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Global health blunders can lend useful lessons

New York Times reporter Lawrence Altman recounts his experience in the mid-1960s with a measles immunization campaign in Upper Volta during his time with the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the CDC in a "Doctor's World" perspective piece in the newspaper. Altman says that although the effort to expand the immunization campaign from a small field trial to a regional program "failed miserably," the "lessons learned from these blunders led to a new program that wiped out smallpox, still the only human disease to have been eradicated from the planet."

28 Sep 2011

New York Times 'Small Fixes' section examines multiple low-cost interventions for global health problems

The New York Times on Monday published a special section, titled "Small Fixes," containing several articles examining how low-cost innovations could help save thousands of lives.

28 Sep 2011

NYU Langone to lead NVVLS on long-term effects of PTSD

NYU Langone Medical Center announced that Charles R. Marmar, MD, the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Psychiatry and chair of the Department of Psychiatry, was selected to lead the clinical evaluation component of a national survey — the National Vietnam Veterans Longitudinal Study (NVVLS) — on the long-term effects of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other related health conditions on Vietnam veterans.

27 Sep 2011

GlobalPost examines country ownership in GHI Rwanda program

As part of its special report "Healing the World," GlobalPost examines country ownership within the Global Health Initiative (GHI). The news service writes that Rwandan Health Minister Agnes Binagwaho told GlobalPost that a GHI focus on gender-based violence in Rwanda was a "curious" decision, which "she said ... wasn't a priority and no one had asked her if that fit in with the national plan."

27 Sep 2011

As interest in global health rises in U.S., San Francisco stands at forefront of field

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a growing interest in global health throughout the U.S. and how Jaime Sepulveda, who served as head of epidemiology in Mexico in the early 1980s and who took over the Global Health Sciences division at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) earlier this month, "hopes to make the Bay Area a powerhouse in research and development of global health policies worldwide."

27 Sep 2011

Public Health Institute to receive $209.5M in 'cooperative agreement' funding from USAID

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) announced Friday that the Oakland-based Public Health Institute will receive $209.5 million in "cooperative agreement" funding from USAID, NBC/Bay City News reports.

27 Sep 2011

Health workers key to 'effective health care delivery'

In addition to "essential money," "the right policies, government commitment and citizen accountability" are needed to decrease child mortality and improve other global health indicators, "but the sine qua non for effective health care delivery is health workers. Whether it's prevention, treatment or care, it's all about health workers," Jonathan Glennie, a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, writes in a post on the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog."

27 Sep 2011

Rush Foundation, Copenhagen Consensus Center examine how to spend hypothetical AIDS funding

In this post in the Center for Global Developments "Global Health Policy" blog, Mead Over, a senior fellow at the center, writes that the Rush Foundation has asked the Copenhagen Consensus Centre to address the question of how to spend an additional, but hypothetical, $10 billion on HIV/AIDS programs in Africa over the next five years.

27 Sep 2011

White House fact sheet on Global Health Security

The White House Office of the Press Secretary on Thursday released a fact sheet, titled "Global Health Security," that describes how the U.S. "is taking a multi-faceted approach to the full spectrum of challenges posed by infectious diseases, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or the result of a deliberate attack."

23 Sep 2011

Examining alternatives to assessing Global Fund effectiveness

In this post in the Center for Global Development's "Global Health Policy" blog, William Savedoff, a senior fellow at the center, responds to a high level panel's assessment (.pdf) of fiduciary controls at the Global Fund to Fight, AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, examining "what this report might mean for an organization that was expressly created to blaze an innovative approach to international aid and is being counseled to back away from that vision."

23 Sep 2011

Senate committee approves FY12 foreign operations appropriations bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a $53 billion FY12 foreign operations appropriations bill, the Associated Press reports. "Reflecting the economic pressure, the bill is $6.2 billion less than President Barack Obama requested," the news agency notes.

23 Sep 2011

Panel members at reproductive health forum discuss issue in development context

GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog summarizes a recent forum on reproductive health issues during which panel members of the Global Leaders Council for Reproductive Health of Aspen Global Health and Development discussed how "reproductive health was intimately connected to the world's population boom, climate change, water and sanitation crises, economic downturns, educational rates, and development overall." The article continues, "And yet, reproductive health and family planning is generally not a focus on the world stage.

23 Sep 2011

U.S. entities announce global smoke-free workplace challenge

"The Mayo Clinic, Johnson & Johnson and others are joining forces to try to snuff out smoking in the workplace throughout the world," the Wall Street Journal's "Health Blog" writes, adding, "Their global smoke-free worksite challenge, announced today at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, calls on employers to ban smoking at offices and facilities worldwide."

23 Sep 2011

Looking at the bigger picture of corruption in India's health sector

Milan Vaishnav, a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD) and a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University in New York who also serves as an adjunct professor at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI) at Georgetown University, examines the issue of health sector corruption in India's Uttar Pradesh (UP) state, and in the country at large, in a post in the CGD's "Global Health Policy" blog.

22 Sep 2011

WHO mandated to lead global response against NCDs but funding lacking

In this post in the Center for Global Development's "Global Health Policy" blog, Amanda Glassman, director of global health policy and a research fellow at the center, writes that the "main outcome" of the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) is an assignment for the WHO "to lead the global response to NCDs, develop a monitoring and evaluation framework, provide technical assistance and track progress towards global targets."

22 Sep 2011

Leaders address nutrition on sidelines of U.N. NCD meeting

On the sidelines of the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) on Tuesday, "representatives of governments, civil society and the private sector joined United Nations agencies ... to emphasize the importance of good nutrition, which is vital not only for human health but also for national economic and social development," the U.N. News Centre reports.

22 Sep 2011

Addressing the exclusion of mental health from the MDGs

PRI's "The World" highlights the state of mental health care in Uganda in an examination of how the exclusion of mental health from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has, according to some advocates, held back mental health as a global health issue. Julius Kayiira, director of Mental Health Uganda, an organization that provides social support, job training and care to people with mental illness, "says organizations like his face an enormous funding gap, and he blames that gap, in part, on the United Nations," according to "The World."

22 Sep 2011

Test to properly diagnose fever in children needed 'desperately'

"[F]ar too many children in Kenya and other African countries continue to suffer unnecessarily each year due to the misdiagnosis of fever, which contributes to the deaths of nearly three million children of less than five years of age from malaria and pneumonia," Willis Akhwale, head of Kenya's Department of Disease Prevention and Control in the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, writes in a Daily Nation opinion piece.

21 Sep 2011

'Science Speaks' interviews director of multilateral diplomacy at OGAC

In the second in a series of interviews with staff members of the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), which is responsible for PEPFAR, the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog speaks with Winnie Roberts, director of multilateral diplomacy at OGAC.

21 Sep 2011

Foreign Affairs examines history of negotiations on NCD political declaration

Foreign Affairs on Tuesday published an analysis examining the history of negotiations behind the political declaration approved on Monday by leaders attending the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases.

21 Sep 2011