Christmas 2005

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. Here is an update on what has been going on in global health over the last month. At the start of the month the WTO made permanent the August 30th decision. This was a temporary ruling governing the export of generic drugs to countries which lack the capacity to manufacture their own. MSF and others are concerned that the ruling makes it hard for low income countries to access drugs such as the second line antiretrovirals...

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/fromthefield/MSFIntl/11339020019.htm

Most interventions aimed at alleviating poverty and improving health in low income countries help rich people more than poor people. On 7th December, the World Bank released a report on making health interventions benefit the poor. Here is the press release...

http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,contentMDK:20745823~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:336992,00.html

And the report can be downloaded from this page...

http://www.worldbank.org/povertyandhealth

On the 9th, lots of important people released a statement launching a new campaign on realising the right to health...

http://www.eginitiative.org/images/stories/RRhealth12_02_05.pdf

The 6th WTO ministerial took place in Hong Kong between the 13th and the 18th. It did not deliver what campaigners were calling for. Here is a brief account of what happened...

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1670634,00.html

This is what MPH had to say...

http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/docs/MPH-wtoresponse.doc

And here is a comprehensive report on the meeting by Oxfam...

http://www.oxfam.org/en/files/bp85_hongkong/download

There was a big meeting on child survival in London. You can read papers and listen to speeches on the Lancet website...

http://www.thelancet.com/collections/neonatal_survival

Finally, the BMJ continued its series of papers looking at the best way to reach the millennium development goals with a look at interventions to combat HIV/AIDS. Mass media campaigns, treating STIs and interventions for sex workers are the most cost efficient programmes…

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7530/1431

Did we miss anything? Let us know.

Have a happy new year.

Last updated on Sunday 06 April 2008 at 22:25.