Global Health Progress

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) organized the “Special Event on Philanthropy and the Global Public Health Agenda” on February 23, 2009. Promoting health among the world’s poorest populations brought leaders from various nations, the global health community, biopharmaceutical companies, the media and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) together, highlighting the power of partnerships [...]

Pneumonia and other lung infections are the number-one killers of children worldwide – deadlier than AIDS, malaria and measles combined, but in developing countries lacking medical staff and laboratories the illnesses are often treated blindly with antibiotics.

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently announced it will give US$40 million to improve screenings for pneumococcal disease – the most common forms being pneumonia and meningitis.

New research has revealed the extent and speed at which the HI virus can adapt to overcome the body’s own evolving defence systems.

In an international study, published on Wednesday in the scientific journal, Nature, researchers looked at HIV genetic sequences in over 2,800 people in six different countries in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa to determine how the virus had evolved to respond to a key set of molecules in the human immune system called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs).

President Obama on Thursday released his $3.55 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the Chronicle, the proposal emphasizes the commitment to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other global health programs (Coile, San Francisco Chronicle, 2/27).

Dr. Glenn Geelhoed, professor of surgery, international medical education, and microbiology and tropical medicine at the George Washington University, recently returned to Duk Payuel in South Sudan. Ongoing security concerns, including an incident in a neighboring village in which six people were killed, have led to lighter patient volumes, as patients are concerned for their safety during their long trek to the Duk Lost Boys Clinic.

Johannesburg — The Gauteng Provincial Health Department has allayed fears that there might be an outbreak of meningitis in the province. This after the disease claimed two lives in the province, in the past two weeks, with the first victim, a 15-year-old learner at the Mondeor High school dying from bacterial meningitis and the second a seven-year-old boy from the Emaweni Primary School in Soweto dying from viral meningitis.

New York (PTI): The United Nations health agency on Thursday warned that emergence of a drug resistant form of malaria in South-East Asia threatens to undermine global successes in controlling the disease. There is new evidence of parasites resistant to artemisinin – the main drug used to treat the disease – along the border between Cambodia and Thailand where workers walk for miles every day to clear forests, World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

February 23, 2009

The international AIDS community is buzzing with anxiety over unconfirmed reports that the Obama administration may hold down American financing for international AIDS programs that need greatly increased support. We hope that the new budget blueprint to be released this week will leave enough room to grant these and other vital health programs the money they need to care for millions of sick people and to prevent the spread of additional disease around the world.

A new report on the effects of AIDS and poverty on children adds to the growing realisation that mistaken assump-tions have rendered ineffective many of the world’s attempts to help. A meeting was held this month in London with international organisations to invite them to commit to specific actions recommended in the report, said Linda Richter, director of the Human Sciences Research Council’s (HSRC’s) Child, Youth, Family and Social Development unit.

Pneumonia is the biggest killer of the world’s children — two million a year, more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. But pneumonia, which just means fluid in the lungs, has many causes: bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitical.

In poor countries, it is often treated without testing for the cause; a health worker will see a child panting for breath and give antibiotics. There are vaccines against two of the common bacterial causes, Hib and Streptococcus pneumoniae. They have prevented many deaths in the United States and, thanks to donor money, are now reaching Africa and Asia.