Health and Science

By Emma Batha

The United Nations recently declared the world had met an ambitious target for halving the number of people without safe drinking water well ahead of a 2015 deadline.

It’s an impressive achievement, but not necessarily as impressive as it sounds.

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As a programme officer with the GAVI Alliance, Nilgun Aydogan is responsible not only for helping south Asian countries apply for funding to introduce life-saving vaccines but also for monitoring the effectiveness of their immunisation programmes.  In March, Nilgun was invited to Myanmar’s new capital Nay Pyi Taw to help the health ministry monitor the success of a nationwide measles campaign.

Day 1

Vaccination days are a cause for celebration in Myanmar – and the Buddhist temple in Pyinmana township, near the capital Nay Pyi Taw, is no exception.

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Jeffrey O’Malley is director, HIV/AIDS Group, Bureau for Development Policy, at the United Nations Development Programme, which includes UNDP’s partnership with The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria 

New York— The theme of this year’s World Malaria Day is “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria,” and the organizers carefully selected this theme to remind us that we must sustain progress against malaria to save lives.

In recent years, we have seen success in many regions: In Africa, malaria deaths have been reduced by nearly a third, and on other continents cases have been reduced by half.

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Jonathan Klein is chief executive and co-founder of Getty Images and chair of the board of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The opinions expressed are his own.

Recently, Getty Images released its citizenship report for 2012, a declaration of what we stand for as a company.

It’s not enough anymore that companies turn a profit and be held accountable to their shareholders. Those are good things, to be sure, but it’s become increasingly important that the private sector do more to care for the world we live in.

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Andy Mews is head of programmes for Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Katanga Province, Democratic Republic of Congo. The opinions expressed are his own.

You begin feeling flushed. You get a fever which gradually worsens. You lose the desire to eat. All the colour leaves your face, hands and feet. Your limbs ache and you feel week, feeble to the point where you can’t even move. The hours, days mesh into each other as you drift in and out of consciousness. Somewhere in between the sleepless nights you might lose it altogether. And all of this is because a few mosquitoes bit you. 

Malaria is a predictable disease.  On the level of the individual, patients deteriorate slowly and consistently, experiencing the same flu-like symptoms as the parasite weakens and kills over days or even weeks. On a macro level, malaria is a dependable yearly presence where I work in Katanga Province, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).   

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In a podcast to mark World Malaria Day, 25th April 2012, Christian Aid discovers the supreme versatility of the humble malaria net.

In conversation with Christian Aid’s Technical Health Advisor Felicia Price, the aid agency discusses some of the alternative and rather creative ways we’ve come across people using insecticide treated mosquito nets in malaria prone communities.

The charity also explores why, in places terribly affected by malaria, people are making these sometimes seemingly illogical choices.

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Mike Egboh is national programme manager for PATHS2 (Partnership for Transforming Health Systems 2) in Nigeria. The opinions expressed are his own.

Given the theme for this year’s World Malaria Day - “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria" - it is worth pausing to reflect on the need for integrated partnerships that are uniting efforts and amplifying resources to scale-up malaria prevention and treatment measures.

While Malaria afflicts nearly half a billion people a year, it is particularly deadly in Africa. The contribution of malaria to high mortality rates, particularly in women and children, is of grave global concern.

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For the first time, every region of the world is focusing at the same time on the importance of vaccination, during the World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Immunization Week, April 21 to 28.

More than 180 countries are set to participate in the global initiative, which builds on similar efforts held in different regions, including the Americas, which this year is celebrating its 10^th annual Vaccination Week in the Americas.

Worldwide, immunization is estimated to prevent between two and three million deaths each year from diseases including diphtheria, measles, mumps, tetanus, rubella and whooping cough.

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Sabrina Bakeera-Kitaka is a member of the decision-making framework team for the introduction of the malaria vaccine in Uganda and on the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization Civil Society Steering Committee. The opinions expressed are her own.

Musawo omwana wange affa!’….(Doctor,my child is dying)

This is not an uncommon sentence when you are the doctor on call in the Acute Care Unit of Mulago Hospital.

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Dan Thomas is head of media and communications at the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership, which aims to save children’s lives and protect people’s health by increasing access to vaccines in the world’s poorest countries. The opinions expressed are his own.

Have you ever been to a cinema and seen a trailer for a film that you previously had no interest in seeing and then suddenly thought to yourself “That is a film I CANNOT MISS”?

That was the idea behind GAVI’s most recent production. It’s a three-minute film by a talented young American filmmaker called Ryan Youngblood that I stumbled across in Kigali, Rwanda, one day and I think he and producer Doune Porter more than fulfilled their brief.

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This blog post was provided by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Smarter tactics and investment in evidence-based interventions are urgently needed to sustain the gains in the fight against malaria, according to experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

On World Malaria Day (25 April), leading researchers say they are confident that the war is being won, but call for more intelligent approaches to continue to save lives without wasting money.

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Emma Visman is futures manager at the Humanitarian Futures Programme, King’s College, London. The opinions expressed are her own.

An unforeseen forum for innovation with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives and livelihoods in some of the most disaster-prone communities in the world is being pioneered in Senegal and Kenya right now.

This two-way exchange initiative is enabling scientists to consider how emerging scientific and technological capacities can better meet weather and climate information needs identified by communities at risk of drought and flooding.

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Lyndon Haviland is senior strategy fellow at Aspen Global Health and Development. The opinions expressed are her own.

On Saturday April 7th, Joyce Banda became Africa’s second sitting female president. As President of Malawi, Banda succeeds Bingu wa Mutharika who died of cardiac complications last week.

Once hailed as the “Economist in Chief” Mutharika leaves Malawi impoverished with some of the worst maternal health indicators on the continent – and with many donors, the United States and Britain included, having suspended aid.

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This World Water Day, March 22, Sightsavers is highlighting the importance of clean water. Clean water and good sanitation is integral to our work preventing blindness and restoring sight in developing countries.

(Charlie Bibby/Financial Times/Sightsavers)

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101 years into celebrating International Women’s Day many women around the world still suffer gross inequalities and struggle for basic human rights. One of the gravest global inequalities can be seen in women’s access to maternal health care. 99% of maternal deaths occur in developing countries and Myanmar, also known as Burma, is no exception in high maternal mortality ratios.

The country is splashed across every travel magazine as this year’s hottest destination. Carefully concealed behind the glossy images and the sleek tours there is, however, a very different story. Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in the world, ranks 149 out of 187 in the Human Development Index[1]. Indigenous and remote regions have suffered decades of conflict and in those areas, many still live without the most basic amenities.  Shan State Special Region Four in Shan state, which is bordering with China and Laos, is still recovering from conflict, but for the last 6 years it also has been making the journey towards safer motherhood for all women.

When Health Poverty Action started working in the area in 2006, 98% of women gave birth at home and most of these births took place without the presence of a trained health worker. Instead, women relied on traditional birth attendants, who often didn’t wash their hands, couldn’t identify high-risk pregnancies and used shards of bamboo to cut the umbilical cord, tying it with a piece of string. It’s hardly surprising that, given these conditions, many women – and their children – died unnecessarily.

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Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) makes it a priority to provide life-saving, emergency obstetric care in both acute and chronic humanitarian crises.

Fifteen percent of all pregnancies worldwide will experience a life-threatening complication. The most critical moment is delivery: the majority of maternal deaths occur just before, during, or just after delivery, often from complications that cannot be predicted. It is at this point that the provision of quality obstetric care is vital to save women's lives. The majority of maternal deaths are avoidable when access to emergency obstetric care is ensured.

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By Kathleen Mogelgaard

In January, the U.S. Agency for International Development released its long-awaited climate change strategy. Climate Change & Development: Clean Resilient Growth provides a blueprint for addressing climate change through development assistance programs and operations.

In addition to objectives around mitigation and adaptation, the strategy also outlines a third objective: improving overall operational integration.

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BANGKOK (AlertNet) – It was an early Monday evening and the red light district in Thailand’s capital was already heaving -- full of locals and foreigners drinking sundowner cocktails and enjoying the flesh parading before their eyes. Street vendors were selling food, clothes, souvenirs and Valentine’s Day gifts.

They probably weren’t expecting a group of (mainly) fuchsia-clad men in towering heels, bouffant hairdos and sashes advocating safe sex, but that’s exactly what they got.

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“I can’t see anything,” I hear a fellow visitor say in the darkened exhibition room of a London gallery.

I look at one of the photos on the wall and agree – nearly all I can make out is a foot, a white sheet and a white glove against a black background.

It is only when I shine a portable solar lamp – provided by sustainable-energy charity Ashden, which organised the exhibition – that I make out in the photo the vague shape of a woman’s legs and soiling on the sheets.

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Seth Berkley, M.D., is the CEO of the GAVI Alliance and a global advocate for the power of vaccines. He is an epidemiologist and medical doctor by training. The opinions expressed are his own.

I am in Davos, Switzerland, attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) for the seventh time, representing GAVI, which was born here in 2000, and which like Davos brings together leaders from many fields, in the case of GAVI to save children’s lives and protect people’s health through immunisation. 

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Natasha F. Bilimoria is president of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The opinions expressed are her own.

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria — the world’s most powerful tool for improving health — at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

As I participate in the global health events at this year’s forum in Davos, I can’t help but think of a different scene playing out almost 3,000 miles away in Accra, Ghana, where women with HIV are keeping appointments at Global Fund-supported clinics, talking to health care providers, and getting the treatment they need to protect their newborn babies, care for their families and lead healthy, productive lives.   

During a recent visit to the TEMA and Korel Bu Teaching Hospitals in Accra, I had the honor of meeting some of these women living with HIV, who spoke with pride about their ability to work to support their families and be a part of their communities — and the joy of being alive to watch their children grown and learn.

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Anne Marson is communications manager at the Friends of the Global Fight Against Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Any opinions expressed are her own.

The Global Fund, the world’s largest and most powerful global health financier, is celebrating its 10^th anniversary this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

To mark this important milestone, Christoph Benn, director of External Relations and Partnerships for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who worked as a doctor in Tanzania, speaks about the incredible advances made there and shares his vision for global efforts to fight HIV and AIDS.

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In 1947 when Sightsavers’ founder, Sir John Wilson, coined the phrase river blindness to describe the almost unpronounceable disease onchocerciasis, rife amongst Africa’s river-side communities there was little choice for those living in areas where what we now call a neglected tropical disease (NTD) was endemic.  Fear of being infected by the bite of the simulim fly which was breeding in the rivers’ fast flowing waters and then going blind meant that villages were abandoned and with them the rich fertile lands and people’s livelihoods.   

Today, although the World Health Organization estimates that 120 million people¹ are at risk of river blindness, there is hope. 

For the last 25 years, drug distribution programmes to treat river blindness have been established across most endemic countries, and community-based distribution systems are used to ensure people receive an annual dose of 'Mectizan'® (ivermectin)*.  The drugs are donated by global pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Inc. (known as MSD in the UK) and organizations, like Sightsavers support the distribution. 

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“Country ownership” has become a popular term used in discussions about the future of U.S. foreign assistance. But its definition shifts depending on who you’re talking to. InterAction’s just released policy paper, “Country Ownership: Moving from Rhetoric to Action,” provides a clear and easy to understand definition that all who care about international development should consider using.  

Defined in the paper as “the full and effective participation of a country’s population—including government, civil society and the private sector—in conceptualizing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating development policies, and programs,” country ownership is a partnership approach to development assistance. It empowers and supports countries and their citizens to take responsibility for their own development, using local systems and resources to create new opportunities and change in their communities, while becoming less reliant on foreign aid.   

It’s not just NGOs who believe in country ownership. The Obama administration has become attached to the concept, promoting it in development policies such as the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and initiatives such as Feed the Future and the Global Health Initiative. However despite this progress, the administration’s attempt to “adopt a model of development based… on partnership, not patronage,” as Hillary Clinton has described, has been inconsistent.

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By Alina Paul, communications specialist, ICRISAT

It would be hard to walk down a village track in India without coming across a shack displaying colourful strips of shampoo sachets for 1 rupee (nearly 2 cents) or stacks of mini soap bars. Creative marketing has even brought these sachets to isolated villages on the back of camels.

Hindustan Unilever was behind this approach. They noticed that their soaps and shampoos were too expensive for poor people so they re-packaged them into small doses that they could afford. They initially sold them door-to-door, helped by ‘shakti ladies’ who were members of self-help groups receiving microcredit to become small entrepreneurs. The 1-rupee range now constitutes a significant part of Hindustan Unilever's revenues and sustains a healthy network of small shops.

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Zanele, from the Nyanga township in Cape Town, is living with HIV. Thanks to antiretroviral therapy (ART), she will be able to lead a full life and look after her baby girl Lilathi. But living with HIV also makes her 20 to 30 times more vulnerable to tuberculosis (TB), and she became ill with the disease one month ago. TB is responsible for one in four AIDS deaths and the co-epidemic is particularly devastating in Africa.

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Bernhard Schwartlander is director of the Evidence, Strategy and Results Department at UNAIDS. The opinions expressed are his own.

Tremendous gains against HIV have been made over the past three decades, but to decisively break the trajectory of the HIV epidemic and achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, a far more strategic approach to investment is needed.

We need to radically depart from existing approaches and instead put AIDS financing on an investment track, leading the way to a more targeted and strategic use of scarce resources.

To date, the approach to AIDS needs has been a “commodity” approach – interest groups and advocates of one or other aspect of the AIDS response have put forward their claim to funding and a total bill has been estimated on the basis of these atomised needs.

The failing in this approach is that the incentives lie only in maximising the claim for funding needs, and what it leaves out is any incentive for progammes to act as a whole to maximise results.

The alternative to the commodity approach is an investment paradigm which encourages countries to implement as a package the most effective programmes by capitalising on the best available evidence on what works in HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

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Stefano Bertozzi is director of the HIV/TB Programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The opinions expressed are his own.

World AIDS Day provides us an annual occasion to pause, reflect, and take stock of how we are doing in the fight against HIV.

This year strikes me as especially noteworthy, and not just because of the well-documented breakthroughs and heartbreaks in HIV prevention research.

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Sharonann Lynch is HIV/AIDS Policy Advisor for Médecins Sans Frontières’ Access Campaign. The opinions expressed are her own.

Just over 10 years ago, doctors and nurses working for Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) started to provide treatment to people living with HIV/AIDS in projects in Thailand and South Africa, where before they had simply provided palliative care as people withered away. 

Having seen the dramatic impact treatment has on people’s lives and on communities, we’ve scaled up treatment in our projects, which now span nearly twenty countries, with 170,000 people receiving life-saving HIV drugs. 

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Gottfried Hirnschall, the World Health Organisation's director for HIV/AIDS, spoke with AlertNet in London as a new United Nations health agencies report on HIV/AIDS was released. The international community has made extraordinary progress in the past decade in the fight against AIDS, but a funding crisis is putting those gains at risk, the report said.

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