Global Health Progress

Mozambique on Sunday celebrated the International Day of Struggle against Leprosy, with a prevalence of the disease so low as to allow the country to claim that it has eliminated this ancient terror.
According to data provided by the head of the National Leprosy Control Programme in the Ministry of Health, Alcino Ndeve, the current leprosy [...]

The Obama administration has requested that Mark Dybul immediately resign from his position as U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and administrator of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, CQ HealthBeat reports.

In SA we sometimes have a tendency to become so preoccupied with the multi faceted nature of a problem that we forget to focus on the core of the solution.

So it is with HIV/AIDS and, one suspects, with cholera. Campaigns against AIDS sometimes become so occupied with poverty and abuse, and the other social factors that make the problem worse, that they neglect to focus on the fact that it is a sexually transmitted disease and that unless people change their sexual behaviour the epidemic will continue. Similarly in the case of cholera, anger about Zimbabwe, and inadequate water and sanitation tend to overshadow the point that unless people are very careful about their hygiene habits, the disease will spread and will take lives quite unnecessarily.

Qian Geng works as the Regional Director of China for Project HOPE, an international health education and humanitarian assistance organization. Qian oversees and helps develop programs managed from HOPE’s three offices located in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan. Most recently, she has worked with the Chinese government and Project HOPE’s corporate partners to develop a program to build capacity of rehabilitation services to benefit the many people recovering from earthquake related injuries in China.

The government’s AIDS programme is heading for a funding crisis, deputy chairman of the South African National AIDS Council Mark Heywood has warned.

Speaking to members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU’s) advisory committee on HIV/AIDS in Parliament yesterday, Heywood said the government had failed to budget in line with the cost estimates laid out in its National Strategic AIDS Plan (NSP). The five-year plan was launched 18 months ago, and put a R45bn price tag on meeting its targets, which include treating four-fifths of those in need by 2011.

Correspondence in this week’s edition of The Lancet says that the community infrastructure which treats tropical diseases requires recognition as a critical platform for upscaling malaria interventions, particularly bednets and antimalarial drugs. The Correspondence is written by Professor David Molyneux, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, and colleagues from the tropical disease and malaria communities.

Millions are to be spent on research to allow adult medicines be given more safely to children.

Currently many sick children and babies are given lower doses of adult medicines, which may increase the risk of side effects.

The World Health Organisation and Unicef will spend a grant of almost $10m from the Gates Foundation to carry out more research.

U.S. scientists say they’ve developed a prototype malaria test printed on a small disposable Mylar card that can remain effective for long periods of time.

Rotary International, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the British and German governments today committed more than $630 million in new funds to fight polio, a crippling and sometimes fatal disease that still paralyzes children in parts of Africa and Asia and threatens children everywhere. In addition to pledging needed funds, leaders urged additional donors and leaders of countries where polio still exists to join them in an aggressive push for eradication.

Iranian physicians Arash Alaei and Kamiar Alaei, brothers who implemented Iran’s first HIV/AIDS prevention program, on Wednesday received prison sentences of six years and three years, respectively, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, Masoud Shafii, an attorney for the Alaeis, said, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Times, Iranian authorities have not announced the verdict in the Alaei case, but an unnamed official leaked the outcome of the case. Shafii said he would appeal the verdict within the 20-day time limit.