Global Health News - February
Call to aid global health systems
The UK must do more to help support the health systems in developing countries, the former chief of the NHS has said. Lord Crisp says south-east Asian and African nations are struggling to tackle disease due to a shortage of health workers and equipment. In a government-commissioned report, he recommends the NHS should offer more help to train health workers. He also calls for an eBay-style website to be set up so countries can advertise their need for resources. Medsin and Almamata are mentioned in the report. Foreign Affairs published an interesting edition focussing on health systems last month.
The new head of the World Health Organisation has been widely criticised for questioning the safety of generic medicines, whilst commenting on the Thai government's attempts to gain access to generic versions of the antiretroviral Kaletra.
Concern that Novartis Case could restrict the world's supply to generic medicines
A court case in Chennai, India, is threatening to reduce the world's supply of generic medicines. Novartis is seeking to remove a flexibility in Indian patent law, which has allowed India to produce a generic form of the anti-cancer drug Gleevec.
There is an MSF film and a briefing explaining the background to the case...
Smoking curbs: The global picture
The BBC News Website traces the recent wave of smoking bans around the world as governments seek to improve the health of their populations.
Former BMJ Editor urges healthworkers to take on Reid Elsevier
Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ, has written an article questioning whether Reid Elsevier's involvement in the arms trade is incompatible with its role as a medical publisher. Medsin has recently written a letter to the Lancet on this issue, which may appear in this week's edition.
Vaccine drive cuts measles deaths
Child deaths from measles have fallen by 60% following a massive global vaccination campaign. A study in The Lancet confirms that hundreds of thousands measles deaths have been prevented since 1999, surpassing a target of halving deaths by 2005.
Now proponents of the campaign are considering more ambitious targets, and perhaps even the complete eradication of the disease.
Nearly half of Indian women have not heard of AIDS
More than 40 percent of women in India have not heard of AIDS, according to a government survey that has alarmed activists.
India has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nations, which is the world's highest caseload. But the prevalence rate, in the country of 1.1 billion people, is much lower than in most of Africa. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), the most extensive study on health and nutrition in India, said in its latest report only 57 percent of women have heard of AIDS.
Asia hit by fake drug epidemic
An "EPIDEMIC of counterfeits" of life-saving drugs is sweeping Asia, experts say, and the problem is spreading. Malaria medicines have been particularly hard hit. In a recent sampling in South-East Asia, 53 per cent of the anti-malarials bought were fakes. Bogus antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs, AIDS drugs and even meningitis vaccines have also been found.
Estimates of the deaths caused by fakes run from tens of thousands a year to 200,000 or more. The World Health Organisation has estimated that a fifth of the 1 million annual deaths from malaria would be prevented if all medicines for it were genuine and taken properly.
Bird-Flu Vaccine Is a Fact; Need for It Is Questionable
A vaccine for avian influenza is at hand. Now regulators and companies are weighing whether to make it widely available before any outbreak occurs.
To date, the H5N1 virus that causes the flu has passed only occasionally from birds to humans. The possibility of a mutation of the virus causing a large-scale, highly lethal outbreak among humans motivated big pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Sanofi-Aventis to develop vaccines. The Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved any of them yet; indeed, the vaccine has yet to get an endorsement from any regulatory agency for use before a pandemic, but some governments already are stockpiling supplies.
'Medical' trend with female genital mutilation disturbs UN agency
Calling for stepped-up efforts against the traditional yet gruesome practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), the United Nations Population Fund sounded the alarm today against a new trend - parents using health-care workers to perform cutting in the belief that any medical problems can be minimized.
In an appeal for the International Day Against FGM, which is being observed tomorrow, UNFPA Executive Director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid voiced concern about what she dubbed the "medicalization" of the practice.
Some 3 million girls worldwide face the threat of undergoing FGM each year, and an estimated 120 to 140 million women have already been subject to the practice, which leaves lasting physical and psychological scars and increases the risks of problems during childbirth.
Menopause at 30 for millions in poverty
Millions of women in India are going through the menopause as young as 30 because of chronic malnutrition and poverty, according to a study by a prominent Indian think-tank. The research suggests that almost one in five women in the country have gone through the menopause by the age of 41.
Malnutrition is believed to be a contributory factor, particularly in rural areas, although the study did not address the causes. Yesterday doctors called for further research into the condition
The dilemma of a deadly disease: patients may be forcibly detained
South Africa is considering forcibly detaining people who carry a deadly strain of tuberculosis that has already claimed hundreds of lives. The strain threatens to cause a global pandemic, but the planned move pits public protection against human rights.
The country's health department says it has discussed with the World Health Organisation and South Africa's leading medical organisations the possibility of placing carriers of extreme drug resistant TB or XDR-TB under guard in isolation wards until they die, but has yet to reach a decision.
Sanitation 'best medical advance'
The development of sanitation has been the greatest medical advance in the last 166 years, according to a vote of more than 11,000 people worldwide.
Sanitation received 15.8% of the votes, beating other advances including the discovery of antibiotics and the development of vaccines.
Inadequate sanitation remains a problem in the developing world, contributing to millions of deaths. The contest was run by the British Medical Journal.
Drug firms go to war over vaccine
GlaxoSmithKline says it will test its Cervarix head-to-head against rival Merck's Gardasil. A global marketing war over a potentially multibillion-dollar cancer vaccine is about to escalate, with its epicenter in the tranquil corporate campuses of Montgomery County.
GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. said yesterday that it would sponsor an unusual clinical trial of two cancer vaccines directly against each other to see which works better - Gardasil, made by Merck & Co. Inc., or its own experimental vaccine Cervarix, which is expected to hit the market this year.
It is the kind of expensive, high-risk comparison that companies undertake only if forced to by regulators or only for a high-profit prescription drug - not for a vaccine. At stake is a share of the projected $2 billion to $4 billion revenue from human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccines by 2009.
Africa: Countries Sign Up to UNITAID
17 African countries on Friday signed up to UNITAID, an innovative facility to purchase medicines for African health services. The signing ceremony took place in the southern French town of Cannes, on the second and final day of the Franco-African summit.
UNITAID was set up by five founding members - France, Britain. Norway, Brazil and Chile - in New York in September 2006. It intends to raise money to buy drugs against HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria through 'innovative' financial arrangements. So far, the main such arrangement is the tax on airline tickets pioneered by France.
Vaccine hope for developing world
Millions of people at risk from malaria, HIV and tuberculosis in the developing world could soon receive protection from a new type of vaccination, scientists said.
The new "Trojan horse" vaccines use genetically-engineered viruses which get inside cells and stimulate a strong immune response by the body to the killer diseases. And they are being adapted to use technology which will allow them to be transported to remote parts of the developing world without needing refrigeration, making them cheaper and easier to distribute.
The multi-million pound project is being funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates' Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative.
Heating planet 'makes children sick'
Global warming will take a toll on children's health, according to a new report showing hospital admissions for fever soar as days get hotter.
The new study found that temperature rises had a significant impact on the number of pre-schoolers presenting to emergency departments for fever and gastroenteritis.
The two-year study at a major children's hospital showed that for every five-degree rise in temperature two more children under six years old were admitted with fever to that hospital. The University of Sydney research is the first to make a solid link between climate changes and childhood illness.
U.K., U.S. Worst Places for Children, UN Study Says
The U.K. and the U.S. are the worst places for children's quality of life and the Netherlands and Sweden are the best, according to a report on 21 industrialized countries by the United Nations Children's Fund.
The UNICEF report, released today, uses 40 indicators to gauge children's well-being. The study found no solid relationship between the wealth of a country and children's welfare. The U.K. ranks poorly in factors such as quality of relationships, behavior, health and safety, according to the report. Children here drink a lot and have lots of underage sex.
Last updated on Sunday 06 April 2008 at 22:23.
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