Living Proof

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:

Check out this new photo gallery courtesy of the Living Proof Project. It intimately chronicles child birth and maternal health in rural Nepal.

The Living Proof Project recently published a new photo gallery looking at a program organized by the Ethiopian government to train over 32,000 high-school educated women to work as Health Extension Workers and teach rural families about disease prevention and healthy living.

Check it out:

As he has done in years past, today Bill Gates released his annual letter. This year’s letter focuses on “innovation and how it can make the difference between a bleak future and a bright one.”

You can find the full 2010 letter here, and a short excerpt below including a mention of ONE:

In total, foreign aid from the richest countries in 2008 was $121 billion. Specific data is available at stats.oecd.org/qwids, and it’s something I watch closely because the generosity of these governments is key to long-term success.

Because of budget deficits, there is significant risk that aid budgets will either be cut or not increase much. In the table below, I show some countries’ budget deficits as a percentage of gross domestic product (or GDP, a measure of the overall size of the economy). Many of these percentages represent unprecedented peacetime deficits.

The public may not prioritize keeping foreign aid at high levels because so many of them have not heard how effective it is. Some formed their image of foreign aid during the Cold War, when money was sent to buy the allegiance of a dictator with very little control to make sure it was well spent. We need to get the successes to be far more visible than they are today. The organization ONE is a key partner in helping with this, and they have Bono’s brilliance as well as a strong staff. In October Melinda and I did a presentation we called “LIVING PROOF: Why We Are Impatient Optimists” to show how well government investments in health are working. You can watch it at www.livingproofproject.org. This version was focused on U.S. giving, but the message is even more appropriate for the rich countries that are even more generous than the United States.

Check out this great photo gallery from the Living Proof Project. It follows Liya Kebede was born in Ethiopia and now serves as a WHO Global Ambassador, and her work in Ethiopia.

You can view the full gallery by clicking the image below:

The Living Proof Project has a new photo gallery chronicling the “Mabrouk!” Initiative, a program that uses education and counseling to address health challenges for pregnant women and their babies. Egypt is a country with 800,000 weddings each year, and nearly 60% of the population is under 25 so spreading these services to newlyweds is particularly important.

You can see the full gallery by clicking the image below:

The Living Proof Project just posted this excellent photo gallery on “Kangaroo Care” in Malawi. You may remember the corresponding video we posted a while back on the same subject. Remember to check out the Living Proof Project for more evidence of how US investments in global health are saving lives around the world.

Click the image below for the full gallery:

As part of the Living Proof Project, the Gates Foundation recently cut this great video highlighting some of the great successes in global health over the years. Check it out, and pass it on:

As part of the Living Proof Project, the Gates Foundation produced this amazing video which you may remember seeing during Bill and Melinda Gates’ “Impatient Optimists” presentation.

The video follows Ethiopia native Liya Kebede, the World Health Organization’s Global Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.

The Living Proof Project recently posted a new video, this one set in Malawi. It explores something called The Kangaroo Mother Care program, which “teaches mothers how to increase the body temperatures of their newborns by wrapping the babies to their bare chests.” The skin-to-skin contact helps reduce hypothermia, among other benefits.

It’s a pretty remarkable video. Check it out: