Posts by Mike Smith
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China Rehabilitates Drug Users Through Beatings and Labor Camps
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Five Success Stories in Global Health from 2009
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Remembering the Tsunami Five Years On, And Creating Solutions for the Future
Can Hybrid Fundraising Save 11 Million Children a Year?
Published January 08, 2010 @ 09:34AM PT
Can hybrid money-raising efforts by non-profits, foundations and governments help save the 11 million children under the age of 5 who die every year due to malnutrition and preventable disease? With increasingly imaginative fund raising efforts, the Economist provides reasons to hope that "a spoonful of ingenuity" can make a big dent in child mortality rates.
In the last 20 years, funding sources have diversified with foreign governments increasing the amount they're donating. An increasing amount now comes from corporations and private philanthropy. In 2007 the Gates Foundation alone provided more than all corporations and private philanthropists provided in 1990. There is a sea-change, but $22 billion is still not enough.
Clinton Announces Development Will Be Central Pillar of Foreign Policy
Published January 07, 2010 @ 12:33PM PT
In a high profile speech delivered yesterday, Hilary Clinton explained that development would be elevated to be a 'Central Pillar' of U.S. foreign policy. With the Obama administration not making its foreign policy thinking clear, it's unclear in what company this central pillar will find itself. Exactly what the pillar will be constructed of is similarly unclear. Tying security to improving delivery of aid is a nice target, but there were few specifics, and US global health and development policy has been slow under the Obama administration, illustrated most vividly by the terribly slow appointment of new administrator of USAID Rajiv Shah, who was finally sworn in this afternoon.
But this is just the beginning, and a beginning is what we need. USAID will now have a high profile and after the healthcare battle, and climate conference let-down, the Obama administration will able to concentrate even more of their resources to helping the world's most needy.
Smoking Epidemic in Africa Could Contribute to 8 Million Worldwide Deaths
Published December 24, 2009 @ 09:12AM PT
There are is no epidemic more easily preventable than smoking. And as it already kills 5.6 million people a year, especially hitting sub-Saharan Africa, now is the time to make a new years resolution to better monitor the threat and alert countries to the growing danger.
As we reported earlier this year, too much good work by global health professionals is blown away 'in a gust of smoke,' but developing nations are increasingly acting — quicker than developed nations did — to ban advertising and limiting government incentives.
An international monitoring effort called the Global Tobacco Surveillance System is working with the World Health Organization and nations in Africa to better guide tobacco prevention programs reports VOA News. U.S. corporations are often to blame, playing a big role in selling tobacco, but now through setting up wider partnerships the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is helping to save the lives of its people who are experiencing higher cancer rates. Women are ten times less likely to smoke than men, but aggressive marketing is further putting them under threat. The epidemic could rise to kill 8 million people a year over the next twenty years. We must work hard to save the 80 million lives at threat in the next decade.
Climate Change Causes 300,000 Deaths Every Year, Most in Poorest Countries
Published December 17, 2009 @ 03:44AM PT
Two reports remind us why climate change is an issue already affecting people, killing 300,000 each year. As you can see on this map made by Oxfam, Africa and South Asia are suffering the greatest number of deaths, confirming that it's the poorest people suffering most from the effects on climate change.
A World Health Organization (WHO) report published in 2005 initially estimated 150,000 climate-related deaths occurred in 2000 — caused by more heatwaves, more water-borne diseases, increased malnutrition, and rising sea-levels. WHO expects this numbers to increase in the future. Four years before the Copenhagen climate summit (COP15, the fifteenth such meeting), WHO was already demanding action be taken to reduce human influence on the climate: cutting emissions and building capacity to help developing nations react.
A more recent Oxfam report notes the number is now 300,000, and is expected to rise to 500,000 every year by 2030. The organization explains that 325 million people are seriously affected, with financial losses each year amounting to $125 billion. It's not changes to weather that's killing the most people but 9/10 deaths "are related to the gradual environmental degradation [climate change] causes (principally malnutrition, diarrhoea, malaria)."
Four years after the WHO report and following the Oxfam report, countries are still avoiding an agreement that they are more than able to make. They managed to rally their economies in the face of financial disaster, but climate disaster, which is actually killing people, hundreds of thousands of people every year, doesn't get trillions of dollars or anywhere near the same degree of international co-operation.
Climate Change Fuels Growth of Dengue Fever — Spreading to Florida Now!
Published December 15, 2009 @ 11:18AM PT
A global rise in temperature of only four degrees would double the speed at which dengue fever develops in mosquitoes. Climate change is equipping mosquitoes with deadly diseases even quicker than before, explained NBC. It already infects 50 million people every year. As mosquitoes breed better in warmer climes, this will only rise. The change in temperatures will further spread dengue fever from South East Asia, where it is currently contained, into Australia and even Florida where it recently recurred after 50 years. Want a side of dengue fever with your Walt Disney World Resort fun in Orlando? Didn't think so.
We reported at the start of the year that scientists may be able to end dengue fever by altering mosquitoes, but right now, it kills 40 per cent of those it infects who go untreated. Dengue fever won't cause the first climate change related deaths — 300,000 died climate change related deaths last year. Climate debt isn't just a money thing it's becoming a life or death thing. The actions of the developing world as they industrialized and developed is directly causing more people in the developing world to suffer through droughts and extreme weather and die through more vicious diseases. All delegates in Copenhagen need to be stung to take action, but thousands will unnecessarily die as dengue spreads and speeds up unless something meaningful happens.
H1N1 Likely to Rank as Mildest Pandemic Ever
Published December 09, 2009 @ 07:38AM PT
Though they continue to advocate that everyone be vaccinated, and warn that the spread of flu remains entirely unpredictable, experts explain that things may not get as bad as first suspected. Leading epidemiologists explain that H1N1 Swine Flu could rank as the mildest pandemic ever recorded, reports the Washington Post. But the people in the know maintain that the number of deaths is still likely to pass the 10,000 mark. With many hundreds of death among children, this pandemic is nothing to shrug at. The risk to children was something we reported as being likely with the message continuing to be: Wash your hands and make sure they wash their hands!
Eight-million doses of the flu vaccine are now available in America, and the vaccination is being promoted through a new advertising campaign. Germany doesn't quite know what to do with its two million excess doses and is trying to sell or offload them.
A second peak in January is possible, and we must take advantage of this "window of opportunity to get the vaccine and take preventive measures," explained Beth Bell, MD associate director for science at the CDC's immunization and respiratory disease center to WebMD.com. It's good news, but caution and prevention continues to be the headline. Luckily the pandemic hasn't become as severe as first feared, and Egypt continue to kick themselves for over-reacting to the most extreme and unscientific degree.
Global Health Delivery 2.0: Open-Sourcing Global Development
Published December 05, 2009 @ 08:35AM PT
Aid workers in the developing world are about to get a boost through "simple, free, easy-to-learn systems that are powered by the open and collaborative nature of the Web 2.0 strategy," reports the biomedical journal PLoS Medicine. They report on work physicians and epidemiologists from Harvard, Yale, and UCSF, affiliated with the non-profit organization Nyaya Health are doing to implement web 2.0 strategies into health projects.
In one project, Nyaya Health is operating a hospital in Nepal. Despite telecommunication challenges, the health non-profit has developed strategies that need little bandwidth or up-to-date computing infrastructure. Nyaya Health is using web 2.0 products like wikis, real-time maps, and blogs to quickly and efficiently communicate with colleagues; they further explain that "Developing common standards will improve clinical effectiveness and resource allocation to build a truly rigorous and innovative science of global health delivery."
Merely slapping web 2.0 software on to computing system in the hope that it'll be improved by openness and transparency is folly, but for healthcare who rely on efficient communication with peers for the development of public health practice, web 2.0 isn't a just a buzz-word, but a potential life-saver.
