Archive for February, 2010
A massive earthquake hit Chile at 3am their time this morning. The quake, measured at 8.8 magnitude, was even more powerful than the one that hit Haiti last month.
From ABC News:
“The minute-and-a-half-long quake was less than 100 miles north from the southwest coastal city of Concepcion, the second-largest city in Chile, but caused damage as far away as the capital Santiago nearly 200 miles away.
Hospitals in the area have been evacuated and the airport in Santiago has been shut down as the country braces to cope with at least 13 aftershocks measuring 5.0 magnitude or stronger. Phone lines and power also are out of service.”
Officials have warned that the earthquake could trigger a tsunami throughout the region. As US news is reporting, Hawaii is being evacuated as the first wave of a tsunami is expected arrive their at 11:19am local time.
Obviously this story is developing and we’ll be keeping an eye on it.
The Boston Globe: A ‘test and treat’ approach to fighting HIV
The Boston Globe reports that a promising new way to prevent the spread of HIV is being tested in Botswana on a group of people who are being exposed to a particularly vicious strain of the virus. According to the paper, the “test and treat’’ approach is not primarily intended to ward off the development of full blown AIDS, though it should also do that. Rather, the purpose of the trial is to sharply reduce the high quantity of virus being generated in an infected person to such a low level that little to no HIV would be available to pass along to a partner. This new method was designed and is being employed by AIDS scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health in the village of Mochudi, where 25 percent of the adult population is infected with HIV.
MediaGlobal (New York): Substandard Antimalarial Medicines Highlight the Need for Health Care Reform in African Countries
Sub-standard anti-malarial medicines are still widely sold in Madagascar, Senegal, and Uganda, according to a recently published study by Maryland-based NGO, the United States Pharmacopeia (USP). According to the study, substandard medicines are available because there is a high public demand for affordable health options and people living in rural areas do not always have access to a government-regulated distributor. The study maintains that addressing these issues is a complicated process, and drug regulation requires continuing efforts on the part of national governments. A government official involved in the study called for the creation of national health insurance programs, saying “If people know that they can go there and get the medicines at very reduced price, or next to nothing, then they will not be hesitation to go to the outlets to find these.”
The Financial Times: Helping Zimbabwe (Editorial)
The Financial Times writes that South African president Jacob Zuma believes lifting the targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe would help break political deadlock there, and will use his state visit to the UK next week to press his case. According to the Times, Mr. Zuma’s visit is an opportunity to try, once again, to find a way forward for Zimbabwe. The paper lays out a number of “wish list” conditions that would precede any change in sanctions: for example. “the press should be allowed to operate with freedom…and clear signs of progress on constitutional reforms are needed before any fresh elections.” Mr Zuma should, in return, be authorized to say that sanctions would then be lifted and phased aid to the government from western donors would be resumed. The Times concludes by saying, “There is no guarantee of success. But at least then there would be a credible attempt to resolve the Zimbabwe conundrum.”
The Wall Street Journal: India Budget Boosts Farm Spending
Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee Friday proposed a new law to ensure food security in the country and announced the government would boost agriculture spending in addition to providing farmers more time to repay loans. According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Mukherjee outlined a four-pronged strategy – easier access to farm loans, greater focus on value addition by food-processing sector, cutting food wastage and increasing farm productivity – to boost farm sector growth. He plans to launch a “Green Revolution” in the country’s eastern region, similar to programs in the sixties and seventies which helped the country become self-sufficient in food production for the first time. Increased investments in agriculture and the proposal for a new food security law were announced amid widespread concern that another year of bad monsoon could badly hit the country’s ability to feed its millions.
The Economist: Attack of the really quite likeable tomatoes
The Economist explores the burgeoning popularity of genetically modified foods around the world, arguing that their success is providing opportunities to win over their many critics. According to the article, one of the primary criticisms of GM crops is that they are a way for “big companies to take over the livelihoods of small farmers,” primarily in the developing world. However, organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are refuting these claims by funding efforts in various countries to make crops more hardy or nutritious. Bill Gates maintains that as with drugs and vaccines, it is possible to get products that were developed with profit in mind to the people who need them using donor money and clever pricing and licensing deals. Said Gates, “The whole idea is not that poor farmers should go on being poor. It is that poor farmers should get a bit richer, be able to invest a bit more, and thus increase the food available to a growing and predominantly urban population.”
Check out this great opportunity from our friends at Global Health Corps:
We are excited to announce that applications are now open for Global Health Corps (GHC) fellowships in Rwanda, Malawi, Burundi, and the United States.
GHC is a fellowship program that pairs young professionals from the United States with young professionals from our partner countries. This pair then works in year-long placements with leading non-profits in global health. You can watch a short video on our work here.
Our work is driven by a belief that a new generation of global health leaders with diverse skill-sets must be fostered and empowered in order to bring about innovative solutions to the extreme inequity in health outcomes around the world. GHC works to build this movement by recruiting, training, connecting, and supporting future leaders in global health. In addition to placing fellows with inspiring and effective organizations, we provide mentorship, training, and a community of alumni to help fellows build careers in global health.
Our first class of 22 fellows launched in August 2009, and they’re already making a significant impact in the field. Andrew Peterson left his job as a product manager at Google to take a GHC fellowship. He’s working with Goodluck Minja, a graduate in Computer Science from the ICS Institute in Dar es Salaam, to enhance the supply chain system for essential medicines in rural Tanzania. Emily Bearse finished her Masters in Public Health at Boston University. She accepted a fellowship working with Jeffrey Misomali, a graduate of the University of Malawi in Environmental Science and Technology, to help implement a new expert client program to support the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV/AIDS in rural Malawi.
All of our fellows are writing and posting videos from their sites at fellows.ghcorps.org. If you’re interested in helping to build this movement, please check out this year’s positions at apply.ghcorps.org. Friday, March 5th is the deadline for American applicants, and for international applicants it’s April 1st.
-Dave Ryan, Founding Director, Global Health Corps
Reuters has a report on a new study that suggests that treating AIDS and tuberculosis simultaneously could save more than twice as many lives as going after tuberculosis first would:
About 33 million people worldwide are infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, and 9.2 million have recently been diagnosed with lung-destroying tuberculosis, according to the World Health Organization.
In many cases, HIV’s suppression of the immune system allows the deadly tuberculosis bacterium to thrive. In South Africa, about 73 percent of TB patients also have HIV.
Yet doctors have been reluctant to treat both at once, often choosing to go after TB first. They have been concerned about drug interactions, overlapping side effects and the large number of pills that patients have to take each day.
“You add to the risk of side effects very substantially,” Dr. Salim Abdool Karim of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, in Durban, South Africa, said in a telephone interview.
Treating TB requires months of antibiotics. HIV is incurable and patients must take cocktails of antiviral drugs for life.
“What you don’t want is patients stopping the TB drugs,” Karim said. “So most doctors treating a patient with TB and HIV prefer to finish with the TB drugs and then start on the antiretroviral drugs.”
They tested more than 600 patients with both TB and HIV.
The death rate was 5.4 percent a year for the volunteers who got treatment for both infections, compared with 12.1 percent for those whose TB was treated first, with HIV therapy beginning about six months later.
The results were so convincing that they already prompted the WHO to change its guidelines to call for treating both conditions at the same time.
You can read more details here.
Earlier today, we informed ONE Members of an opportunity to reach out to our members of Congress in support of the President’s 2011 International Affairs Budget Request. And ONE Members, as they always do, quickly responded. Here’s a sample of responses we’ve gotten from people who’ve called their members of Congress:
my first time calling my senator and i’m glad it was to hopefully help moms and their daughters!! (being a mom myself!)
First time I’ve ever called my senator about anything…the staffer took my name and address, and said they’d be happy to share that with the Senator.
I called Senator Barbara Boxer office and talked to one of her staff member. After I told him that I want my senator to support the President’s Foreign Affairs Budget, he told me that you got it!
The call went well, I explained that I supported the Foreign Affairs Budget request after saying that I was a member of ONE.org. I thanked her for her time, and hung up. I hope that many others do the same.
they were very supportive and said they would pass this along!
These calls are easy to make, and make all the difference in the world. You can find the numbers and talking points you need for the House here, and for the Senate here.
End Polio Now. All this week, these three words—representing Rotary’s pledge to rid the world of this crippling childhood disease—have lit up iconic landmarks across the globe.
Illuminated sites included the Old Port Captain’s Office on the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town; the Pyramid of Khafre in Egypt; the Taipei Arena in Taiwan; the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain; the Obelisk of Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Wrigley Building in Chicago; and the Royal Palace at Caserta in Italy.
For a photo slideshow of the dazzling Rotary light display, click here.
As we noted yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the FY11 International Affairs Budget. You can watch the video of her opening statement below:
Here’s a key excerpt:
The second major area is investing in development. And this budget makes targeted investments in fragile societies – which, in our interconnected world, bear heavily on our own security and prosperity. These investments are a key part of our effort to get ahead of crisis rather than just responding to it, positioning us to deal effectively with threats and challenges that lie ahead.
The first of these is in health. Building on our success in treating HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, our Global Health Initiative will invest $63 billion over six years, starting with $8.5 billion in FY11, to help our partners address specific diseases and, equally importantly, build strong, sustainable health systems as they do.
The Administration has also pledged to invest at least $3.5 billion in food security over three years, and this year’s request includes $1.6 billion, of which $1.2 billion is funded through the State Department. And I greatly appreciate the work that Senator Lugar and Senator Casey have done to help target the United States effort when it comes to global hunger and food security. So this funding will focus on countries that have developed effective, comprehensive strategies, where agriculture is central to prosperity and hunger remains widespread.
On climate change, we could not agree with the Chairman more. Therefore, we have requested $646 million to promote the United States as a leader in green technology and to leverage other leaders’ cooperation – including through the Copenhagen Accord, which for the first time, to underscore the Chairman’s point, brings developing and developed countries together. This is such an important initiative. We need leadership from the rest of the world. This is an opportunity for us to push this initiative and to ensure that we have support to give to core climate change activities and to spread the burden among other countries so that they share part of the responsibility in meeting this global challenge.
You can read the full text of the Secretary’s remarks here.
PS– Today Secretary Clinton is addressing members of the House. We’re following the remarks and will have some highlights/analysis shortly.
