If you haven’t had a chance yet, check out our Hot Topic piece on the eradication of polio. Since 1988, polio cases have decreased by 99%. This disease once took the lives of more than 300,000 people a year; we are now just 1,300 cases per year away from achieving global eradication of this devastating disease. This is truly a remarkable story.
Our Policy Team has outlined the both challenge and opportunity presented by polio in a policy brief which you can read here. It’s as good a recap as you’re likely to find on our battle against this infectious disease.
Which reminds me– check out this clip from Bill and Melinda Gates’s “Impatient Optimists” presentation in which they outline some of the key successes in combating polio:
The 2009 WHO Global Tuberculosis Update was launched earlier this month, providing the latest information on the state of the epidemic around the world. The report shows that in the last 15 years, 36 million people have been cured of tuberculosis, and eight million cases have been prevented. This progress attests to the effectiveness of the Stop TB Strategy and DOTS in the fight against tuberculosis.
During the latest 12-month reporting period, 2.3 million infectious patients were cured, more than ever before in that time frame. Still, not enough people are accessing the treatment they need, and about 1.8 million people died of tuberculosis in 2008.
There were an estimated 9.27 million incident cases of TB in 2007 (of which, 15% percent were among individuals who were also HIV-positive), a slight increase from 9.24 million in 2006. However, while the total number of TB cases is up due to population growth, the number of cases per capita is actually down 1%.
The report shows further progress in addressing the deadly combination of TB and HIV. TB remains the leading cause of death for those with HIV, but testing TB patients for HIV is on the rise, and more patients are receiving appropriate treatment.
The report also notes that there has been little progress in stopping multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), an even more dangerous and resistant to treatment form of TB.
Former Senator Bill Frist was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning and spoke at length about deadly and preventable diseases in Africa. He also spoke about the need for clean water and what a long way that goes in saving children’s lives.
Senator Frist also has an op-ed in today’s Washington Times on the state of Africa’s children which you can read here.
You can check out the clip here, partial transcript below:
These deaths are preventable, and it’s cheap and we know how to do that. And people think of malaria and HIV and tuberculosis– all very serious– but the number one disease is cardiovascular disease. And we must continue to focus on malaria and bed nets, but simply clean water can go further in saving lives inexpensively around the world.
Imagine what the state of global health might be today if we had been able to predict how and approximately when HIV would surface and swell to the epidemic proportions it has today. If, as they say, forewarned is forearmed, we might have preemptively set up better systems for controlling the spread of HIV and we may have had a jumpstart on researching a vaccine before the virus adapted and mutated into the myriad of strains we have today. What we know of today as one of the largest threats to health and development might have turned out altogether differently if we had had some small indication of what was to come. Wishful thinking you say? Maybe not entirely.
American and British scientists have come up with some rather sophisticated models which just might allow us to map out and predict where the next new disease might emerge. One of the leading scientists who has championed this research, Peter Daszak, will present a map of ‘Emerging Disease Hotspots’ at an open congressional briefing hosted by Senators Sam Brownback and Richard Durbin on Wednesday, April 16 in Washington D.C. (See the invitation here!)
Dr. Daszak’s findings show that some of the new disease hotspots will be in the tropics and developing countries where the growth of human populations wildlife is clashing with wildlife diversity. When human population continues to grow and crowd out wildlife, something has to give, and that something will be human health.
Meanwhile, all the latest cutting-edge research and surveillance has been focused on the developed world where research resources abound and not in the developing countries where the outbreaks are likely to happen. Sound familiar? The underfunding of research into the diseases of poorer countries presents yet another disparity.
With this new ability to predict and get a head start on disease, we have an opportunity to deploy resources to poor parts of the world where proper surveillance is lacking. Through global health research and surveillance funding at agencies like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we have an opportunity to curb the next swarm of emerging infectious diseases. This time round, we have no excuse not to.
Right now, some of the world's biggest oil companies are fighting to keep some of their deals with foreign governments secret. Let's tell big oil we won't be bullied.
Cuts to poverty-fighting programs won't balance the budget, but they will set back progress on Canada's development priorities and risk jeopardizing existing investments.
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.
