Khai is a research assistant on the global policy team, focusing on infectious diseases and maternal and child health. Before joining ONE, Khai was a research and policy fellow at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, where he worked on human impact calculations and analysis of global health funding. In 2010, he spent six months in South Africa, conducting research on health and human rights.
ONE is turning to its community of artists, friends, members and staff for their top picks on creative works that have enhanced their knowledge and understanding of the richness of African culture and arts. Today we have a recommendation from ONE’s Khai Tram.
Photo credit: Khai Tram
In 2010, I lived and studied in Cape Town for a period of five months, and though I am back stateside, my heart still remains in South Africa. I can’t adequately describe the feeling of being in South Africa for the lead-up to and during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but the experience was truly formative in many ways. Even now, certain songs from South Africa will trigger a wave of emotion in me that is both profoundly joyful and achingly nostalgic.
They go to die. Until now. For decades, workers in South Africa’s gold and diamond mines have endured harsh working conditions, including crowded living quarters, poor safety measures, extreme temperatures, coercive labor contracts and separation from their family members.
Louisiana poet and activist Clint Smith performs a chilling spoken word poem describing the South African miners’ struggle to stay alive
Every year, malaria kills approximately 655,000 people—mostly children under the age of five. About 90% of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where a child dies of malaria every minute of the day. Yet, ten dollars is all it costs to protect a child against malaria. For only ten dollars, a bed net treated with insecticide can be purchased and distributed, and its recipients—primarily mothers and children—can be educated on how to use it.
Just a few decades ago, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis used to be a death sentence. Even when highly-effective treatment was newly available, it cost upwards of $10,000 per person—a way to stay alive, but financially far beyond the reach of the majority in need. Fortunately much has changed since then; thanks to negotiation and partnership, the drugs that make up life-saving antiretroviral treatment now cost as little as 40 cents per day. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), consisting of combinations of antiretroviral drugs, has saved millions of lives by suppressing the body’s viral HIV load and halting progression of the disease. ART is not a cure for HIV or AIDS, and the drugs must be taken every day for the rest of one’s life, but it can prolong the onset of illness and enable a person to live a healthy, productive life for many years.
Currently, there are 6.6 million people around the world receiving ART, up from about 300,000 people in 2003. The number of people on treatment in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 50,000 in 2002 to more than 5 million people in 2010. The Global Fund and PEPFAR, the two largest donors providing ART treatment, support nearly 5.6 million people on ART combined. Since the introduction of ART in the mid-1990s, an estimated 2.5 million AIDS-related deaths have been averted.
Have you checked out ONE’s new Tax Tool on our website? It shows how much of your salary goes toward life-saving health interventions. In this post, Khai Tram from ONE’s global health policy team talks about why vaccines are an effective use of our taxpayer dollars.
An estimated 7.6 million children die before their fifth birthday every year, and nearly all of these deaths will be due to preventable or treatable causes. Deadly childhood diseases, such as pneumonia, diarrhea, measles, polio, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, can be easily prevented through immunizations, but insufficient access to vaccines and other basic life-saving interventions continues to be a major barrier to reducing child deaths globally.
In 2000, the GAVI Alliance was launched with a mission to accelerate access to new and underused vaccines in the world’s poorest countries. After a decade of work, GAVI and its partners have already saved the lives of more than 5.5 million children and continue to build on the existing vaccine portfolio.
About 4 babies are born every second of the day. Each year, however, more than 3 million babies do not survive past their first 4 weeks of life. The neonatal period starts at birth and extends for 28 days, during which newborns are especially vulnerable to severe infection, asphyxia (suffocation), or complications from premature delivery. Fortunately, a number of tools are available to help protect newborns during this critical period.
A recent study in Bangladesh has demonstrated that cleaning the umbilical cord of a newborn with an antiseptic, chlorhexidine, reduces the risk of infection and death by 20 percent. The umbilical cord, though often overlooked, can serve as an entry way for infection into the surrounding tissue and also the bloodstream. One-third of neonatal deaths each year can be attributed to infections, so simply cleaning the umbilical cord may be enough to save a baby’s life.
Last week, the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) celebrated the transition of Project HEART to local partners, after eight years of putting hundreds of thousands of patients on life-saving ARV treatment.
Kevin Kouassi, Community HIV Counselor from Dimbokro, Cote d’Ivoire, and Project HEART beneficiary, counsels a young pregnant woman about prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV services. (Photo: Olivier Asselin)
Project HEART was launched in 2004 in partnership with the CDC and PEPFAR to scale up access to HIV prevention, care and treatment services in Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. As of September 2011, Project HEART has enrolled more than 1 million people in HIV care programs (including 80,000 children), provided antiretroviral treatment for more than 560,000 patients, and tested and counseled more than 2.5 million pregnant women.
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Just a few decades ago, an HIV/AIDS diagnosis used to be a death sentence. Even when highly-effective treatment was newly available, it cost upwards of $10,000 per person—a way to stay alive, but financially far beyond the reach of the majority in need. Fortunately much has changed since then; thanks to negotiation and partnership, the drugs that make up life-saving antiretroviral treatment now cost as little as 40 cents per day. Antiretroviral therapy (ART), consisting of combinations of antiretroviral drugs, has saved millions of lives by suppressing the body’s viral HIV load and halting progression of the disease. ART is not a cure for HIV or AIDS, and the drugs must be taken every day for the rest of one’s life, but it can prolong the onset of illness and enable a person to live a healthy, productive life for many years. 
