This morning in London, 13 pharmaceutical companies, the US, UK and UAE governments, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and other global health organizations announced a new plan to eliminate or control 10 neglected tropical diseases, which disproportionally affect 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people.
Dr Caroline Anstey of the World Bank said: “These are not neglected diseases -– but rather diseases of neglected people.”
The aim is to eliminate Guinea worm, leprosy, lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma and sleeping sickness by 2020, and control schistosomiasis, river blindness, soil-transmitted helminthes, Chagas disease and visceral leishmaniasis. These diseases cause misery, suffering, disfigurement and death -– and when they don’t kill the seriously affect the lives of many people.
Paloma Pineda and Katherine Warren, founding co-directors of the Akili Initative, an online student think tank for global health, report on the recent Consortium of Universities for Global Health.
The immense challenges of global health have increasingly inspired our younger generation to act to create change. As global health challenges grow, students’ optimistic spirit, capacity to innovate and multidisciplinary perspectives will be an invaluable resource to cultivate in the years to come.
Over the past few decades, universities have recognized this value and have made strides towards providing students with the tools they need to make an impact in global health work. Currently, more than 240 North American universities have dedicated global health coursework, and more than a third of those also include research programs. The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) seeks to build collaboration among these institutions to ensure optimal curricula and research programs.
Top docs Dr. Orin Levine and Dr. Ciro de Quadros share some unfortunate news: dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease, is making a reemergence in the United States.
If someone told you that they’d survived “break bone fever” would you know the disease they’re talking about? If they told you that the first outbreak of this disease in the United States was recorded in Philadelphia in 1870, would that help? If they revealed that mosquitoes that spread the disease are found in many parts of the United States today, would that shed any light?
Twelve years ago, I was a small-town Chinese girl who had just moved to Shanghai –- as bewildered and overwhelmed as any cliché would predict. While toying with the idea of a career in modeling, I stumbled upon a haunting memoir -– “Desert Flower” –- that shook me to my core. It is the powerful and unflinching story of Waris Dirie who started her life as an impoverished girl in the Somali desert and ultimately becomes a successful supermodel -– even a “Bond girl” no less.
It’s time to announce our second finalist in the 2011 ONE Africa Award.
After our piece on a project in Togo, we went on to Accra, Ghana to meet the Alliance for Reproductive Health Rights (ARHR). The alliance was established by a group of NGOs in 2004 and evolved from a defunct Save the Children program on sexual and reproductive health. ARHR Executive Director, Ms. Vicky Okine, is the former Save the Children program manager, and recognized the importance of the continuation of this program. It builds on the potential of community health organizations to empower their communities and drive the demand for better access to sexual and reproductive health care.
More common than deafness or Down’s syndrome, hydrocephalus, or “water on the brain,” is a completely treatable condition diagnosed in 400,000 babies worldwide each year, including 250,000 in sub-Saharan Africa. Usually caused by complications from an infection at birth or in infancy, babies provided with proper medical assistance are expected to make full recoveries and to go on to lead perfectly normal, healthy lives. But, like many preventable diseases and disabilities prevalent in the developing world, almost 90 percent of hydrocephalus cases found in African children turn out to be fatal.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
