Mercy Ahun of the GAVI Alliance looks back on the horrible meningitis epidemics that hit her native country of Ghana. But thanks to a new vaccine, Ghana may be able to rid itself of the disease.
Growing up in a Ghanaian coastal village, the dry and dusty trade winds that blew in from the Sahara were associated with Advent, Christmas and happiness.
But as I moved inland with my work, they also became linked with meningococcal meningitis A (men A), Ghana’s most common form of meningitis, which brought major epidemics every eight to 12 years.
Men A strikes children and young adults suddenly, causing severe headaches, fever and a stiff neck. Patients can die within 48 hours.
Dr. Muhammad Pate, executive director of Nigeria’s National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, says the country’s polio program has provided the momentum to combat other vaccine-preventable diseases. Read the original post on the Gates Foundation’s Foundation Notes blog.
In Nigeria we have made remarkable progress in the fight against polio, with intense campaigns that drove polio down from 388 cases in 2009 to 21 in 2010 — a 95 percent reduction. We are extremely hopeful that these gains continue, although much hard work remains.
Yesterday, we announced our Summer Photo Challenge on the ONE Blog. While it’s a chance for our photography-savvy ONE members to show us their stuff, unfortunately, it’s only open to students. But since we’re equal opportunity here at ONE, we wanted to pass along another great way to share the fruits of your creative labors: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s small farmer challenge.
Inspiration for your submission, via Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
GOOD Magazine just released a cool infographic on preventing polio. While those of us fortunate to live in developed countries live without the fear of polio and tend to think of it as a thing of the past, polio is still very much alive in about a dozen countries today. This crippling and oftentimes deadly disease causes lifelong pain and great economic burden.
This post was adapted from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s blog, Foundation Notes.
My third annual letter came out recently. One of the major themes of the letter is the miracle of vaccines. Last year, Melinda and I announced that we were working together with partners to make this the Decade of Vaccines, and I wanted to use this year’s letter to explain why.
In particular, my letter focuses on the vaccine for polio, since it’s helped the world get to the threshold of something amazing: eradicating the disease altogether. We’re incredibly close and we need to finish the job.
We put together a video, called “Vaccines Save Lives,” to try to describe why vaccines are a miracle in a vivid way. I hope you enjoy it—and share it with your friends.
Each year, Bill Gates releases an annual letter on behalf of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to look back on progress made and lessons learned in his efforts to reduce extreme poverty and improve global health. These letters also seek to educate and inform the public on the effectiveness and importance of smart foreign aid and look ahead to the future.
This year, the focus is on vaccines — particularly the polio vaccine — as well as HIV/AIDS, malaria, agriculture and education. You can download an electronic copy on the Gates Foundation website, but to get you started, here’s a list of important points Gates makes in his letter:
1. Until polio is wiped out completely, the disease is still very much alive. The money that we will save by eradication will far exceed what we are spending on efforts now — it could save the world up to $50 billion over the next 25 years!
2. Vaccines are the most effective and cost-effective health tool invented. If we simply scale up existing vaccines in the five countries with the highest child mortality, we could save 3 million lives (not to mention more than $2.9 billion in treatment costs alone) over the next decade.
3. The fight against malaria is making huge strides. Of the 99 countries with the disease, 43 have decreased cases of the disease by more than 50 percent!
4. Bed nets can have a huge impact on the fight against malaria. Many amazing grassroots groups are helping by delivering bed nets. The Nothing But Nets campaign has recruited hundreds of thousands of individuals, as well as organizations like the United Methodist Church and National Basketball Association involved in the fight against malaria.
5. Neonatal deaths can be reduced by over 50 percent by increasing the number of births done by a skilled provider in a clinic and educating mothers on sanitary measures and proper child nutrition.
6. Although progress continues, the pace is still slow in fighting the AIDS epidemic. There are two fronts of this war that need to be tackled: treating those already infected and preventing new infections.
7. More attention needs to be given to agricultural development, since most poor people in the world feed their families and earn their living from farming. It has been proven that when farmers increase productivity, nutrition improves and hunger and poverty are reduced.
As Gates rightfully states, “Securing the conditions that will lead to a healthy, prosperous future for everyone is a goal I believe we all share.” We’re excited for the great strides The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will make in 2011!
Earlier today, Brooke Riley and I went all the way to the Big Apple from our nation’s capital to attend the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s huge polio event, “Polio Eradication and the Power of Vaccines.” Not only did we get to attend the event, we also had the opportunity to speak with some of the panelists about the disease: Dr. Peter Salk, son of polio vaccine founder Dr. Jonas Salk; Mr. James Roosevelt Jr., grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who contracted polio at age 39); and Dr. David Oshinsky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Polio: An American Story.”
Although these amazing individuals offered very unique perspectives to the story of polio, their mission to end the disease is the same. Read on to find out what they had to say:
Mr. James Roosevelt, Jr.
“My grandfather [FDR] was living in this house [the Roosevelt House where the event was located] when he was learning first to crawl again and then to walk again because of polio. And I grew up in the era when we were terrified as children to go to movie theaters in the summer, to go to swimming pools in the summer. And then the work of the March of Dimes that my grandfather founded brought about the discovery of these vaccines that could not just prevent but completely eradicate polio. And we’re now down to four countries in the world [where polio cases still exist], so we still have danger as long as it exists at all.”
Dr. Peter Salk
“[My father Dr. Salk] was very busy and often absent for trips. He would go to work early in the morning and come back late at night. It was a period when we lived outside of Pittsburgh and he would drive me to school in the morning, so we would have that time together in the car. Having the example of what he had done in his life made it feel as though it would be an important thing to continue on that kind of endeavor.”
“To be able to pursue this effort this effort to eradicate this second disease – smallpox being the first, and now polio – that’s going to be a boost to our confidence of being able to do much more.”
Dr. David Oshinksy
“There is no better way to really support the health of children around the world than through worldwide vaccination. Economically, politically, socially, medically, it is by far the best tool that we have. We are so close now to eradicating polio with vaccination. We are using vaccination against measles, mumps and we’re starting to develop the malaria vaccine. And what you really need to know is that…vaccines have proven itself over the years to be extremely safe and remarkably effective.”
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
