignored | Emilie Filou (guardian.co.uk)
• Non Communicable Diseases: The World’s Number One Killer For Women (medicalnewstoday.com)

HealthMap PREDICT warns about diseases moving between wildlife and people

HealthMap PREDICT – A global early warning system to detect and reduce the impacts of emerging diseases that move between wildlife and people (zoonotic diseases).

From the about page

In order to predict, respond to, and prevent the emergence of novel infectious diseases in humans, pathogens must be identified at their source. Explosive human population growth and environmental changes have resulted in increased numbers of people living in close contact with animals. Unfortunately the resulting increase in contact, together with changes in land use, has altered the inherent ecological balance between pathogens and their human and animal hosts.

PREDICT, a project of USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats Program,is building a global early warning system to detect and reduce the impacts of emerging diseases that move between wildlife and people (zoonotic diseases). PREDICT has developed a SMART surveillance method (Strategic, Measurable, Adaptive, Responsive, and Targeted) that accounts for the fact that zoonotic pathogens, such as influenza and SARS, are responsible for the majority of emerging infectious diseases in people, and that more than three quarters of these emerging zoonoses are of wildlife origin. The SMART surveillance approach is designed to detect novel diseases with pandemic potential early, giving health professionals the best opportunity to prevent emergence and spread. It also targets sentinel animal species at active human interfaces in hotspot regions to improve surveillance efficiency.

The PREDICT team builds on a broad coalition of partners to develop the global capacity to monitor diseases at the animal-human interface and develop a risk-based approach to concentrate these efforts in surveillance, prevention, and response at the most critical points for disease emergence from wildlife.

PREDICT project objectives:

• Assess local surveillance capacity;
• Implement targeted and adaptive wildlife disease surveillance systems;
• Develop and deliver new technologies to improve efforts close to the source;
• Use cutting-edge information management and communication tools to bring the world closer to realizing an integrated, global approach to emerging zoonotic diseases.

A sampling of other health maps

• Health Map – Global Health, Local Information
• Flu.gov Influenza Activity Map (US)
• FluTracker
• USGS Disease Maps
• FAO Empress Maps
• WHO Global Health Atlas

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism

Ready or Not? Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism

[Flahiff’s note: Here in Northwest Ohio, one area of concern is Lake Erie water sampling for organisms as E. coli and toxic algae. For years a private college was doing the testing with their own funds. The funds have dried up and the state is still trying to come up with reliable funding.]

A December 16 item from the listserv DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB, by the Disaster Information Management Research Center***, U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The findings of this report by the Trust for America’s Health and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are that budget cuts have imperiled a decade of progress in how the nation prevents, identifies, and contains new disease outbreaks and bioterrorism threats and responds to the aftermath of natural disasters.
Section 1 of the report provides a state by state evaluation on 10 key preparedness indicators in areas as funding, communication, planning, and staffing.
Section 2 of the report examines current federal policy issues and gives recommendations for improving disaster preparedness.
Gaps in preparedness are outlined (as workforce gaps) and examples of major emergency public health threats are identified. Hallmarks of all-hazards preparedness are also identified and National Health Security Strategy is outlined.
The report also includes expert perspectives national strategies and over 70 scientific/medical references in the endnotes section.

Key Findings of this Report (from page 5 of the report)

• 33 states and D.C. cut funding for public health from FY 2008-09 to FY 2009-10.
• Only 7 states can not currently share data electronically with health care providers.
• 10 states do not have an electronic syndromic surveillance system that can report and exchange information.
• Only six states reported that pre-identified staff were not able to acknowledge notification of emergency exercises or incidents within the target time of 60 minutes at least twice during 2007-08.
• Six states did not activate their emergency operations center (EOC) a minimum of two times in 2007-08.
• Only two states did not develop at least two After-Action Report/Improvement Plans (AAR/IPs) after exercises or real incidents in 2007-08.
• 25 states do not mandate all licensed child care facilities to have a multi-hazard written evacuation and relocation plan.
• 21 states were not able to rapidly identify disease-causing E.coli O157:H7 and submit the lab results in 90 percent of cases within four days during 2007-08.
• Only three states and D.C. report not having enough staffing capacity to work five, 12-hour days for six to eight weeks in response to an infectious disease outbreak, such as novel influenza A H1N1.
• Only one state decreased their Laboratory Response Network for Chemical Threats (LRN-C) chemical capability from August 10, 2009 to August 9, 2010.

—————————————————————————————————

***Disaster Information Management Research Center

The Disaster Information Management Research Center  (DIMRC) helpswith national emergency preparedness, response, and recovery efforts. As part of NLM’s Specialized Information Services (SIS) division, DIMRC collects, organizes, and disseminates health information resources and informatics research related to disasters of natural, accidental, or deliberate origin.

It focuses on maintaining access to health information during disasters and developing services and projects for emergency providers and managers . (From the DMIRC about page).

A sampling of DMIRC resources

• Emergency and Response Tools as Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders (WISER). WISER helps emergency responders identify hazardous materials and respond to chemical emergencies. It contains information on over 400 chemicals and radiologic agents.
• Disaster Medicine and Public Health Literature . For example, the Resource Guide for Public Health Preparedness includes expert guidelines, factsheets, websites, technical reports, articles, and more.TOXLINE contains over three million references from the toxicology literature, including MEDLINE/PubMed, research in progress, and meeting abstracts.

• Librarians and Disasters has links to resources and tools as a bibliography on the librarian’s role in disasters and links to related listservs. The Emergency Access Initiative provides temporary free access to full text articles from major biomedicine titles to healthcare professionals, librarians, and the public affected by disasters.

Human networking theory gives picture of infectious disease spread

Human networking theory gives picture of infectious disease spread

High school students’ interactions provide new look at disease transmission

From a December 13, 2010 Eureka news alert

It’s colds and flu season, and as any parent knows, colds and flu spread like wildfire, especially through schools.

New research using human-networking theory may give a clearer picture of just how, exactly, infectious diseases such as the common cold, influenza, whooping cough and SARS can spread through a closed group of people, and even through populations at large.

With the help of 788 volunteers at a high school, Marcel Salathé, a biologist at Penn State University, developed a new technique to count the number of possible disease-spreading events that occur in a typical day.

This results is published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)…

…

Using a population of high-school students, teachers and staff members as a model for a closed group of people, Salathé and his team designed a method to count how many times possible disease-spreading interactions occurred during a typical day.

Volunteers were asked to spend one school day wearing matchbox-sized sensor devices–called motes–on lanyards around their necks.

Like a cell phone, each mote was equipped with its own unique tracking number, and each mote was programmed to send and receive radio signals at 20-second intervals to record the presence of other nearby motes….

…

Salathé and his team found that, at the end of the day, most people had experienced a fairly high number of person-to-person interactions, but they also found very little variation among individuals.

Strikingly, they did not find any individuals who had an extraordinarily high number of contacts when compared with the rest of the group. Such individuals–called super-spreaders–are known to be very important in the dynamics of disease spread.

“For example, in sexual-contact networks, one often finds a group of people with a much higher potential to contract and spread a virus such as HIV,” Salathé said.

“This potential is due to these individuals’ extremely high number of interactions. But in our experiment, while there may have been kids with a few more interaction events, for the most part, everyone had about the same high level of interaction.”

Salathé explained that while schools may indeed be “hot beds” for colds and the flu, individual students do not seem to vary with regard to exposure risk due to their contact patterns.

Data from the motes also confirmed an important social-networking theory–that contact events are not random because many “closed triangles” exist within a community.

“If person A has contact with person B, and person B has contact with person C, chances are that persons A and C also have contact with each other,” Salathé said.

“Real data illustrating these triangles provide just one more piece of information to help us track how a disease actually spreads.”

Salathé also said that networking data such as his may help guide public-health initiatives such as vaccination strategies and prevention education.

 

 

Biodiversity loss correlates with increases in infectious disease

From the December 1, 2010 Eureka news alert

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Habitat destruction and species extinction may lead to an increase in diseases that infect humans and other species, according to a paper in the journal Nature co-authored by a University of Florida ecologist.

In the paper to be published Thursday, UF biology professor Robert D. Holt and his colleagues reported that by reviewing studies from a wide range of systems, including data from plants, animals and bacteria, they were able to relate dimensions of environmental loss, and in particular species loss, with incidence of infectious disease. The study –- which was led by biologist Felicia Keesing of Bard College –- focused on diseases on the rise, such as West Nile virus, Lyme disease and Hantavirus.

“The general degradation of biodiversity because of land use transformation, combined with climate change, overharvesting, and so forth, is likely to have many perverse consequences for emerging pathogens,” said Holt, a UF Eminent Scholar associated with the Emerging Pathogens Institute. “You have to think both as an ecologist and an infectious disease specialist to grapple with questions like this.”

Some pathogens can flourish under less biologically diverse conditions, such as in areas where top predators or other key species become extinct…

Get Smart : Know When Antibiotics Work

The US Centers for Disease Control publishes a wealth of information about antibiotics for consumers, health practitioners, and the media.

Topics include appropriate antibiotic use, dangers of antibiotic resistance, and an antibiotic quiz.

Information for Everyone includes both print and online materials, fact sheets, and Q and A’s.

Information for Healthcare Providers includes Treatment Guidelines, Patient Education Materials, and Continuing Education materials.

History of Vaccines

The History of Vaccines is an informational, educational website created by The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the oldest professional society in the United States.

The History of Vaccine provides continually updated to provide a compelling history of vaccine development as well as cutting edge technologies in vaccine development and delivery.

Site content can be found through either topics or audience types.

• The topics include Timelines and a Gallery of over 400 related images. The Articles range from vaccine science to vaccine information to the history of vaccines. Activities provide self-paced active learning opportunities about the past, present, and future of vaccines and infectious diseases.
• Audience types include Parents and Educators. While there is no student link, students could benefit by going to the Educator, Article, and Activities links. This Web site is written at about a high school or early college level.