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.

In her memoir, Dirie graphically explained that she was one of the estimated 140 million girls and women who are survivors of female genital cutting (FGC). At five years old, she was held down by family members who cut off almost all of her clitoris with no anesthesia or sterilization. It was supposed to make her eligible for marriage. Instead, it left her with a lifetime of physical and psychological scars.

More than 8,000 girls undergo this horrific practice every day. It is severely painful. Shock, hemorrhage and infection such as sepsis or tetanus are the most immediate after-effects. Long term, it causes recurrent infections to the urinary tract and to complications that can lead to the death of a mother or her baby in childbirth.

As shocked as I was to read about this, I never imagined that I would ever be in position to do anything about this practice that seemed to be a world away. Flash forward to today, and I am now part of a team at Johnson & Johnson Corporate Contributions that partners with Tostan -– one of the most innovative and successful organizations combatting FGC today.

Tostan’s success is due in no small part to its community-led approach. Instead of shaming community leaders and parents, it works with them to respectfully educate members about the dangers of cutting, which has led to willing abandonment of the practice. Tostan was spotlighted in a front page article in the New York Times, which pointed out that Tostan’s successful method has been greatly influenced by community efforts in China to abandon foot binding in girls. So this practice that had seemed so distant was closer to home than I ever imagined.

Johnson & Johnson works with Tostan as part of an overall strategy to advance the health of women and girls worldwide. The company is directly supporting the advancement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and has now partnered with the 7 Billion Actions campaign of the United Nations Population Fund to highlight the crucial role that women and girls, in particular, will play in securing a healthy, safe and sustainable world of seven billion people. As we near this critical moment for humanity, we are faced with an opportunity to make a positive change.

Waris Dirie’s supermodel status helped bring worldwide attention to the pervasiveness and danger of FGC, but as Tostan’s model has shown, eradicating the practice will happen at a grassroots level, educating one community at a time in a constructive way. It is the only way to ensure that communities come to the right decisions that ensure that women and girls are healthy, safe, educated and empowered to make a world of seven billion a better place for all.

Last week, the Measles Initiative issued a press release with the exciting news that in their first decade of work, they have assisted in vaccinating 1 billion children in more than 60 developing countries. The Measles Initiative was launched in 2001 by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the World Health Organization to provide technical and monetary support of vaccination campaigns by governments and communities in the developing world.

Parents wait in line with their children to receive a lifesaving measles vaccination in Mozambique, May 2011. One child helped make history when he received the one billionth dose of the vaccine provided by the Measles Initiative since 2001. Stuart Ramson/UN Foundation

Measles mortality has plummeted since the onset of rapid immunization initiatives by governments and the Measles Initiative. Global measles mortality has dropped a stunning 78 percent worldwide — from 733,000 deaths in 2000 to 164,000 in 2008 — and has accounted for a 24 percent drop in overall childhood mortality over the same time period.

Despite this significant achievement, the global health community can hardly rest efforts on the measles front. Director of the CDC’s global immunization division, Dr. Brent Burkholder, warned that measles outbreaks and vaccine funding gaps, particularly in Africa, threaten to erase gains made to eradicate measles and achieve Millennium Development Goal 4.

At $1 per child, the measles vaccine continues to be the most cost effective strategy for measles control and elimination. Continued political commitment will be critical to maintain the gains of the Measles Initiative. In the coming decade, the Measles Initiative aims to focus on several smaller targets, the first of which is to reduce measles mortality by 95 percent by 2015.

At the recent UN High Level Meeting on AIDS, world leaders made a critical step in the right direction with the launch of a global plan to eliminate new HIV infections among children by 2015 and to keep their mothers alive. Last fall, ONE members tirelessly advocated for the Global Fund during our “No Child Born with HIV” campaign, and we’re pleased that this plan will help us work towards turning that goal into reality.

Tremendous gains have been made in recent years in reducing HIV infections among children and scaling up the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, yet much work remains. In 2009, an estimated 370,000 new infections occurred among children, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. The global strategy identifies two top goals: to reduce the number of new infections among children by 90 percent and reduce the number of AIDS-related maternal deaths by 50 percent. Under the plan, resources will be channeled to 22 priority countries, where nearly all HIV-positive pregnant women live.

The global plan identifies a four-prong framework for achieving these goals: preventing HIV among women of reproductive age through services related to reproductive health such as postpartum care; providing appropriate counseling and support to women living with HIV; ensuring HIV testing, counseling and access to treatment for pregnant women living with HIV; and HIV care, treatment and support for women and children living with HIV and their families.

We’re pleased to see that the global plan puts accountability at the helm and recognizes the critical importance of an integrated approach that connects an array of maternal and child health services across the health system. Additionally, the plan identifies the need for countries to be at the lead by providing political leadership, funding, effective strategies and strong monitoring and evaluation. While we applaud the effort to create this strategy, a plan is only so strong in so far as it has concerted political support and funding. Moving forward, if we hope to ensure no child is born with HIV by 2015, we need to see the following:

In answering the call to action at the launch of the plan, the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief announced an additional $75 million to prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV efforts. Additionally, private donors — including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — pledged $40 million, Chevron pledged $20 million and Johnson & Johnson pledged $15 million.

During the high-level meeting, Ambassador Eric Goosby, the United States Global AIDS coordinator, summed up the need for this critically important plan: “Nearly every minute a child is born with HIV. Working together, we can reverse this tide as we have done in the United States and they are very close to doing in Botswana. Preventing new HIV infections among children across the globe is truly a smart investment that saves lives and helps to give children a healthy start in life.”

Find Brooke on Twitter @riledupB

I couldn’t help it. Eating like this is way harder than I thought. When I got home from work last night, I was cranky, dizzy and deflated that my dinner would be a bowl of instant ramen, which made me feel ungracious and jaded. In retrospect, it wasn’t so bad, and I probably didn’t need the sugar fix. Take a look at some of the photos that my friend Becky took of our meals (we have the same food items, so we’re eating similar things):

From these pictures, the food doesn’t look so bad. I have oatmeal for breakfast, rice for lunch and noodles for dinner. But my colleague Maryamu Aminu from ONE’s US government relations team shattered my hunger-pang-free vision of the week.

“Is that all you’re eating? Carbs?” she asked. “That’s why some babies in Africa have big stomachs. They have kwashiorkor.”

Kwashiorkor, I found out, is a form of malnutrition that occurs when there’s not enough protein in the diet. It usually strikes children living during times of famine, drought, political unrest or overcrowded, poor conditions.

Because carbohydrates like rice, grains and other starchy foods are cheaper, more filling and more readily available than vegetables, milk and meat, desperate families feed this to their children to help ease their hunger woes.

Unfortunately, carbs have little nutritional value, and children develop protein-calorie malnutrition that bloats their bellies, stunts their growth, gives them diarrhea and makes them pretty much miserable.

I’m not saying that I’m going to develop kwashiorkor, but it made me incredibly sad to think that there are children in the world who have to eat like this to survive. And even then, how is that surviving?

Check the ONE Blog tomorrow for updates on Day 3.

“Look at those round cheeks, beautiful smiles,” remarked Florence from the Ministry of Education who joined ONE’s site visit. “The children are happy because they have taken their porridge.” At this school feeding program, run by the World Food Programme, the 777 students at Mawango are guaranteed a bowl of porridge made from a corn-soya blend, sweetened with sugar and fortified with essential nutrients.

Girls and orphaned boys also get a monthly take-home ration conditioned on 80 percent attendance. Some of this food is grown by Malawian farmers and delivered by the WFP through their Purchase for Progress program. So the WFP is helping to feed the undernourished, helping to keep kids -– especially girls -– in school, and improve the livelihoods of Malawian small-scale maize farmers.

Photos by Morgana Wingard

When I visited Cambodia with Johnson & Johnson for a deworming day at Poek Ho (waterfall) school in Kandal Province, I was struck by the sheer number of students who lined up to receive mebendazole. These children showed up to receive treatment for intestinal parasites with mebendazole donated by Johnson & Johnson. They also received a meal, which for some was likely the only meal they received that day.

These children were at particular risk of infection with intestinal worms because worms thrive in the warm climate. The lack of access to sanitation facilities in Cambodia doesn’t help much, either. In America, it is hard for us to imagine that more than 1.2 billion people living in developing countries are infected with intestinal worms. Worms are most prevalent in children between the ages of 6 to 14 and can lead to malnutrition, robbing them of the energy they need to learn and grow.

Schools provide CWW and our partners with a means to distribute the mebendazole to the children who need it, and schools also provide a platform to teach STH prevention by promoting healthy behavior within the classroom. Helen Keller International, our partners in Cambodia, works to integrate deworming prevention and hygiene into school programs and curriculum.

Even though schools provide a platform for reaching children in Cambodia, many of the poorest children do not have the resources and ability to attend school, and therefore, are left out of these deworming days. Strategies need to be developed to target this vulnerable population, such as inviting non-enrolled children to attend on “deworming day” and working with community leaders to identify and treat these children.

Treatment, hygiene education and access to sanitation and clean water are all components needed to bring STH infection under control, and together, governments, NGOs and other groups can come up with better solutions to reach this vulnerable population and find ways to prevent and treat intestinal worms.

There are many health challenges that children face throughout the world. But for intestinal worms, there is a solution that greatly improves a child’s capacity to learn and grow. A dose of medication, along with hygiene education and access to sanitation, are vital steps forward in improving a child’s life.

Read more about CWW’s work to distribute mebendazole from Johnson & Johnson to school age children as part of the Cambodia’s national deworming program.

On Wednesday, ONE lost a friend and an inspiration.

Many of us on the ONE staff were fortunate to know Vida, a Ghanaian girl living just a short drive from Accra, in Tema.

When I saw Vida three weeks ago, she and her father showed me her straight-A report card from school. She was a smart, talented and spirited person. You didn’t need a report card to know that, but it was a physical affirmation of her delight in learning and her hope for the future. Her dream was to someday be a bank manager at the Bank of Ghana, and of course, to buy her very own car.

We were concerned for her, though, because she wasn’t looking so good. It seemed she was missing some of her usual spunk.

Vida was born with HIV. She had been taking antiretroviral therapy (ART) for several years. Since her mother died of HIV, Vida was raised by her father, who is also HIV-positive. She couldn’t start school until she was 9 years old because of complications from AIDS. But once she started ART, she got into school and quickly found she loved it -– especially science –- and excelled in most all of her classes.

During the past few years, Vida has been a friend to and spokesperson for ONE and our sister organization, (RED).

The clinic Vida went to for medical care, including ART, is at the Tema General Hospital. This clinic is run by Dr. Patricia, who is also a friend of ONE and many of our staff. Last week, Vida was admitted to the Tema General Hospital, and placed on antibiotics for a dental abscess but –- having just recently been through a battle with pneumonia –- she was simply unable to beat another strong infection. Yesterday, Dr. Patricia let us know that Vida died on Wednesday.

With your help, ONE has long been advocating for the resources to support programs like the Global Fund and PEPFAR that provide drugs to prevent to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV. We often talk about the 1,000 children per day that are still born with HIV, but those numbers are sterile and can’t reflect the vibrant reality of Vida. We will all miss her.

But, just as Vida was a voice for the efforts of ONE and (RED), it is our pledge to be Vida’s ongoing voice in this absolutely winnable battle against mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

I — along with many of my colleagues at ONE — was shocked and saddened to learn that Bwalya Liteta — the 12-year-old girl featured in the recent HBO documentary “The Lazarus Effect” — passed away on August 14th.

As many of you may have seen from our sister organization (RED)‘s website, Bwalya was an HIV-positive child who had lost both her parents. (RED) first met her in May 2009 and filmed her recovery from near death to robust health with the help of antiretroviral treatment (ARVs).

Everyone who met her in the filming process was inspired by her quiet determination, and many of us at ONE felt personally compelled by the simple joy she exuded as she was finally feeling better and able to return to school with her friends.

“The Lazarus Effect” highlighted the miracle of antiretroviral drugs in restoring the health of people living with HIV/AIDS. But even when treated, AIDS can be a physically devastating disease — especially for young children.

This year, we’ve been campaigning for the full replenishment of the Global Fund. If fully funded, the Global Fund — along with other bilateral AIDS efforts — can ensure that no child is born with HIV by 2015 and make certain that little girls like Bwalya never need to become infected in the first place.

Her story should compel us — including world leaders — to be bold in our efforts to make this goal achievable.

Bwalya’s story is also compelling because it is not just a story about HIV — it’s a story about the importance of comprehensive global health policy. Although a final autopsy was not conducted, we know that Bwalya had been battling complications from AIDS, and ultimately died from heart failure.

We often talk about “health systems strengthening”– an admittedly vague term. But in her home country of Zambia, health infrastructure (hospitals, clinics, medical technology, clean water, etc) is generally weak, and there are very few heart specialists in the entire country. When the infrastructure is not in place or is not readily accessible in emergencies, it makes tragic cases like Bwalya’s death all the more common.

Bwalya’s story, which is constantly replicated in the lives of so many others who are not in the spotlight, means that the development community and recipient governments need to do even better to ensure that global health efforts are integrated, comprehensive and sustainable for those who need it the most.

An HIV-positive pregnant woman shouldn’t need to go to three separate clinics for antiretroviral drugs to ensure that she doesn’t transmit the virus to her child, anti-malarial medication and supplements to ward off infections, and someone who can help her in delivery if she faces complications.

Doing so requires strengthened partnership and communication between policymakers, practitioners, host governments and community leaders in the years ahead.

Our thoughts are with Bwalya’s family and all those who knew her. Please feel free to leave your own remarks in the comments section if you have seen the film or have been touched by her story.

© The Associated Press 2010

The people that put together “Sesame Street” and Jim Henson’s “The Muppets Show” have been working to create a version in Nigeria called “Sesame Square.” They announced that the show will include an HIV-positive girl named Kami –- news reports describe her as ‘furry and yellow.’

Given that more than 40 percent of Nigeria’s 150 million people are under the age of 14, this Muppet is a great way to reduce stigma around living with HIV and inform kids (and their parents) about the disease.

Kami’s not new – she was introduced in 2002 to South African viewers, and has appeared across the world, including with former President Clinton.

And you may remember that there was quite a buzz in the U.S. about this, with several politicians threatening to cut funding for PBS if they brought Kami in (I wonder if this was because of the sad immigration ban that Congress imposed on HIV-positive people that was only recently lifted. Let’s hope that we’ve become more enlightened since then.

According to the Measles Initiative’s announcement, “during the 2010 WNBA season, the Atlanta Dream, Phoenix Mercury and Seattle Storm will each host a special Vaccinate a Village Night to help expand awareness and education for the Measles Initiative. At each arena, efforts will include various on-court promotions, public announcements and information booths providing fans with ways to get involved. WNBA Cares will also be making a donation of $25,000 to support the Measles Initiative, which will ensure the vaccination of the same number of children.”

Additionally, WNBA All-Star Candace Parker, alongside NBA legend (and prominent philanthropist) Dikembe Mutombo will lend their voices toward this project. They’ll both star in a public service announcement focused on measles that will debut during the 2010 WNBA Playoffs.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that kills hundreds of children every day, but an effective vaccine exists to help prevent its spread. The Measles Initiative has supported the vaccination of more than 700 million children, helping to reduce measles deaths by 78 percent globally since 2000. This reduction in measles deaths accounts for approximately 23 percent of all progress to date on Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 — an impressive statistic worth remembering as we look forward to the MDG Summit in September and ONE’s broader work on vaccines this fall and into next year.