Kaya (no longer) in Zambia

2012-01-14T18:29:00.002-06:00

Healing in Haiti

"This month marks the two-year anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti that killed more than 300,000 people and left more than 1,000,000 homeless. Last year, filmmakers Jacques del Conte and Chandra Ratner, along with model Lee Greene, traveled to the ravaged island nation to witness the devastation firsthand, and document the heroic day-to-day efforts of volunteers from Artists for Peace and Justice and others as they fight to help rebuild Haiti."

2011-12-07T18:50:00.000-06:00

My friend Christine is helping to develop an anti-rape app, which just received funding from the US Department of Health and Human Services:

Anti-rape app by Sunset Park filmmaker Nancy Schwartzman wins White House contest

2011-11-30T16:20:00.000-06:00

What Would Gandhi Do?

"Although the young Gandhi focused on protest and political organizing, the more mature one made his central focus 'constructive work' and service."

2011-11-26T12:51:00.002-06:00

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker - Book review

"Pinker has argued that evolution shaped the basic design of our brain, and hence our cognitive and emotional faculties. This process has given us propensities to violence — our 'inner demons' as well as 'the better angels of our nature' (Abraham Lincoln’s words) — that incline us to be peaceful and cooperative. Our material circumstances, along with cultural inputs, determine whether the demons or the angels have the upper hand."

2011-11-23T23:15:00.001-06:00

Are We Getting Nicer? - Nicholas Kristof

2011-11-12T09:05:00.002-06:00

Tennessee's Push to Transform Schools

2011-11-10T13:30:00.002-06:00

Girls Just Want to Go to School - Nicholas Kristof

2011-11-06T11:58:00.000-06:00

India’s Innovation Stimulus - Thomas Friedman

"A quarter of the world’s blind people, some 12 million, are in India, Chandrasekhar explains, and more than 80 percent of those are blind as a result of a lack of screening and a lack of ophthalmologists in rural areas. In the past, comprehensive screening required multiple expensive diagnostic devices to check for diabetic retinas, cataracts, glaucoma, cornea and refraction problems, all of which cause 90 percent of the avoidable blindness in India. So Forus invented 'a single, portable, intelligent, noninvasive, eye prescreening device' that can identify all five of these major ailments and also provide an automated 'Normal or Needs to See a Doctor' report; it can be run by a trained technician, who through telemedicine connects patients to a doctor."

2011-11-04T09:31:00.001-05:00

Making Nutrition a Sustainable Business in Haiti

2011-11-03T09:25:00.002-05:00

From One Maternity Ward, a Growing World - Lens blog

2011-11-03T09:21:00.000-05:00

The Birth Control Solution - Nicholas Kristof

2011-11-01T12:17:00.001-05:00

Four Ways to Close the Income Inequality Gap

2011-11-01T10:41:00.001-05:00

The Wrong Inequality

2011-10-23T15:46:00.000-05:00

Unreasonable, Maybe, but It’s on a Social Mission

2011-10-21T11:05:00.002-05:00

Occupy the Classroom

"Professor Deming found that critics were right that the Head Start advantage in test scores faded quickly. But, in other areas, perhaps more important ones, he found that Head Start had a significant long-term impact: the former Head Start participants are significantly less likely than siblings to repeat grades, to be diagnosed with a learning disability, or to suffer the kind of poor health associated with poverty."

2011-09-28T10:37:00.000-05:00

Far From Any Lab, Paper Bits Find Illness

"The initial target audience is AIDS patients with tuberculosis who must take powerful cocktails of seven or more drugs.

Some drugs damage the liver, and deaths from liver failure are 12 times as common among African AIDS patients as among American ones, Dr. Ryan said, because current liver tests are expensive and require tubes of blood."

2011-09-27T11:09:00.001-05:00

Fighting Cervical Cancer With Vinegar and Ingenuity

"Nurses using the new procedure, developed by experts at the Johns Hopkins medical school in the 1990s and endorsed last year by the World Health Organization, brush vinegar on a woman’s cervix. It makes precancerous spots turn white. They can then be immediately frozen off with a metal probe cooled by a tank of carbon dioxide, available from any Coca-Cola bottling plant."

2011-09-15T13:16:00.002-05:00

Sharing the stress of being a doctor

2011-09-03T11:24:00.001-05:00

When Doctors Become Patients

2011-08-07T14:57:00.001-05:00

The Phantom Menace of Sleep Deprived Doctors

2011-08-04T20:36:00.002-05:00

2011-04-21T11:05:00.001-05:00

'Three Cups of Tea,' Spilled

2011-02-01T15:50:00.000-06:00

Gates Calls for a Final Push to Eradicate Polio

Our professor mentioned this article in our lecture on polio this morning.

2010-12-14T17:28:00.001-06:00

AIDS Drugs Lower the Risk of HIV Infection

2010-07-06T14:03:00.001-05:00

Studies Offer 2 Paths to Cut H.I.V. Rate for African Women

From the article:

After two decades in which researchers searched fruitlessly for an effective vaginal microbicide to block H.I.V., South African scientists working in two AIDS-devastated communities of South Africa, one rural and one urban, say they have finally found something that shows real promise.

Women who used a vaginal microbicidal gel containing an antiretroviral medication widely used to treat AIDS, tenofovir, were 39 percent less likely over all to contract H.I.V. than those who used a placebo. Those who used the gel most regularly reduced their odds of infection 54 percent, according to a two-and-a-half year study of 889 women by Caprisa, a Durban-based AIDS research center.

2010-06-08T18:34:00.002-05:00

Shared Hopes for Haiti Tore Them Apart

2010-05-18T09:54:00.002-05:00

It's International HIV Vaccine Day.

2010-05-17T15:49:00.001-05:00

Parasites in Paradise - Peter J. Hotez

From the piece:

"President Obama has started an ambitious global health initiative that will deliver urgently needed medicine and preventative care to hundreds of millions of people in poor countries. Included in the plan are efforts to devote resources to “neglected tropical diseases,” afflictions like hookworm infections, river blindness and elephantiasis that many think have gone the way of smallpox, but which still make up the most common ailments among the world’s bottom billion.

When we talk about these diseases, we tend to think of distant places like West Africa and South Asia. As we develop the plan, however, it’s crucial that we remember that they plague communities much closer to home as well.

Just off the beautiful beaches of the Caribbean islands popular with American vacationers live millions who suffer from neglected tropical diseases. In Haiti and the Dominican Republic, more than 600,000 people are infected with lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic infection also known as elephantiasis for the profound disfigurement it produces in the limbs and genitals. In the Dominican Republic, 250,000 people are infected with the blood flukes that cause schistosomiasis, and more than a million in the region have hookworms. Intestinal worms are also common in Jamaica, Barbados and Grenada, where they cause chronic anemia, as well as stunted growth and impaired intellectual development in children."

2010-05-15T09:37:00.000-05:00

Still Homeless in Haiti - NYTimes Editorial

2010-05-10T09:06:00.003-05:00

At Front Lines, AIDS War Is Falling Apart

From the article:

"The collapse was set off by the global recession’s effect on donors, and by a growing sense that more lives would be saved by fighting other, cheaper diseases. Even as the number of people infected by AIDS grows by a million a year, money for treatment has stopped growing.

Other forces made failure almost inevitable.

Science has produced no magic bullet — no cure, no vaccine, no widely accepted female condom. Every proposal for controlling the epidemic with current tools — like circumcising every man in the third world, giving a daily prophylactic pill to everyone contemplating sex or testing billions of people and treating all the estimated 33 million who would test positive — is wildly impractical.

...

But for most of Africa and scattered other countries like Haiti, Guyana and Cambodia, it seems inevitable that the 1990s will return: walking skeletons in the villages, stacks of bodies in morgues, mountains of newly turned earth in cemeteries.

...

For doctors on the front line, the frustration is palpable.

Dr. Natasha Astill is a British AIDS specialist working at a hospital on the edges of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, in a mountain valley with pygmy settlements close by fancy gorilla-tourist lodges. It is so remote that the drugs that reached Kampala in 2003 did not get here until 2007.

After a long day in which she and a nurse saw 118 patients, many huddling together in the examining room to avoid the storm pounding on the tin roof, she broke down in tears. All day she told subsistence farmers she could not, for example, treat the white fungal thrush filling their mouths unless they could pay $1 a day — more than they earn."

***

AIDS in Uganda - NYTimes.com Slideshow

***

After Long Scientific Search, Still No Cure for AIDS

From the article:

"The latest failed vaccine trial, in Thailand, took six years. It may have temporarily protected a few participants, but even that required six shots spaced months apart. That is too complicated for places like rural Africa, where polio drives often fail, though they involve only a few pink drops in babies’ mouths. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who oversaw the Thai trial, said he saw 'no chance' of a vaccine in the next few years and a 'reasonable' chance of one in 20 years.

The quest for a vaginal microbicide is also stalled. Women need a product that is not messy and can be inserted secretly, because many men react furiously to any suggestion that they are infected.

...

In July, results are due from a trial of a gel containing the antiretroviral drug tenofovir, which worked well in monkeys. It is expected to show neither a major breakthrough nor an utter failure, since, ethically, scientists would have had to stop the trial prematurely if preliminary results showed either trend."

***

Cultural Attitudes and Rumors Are Lasting Obstacles to Safe Sex

From the article:

"Casual sex is on the rise, epidemiological surveys say. Condom use, never very high, has dropped. Even among people who know they are infected, only 30 percent consistently use condoms."

***

As the Need Grows, the Money for AIDS Runs Far Short

From the article:

"Pepfar’s budget is about $7 billion a year and was last increased by 2 percent, so it has warned its aid recipients to expect no increases for at least two years. Its goal is four million people on drugs by 2014. AIDS activists are furious, insisting the result will be that children are saved only to die later of AIDS. But they appear to have lost that battle.

So, optimistically, the fund and Pepfar could jointly have 10 million on treatment by the end of 2014. But by then, at least 36 million will be infected and 17 million in dire need."

2010-05-08T18:49:00.003-05:00

Bloody Urban Landscapes - Bob Herbert

Herbert writes, "Driving through some of this city’s neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it’s safe to be a child."

...

Dozens of children school-aged and younger are murdered in Chicago every year. More than 150 have been shot (but not all of them killed) during the current school year."

2010-05-08T14:34:00.001-05:00

10 Days in a Carry-On - NYTimes Slideshow

2010-04-29T08:54:00.003-05:00

The Next Empire - The Atlantic

Howard W. French writes, "I was about to embark on one of the world’s great train rides, a journey from this muggy Indian Ocean port city, the commercial capital of Tanzania, to the edge of the Zambian Copper Belt, deep in the heart of southern Africa."

2010-04-28T13:01:00.001-05:00

Despair Grows on Devastated Street in Haiti - NYTimes.com

From the article:

"If Avenue Poupelard bustled with a desperate, survivalist energy two weeks after the earthquake, it now emits a low-level hum as residents, vendors and business owners adjust to the snail-like pace of this shattered city’s recovery.

On this centrally located street, the state of emergency is clearly over: the corpses have disappeared, the stench of death has lifted and the foreign doctors who took over the community clinic have gone home."

...

"The Trou Sable (Hole in the Sand) community clinic, on an extension of Poupelard had become a triage center two weeks after the earthquake when teams of foreign doctors arrived. They stayed for two and a half months, leaving behind a shiny blue stretcher, a dozen crutches and medications that are quickly running out. Rosenie Élysée, the clinic nurse, is on her own now, working without pay and worried.

'I was here alone before, so I’m used to it, but now the community has experienced a well-staffed clinic and free medical care,' she said."

2010-04-20T17:19:00.000-05:00

Mobile Technology in Developing Countries: Three Award-winning Projects - Netsquared.org

2010-04-17T12:20:00.000-05:00

"Hips don't lie about aid" - William Easterly

2010-04-16T10:46:00.002-05:00

Emily Troutman on the makeshift storm shelters some Haitians are building:

Shelter From the Storm - Slate.com Slideshow

2010-04-14T20:34:00.003-05:00

New online map can forecast the location and intensity of global disease outbreaks - Scientific American

From the article:

"Using data on the sequenced genetic code of H1N1 and other viruses, the evolutionary and geographic map enables tracking of how a virus moves from its origins to different hosts around the world."

Related video:

***

Armstrong: Obama NASA plan 'devastating' - MSNBC.com

2010-04-12T19:35:00.002-05:00

Photo essay : Impressions of Haiti - NYTimes.com

Lawrence Downes writes:

"Haitians are trying to solve a riddle: How do you rebuild a country that was never properly built in the first place? Looking for a brighter future, they are feeling their way in the dark, in the rain, surrounded by death and rubble."

2010-04-10T15:56:00.001-05:00

Looking Abroad For Lessons In Healthcare

From the article:

"The company is betting that other products originally created for the developing world ultimately also can be useful here. GE is tapping into the increasingly popular idea that medical innovation should be a global two-way street in which the West benefits from the resourcefulness and frugality poorer nations apply to health problems. The idea isn't new, but it's gaining traction, beyond the creation of products and technology, as public health experts rethink ways to prevent disease and deliver care."

2010-04-09T13:11:00.002-05:00

Haiti civil society brief US government on AIDS needs - UNAIDS.org

From the release:

"There were an estimated 120 000 people living with HIV in Haiti before the earthquake. Most of the structural damage happened in the three departments (Ouest, Sud-Est and les Nippes) that accounted for nearly 60% of the population of people living with HIV."

2010-04-05T14:00:00.002-05:00

Tufts project delivered aid to quake victims - The Boston Globe

From the article:

"In building his Haiti map, Meier drew on technology developed by a multinational group called Ushahidi, in which volunteers painstakingly calculate precise longitude and latitude readings to locate incidents reported during crises on the radio, or via e-mail, Twitter, and other social media. Launched by activists in Kenya after election violence in December 2007, Ushahidi — Swahili for “testimony’’ — has already proved vital in several global crises and trouble spots, especially in Africa."

2010-04-02T23:01:00.004-05:00

Allison Arieff: Rebuilding in Haiti - Opinionator blog

Allison Arieff writes:

"The reintroduction of the infamous trailers got me thinking about the current rebuilding efforts in Haiti and Chile, and what lessons could be learned from Katrina. The rebuilding in New Orleans might be best symbolized by two extremes: those notoriously substandard FEMA trailers, on the one hand; and on the other, 50 or so well-constructed but contextually challenged radical modern homes in an effort led by the Brad Pitt-backed non-profit Global Green."

2010-03-31T11:32:00.002-05:00

A Plan to Spur Growth Away From Haiti’s Capital - NYTimes.com

From the article:

"Prepared by a group of urban planners from the Haitian government agency responsible for the country’s development, the plan is built around a bold central idea: to redistribute large parts of the population of Port-au-Prince to smaller Haitian cities, many of them at a safe distance from areas most vulnerable to natural disaster. In the process the plan would completely transform Haiti from a country dominated by a single metropolis to what the planners call a network of smaller urban “growth poles.”

...

Planners have outlined a similar approach for rural villages, with farms encircling a communal core containing a market, a school and health-care facilities. The public structures would be built by the government; much of the housing could be put up privately by Haitians but under stricter building regulations. (Mr. Voltaire even imagines a prototype for basic shelter that could be transformed into a more permanent house over time.)"

2010-03-30T17:24:00.001-05:00

2010-03-30T17:21:00.000-05:00

The Lede: A Service Economy in Haiti's Tent Cities

2010-03-29T18:39:00.001-05:00

Global Health Act Introduced In Congress: Read the Bill Now - PHR Health Rights Advocate blog

2010-03-27T10:27:00.003-05:00

Urban Flight in Haiti - NYTimes.com slideshow

Rural Haiti Struggles to Absorb Displaced - NYTimes.com

From the article:

"'There has been a mass exodus to places like Fond-des-Blancs,' said Briel Leveillé , a former mayor and founder of the leading peasant cooperative in this region, which includes Nan Roc. 'But the misery of the countryside is compounding the effects of the disaster. I’ve heard people say it would be better to risk another earthquake in Port-au-Prince than to stay in this rural poverty without any help from the government.'

Indeed, some have already returned to the capital seeking the international aid that is concentrated there. But if the reverse flow continues, it could undermine a primary goal of the Haitian government and the international community: to use the earthquake as a catalyst to decentralize Haiti and resuscitate its agricultural economy, said Nancy Dorsinville, a special adviser to former President Bill Clinton, the United Nations special envoy to Haiti.

...

The post-quake transformation of Fond-des-Blancs is palpable. At St. Boniface Hospital, earthquake survivors with spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries fill the wards, while their relatives live in the courtyard. The hospital, which did not even have an X-ray machine until one was donated after the quake, volunteered to take the patients from the American naval hospital ship the Comfort, which pulled up anchor last Tuesday."

2010-03-25T15:21:00.002-05:00

MIT Technology Review: A Cheap, Portable Wound-Healing Device

From the article:

"In mid-February, about a month after a massive earthquake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a wound-care team from Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston traveled to the devastated capital. The team's task was to help care for scores of patients suffering from the large open wounds that accompany amputations, crushed limbs, and other injuries. Among the team was MIT graduate student Danielle Zurovcik, who arrived ready to test a device she had developed as part of her thesis research--a cheap and portable version of the negative-pressure devices currently used to speed wound healing in hospitals.

...

While scientists don't exactly know why this treatment accelerates the healing process, it likely helps by removing some of the fluid and bacteria that accumulates at the injury site and by increasing blood flow to the wound. The pressure itself may also help healing by bringing together the edges of the wound and delivering mechanical pressure, which has been shown to spur cell growth, says Dennis Orgill, a surgeon at Brigham and Women's who was not involved in the project.

...

The team plans a larger test in Rwanda, where it will likely put the device to broader use. People in poor countries are much less likely to survive severe burns, for example, which can be helped with negative-pressure therapy. And the rate of complications from diabetes, such as foot ulcers, is skyrocketing in these countries as well, says Olson."

2010-03-25T08:59:00.002-05:00

A friend is in Popular Science!

MIT Student Invention Deployed in Haiti to Save Lives

From the article:

"While many MIT students busily build break-dancing robots or websites that let your pets network better at doggie daycare, PhD candidate Danielle Zurovcik has designed a $3 pump to drastically speed up the healing of countless patients in the aftermath of Haiti's recent earthquake."

2010-03-24T21:36:00.001-05:00

In First Successful Human Trial, Nanotech Robots Deploy Cancer-Fighting RNA

From the article:

"RNAi, also known as "gene silencing," is a cellular mechanism that blocks the production of proteins, and has tantalized doctors as a potential medicine for a number of years now. However, by placing payloads of RNA in a polymer nanobot, scientists have finally shown that this technique can work against tumors in human patients.

...

Plus, since RNAi can work against any transcription, RNAi nanobots could potentially disable both DNA viruses, like smallox, and RNA viruses, like SARS."

2010-03-23T16:11:00.000-05:00

Deal Provides Vaccines to Poor Countries at Lower Prices - NYTimes.com

From the article:

"The vaccines, Pfizer’s Prevnar 13 and GlaxoSmithKline’s Synflorix, prevent pneumococcal disease, which includes pneumonia and meningitis. Pneumococcal disease kills 1.6 million people a year throughout the world, including 800,000 children before their fifth birthday, according to GAVI."

2010-03-22T16:58:00.000-05:00

U.N. Says Dirty Water Kills More Than War - Lens Blog - NYTimes.com

2010-03-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

The healthcare bill: 10 things you need to know - Salon slideshow
"It could pass this weekend. Putting aside all the political noise, here's what's in it"

2010-03-20T16:55:00.001-05:00

The Doctor Who Would Be President - video

"With the hospitals in Port-au-Prince overwhelmed with trauma patients from the earthquake, Dr. Guy Theodore is picking up the slack in a remote mountain village."

2010-03-19T21:03:00.002-05:00

Haiti: A Cracked System, A Shaken Psyche

Mental Care in Haiti Goes From Bad to Horrid

From the article:

"Right now, though, the need for psychological first aid and emergency psychiatric treatment is so acute that foreign psychiatrists are seeing patients, setting up programs and rapidly training Haitian doctors, nurses and community workers in everything from psychopharmacology to group relaxation techniques. (Before the quake, there were only about 15 psychiatrists in all of Haiti.)

The foreign psychiatrists emphasize that they have found Haitians to be impressively resilient, but the disaster has nonetheless set off reactions ranging from anxiety through psychosis.

...

More common, though, is what Dr. Lynne Jones, a child psychiatrist and disaster expert with the International Medical Corps, calls 'earthquake shock,' a persistent sensation that the earth is still shaking, which makes the heart race and causes chest pain."

2010-03-18T18:56:00.001-05:00

Promising New TB Drugs Put on a Fast Track - Science Speaks blog

From the blog post:

"This afternoon, Dr. Mel Spigelman, president and CEO of the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development, and other leading TB advocates will join with FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to launch a new initiative designed to accelerate the development and approval of life-saving new treatments for tuberculosis. There are now at least 9 promising new TB drugs in the pipeline."

2010-03-13T14:22:00.000-06:00

Called from the suburbs to a Haitian mountaintop

From the article:

"Still, by the time White Stone returned to Haiti in December 2007, Mark was frustrated. There was only so much 27 Tennesseans could do in a week divided between poor villages."

2010-03-12T11:26:00.002-06:00

Haiti, Two Months Later

From the editorial:

"Only half of those displaced have received even the crudest means of emergency shelter: plastic tarps and tents that will hardly protect them when floods start in earnest next month, and the hurricanes come in June."

...

"Weeks after the disaster, he said, several of the agency “clusters” in charge of handling needs like food and shelter had not even developed a basic overview of what they had to do, much less a plan."

...

"But there are thousands of others, like the small rural mission churches and other groups that right now are offering just pinpricks of relief."

2010-03-11T21:25:00.003-06:00

Image credit: NYTimes

Azile Saint Vincent de Paul nursing home in Leogane, Haiti

Earthquake’s Burdens Weigh Heavily on Haiti’s Elderly

From the article:

"The United Nations also released a report last month stating that despite the privation facing younger women and children in Haiti since the earthquake, it is the elderly who are now by far the most at risk. Older people have been overlooked in relief efforts because they are more frail, less mobile and less vocal in their demands for food and water, United Nations officials explained.

...

Routine, which for so long has been a guide to the 75 former nursing home residents, is gone. So too is privacy and dignity as bathing and defecating are now done using buckets in public.

About half of them said they were too scared to go back inside when the nursing home was repaired. That means that many of them who are already sick will be weathering the coming rainy season in shabby tents.

...

Roughly half of Haiti’s population is under the age of 18 and life expectancy is 61 years, compared with 78 in the United States.

And yet, because of the impact of H.I.V. and AIDS on middle generations, and because parents often leave the country to seek work, the elderly have historically played an important role in Haiti in caring for younger family members."

2010-03-10T16:43:00.003-06:00

March 10: Redoubling Our Efforts on National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Tina Chen writes:

"It is imperative that HIV prevention efforts take into account the way in which many women in the U.S. become infected with HIV, as more than 80 percent of HIV/AIDS cases among women and teenage girls are attributable to heterosexual contact. It is also important to increase access to female-controlled prevention methods, such as the female condom, and to develop effective microbicides and vaccines.

The Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) is leading a team of Federal Agency partners to develop a National HIV/AIDS Strategy and strengthen our nation’s response to the domestic epidemic. Working with a wide range of stakeholders such as state and local governments, businesses, faith communities, service providers, and others will be critical to implementing the national strategy."

***

Michelle Obama & Secretary Clinton host the International Women of Courage Awards.

***

Inside India's Sagging Health System, One State Shines

"For all of India's booming technology and growing pharmaceutical industry, on average, the health of the general population remains quite poor. Why the persistent health deficit? According to former chief economic adviser to the Indian government Shankar Acharya, who analyzes two newly published papers, the reasons come down to 1). the withering of India's public health sector and 2). the overspecialization of its medical profession.

...

But a ray of hope comes from within India's own borders: from the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. The state spends less per person and has private health expenditures that are lower than India's national averages. And yet Tamil Nadu still has better infant mortality rates, a very high percentage of women receiving pre-and post-natal case and excellent child immunization coverage. The state even was able to offer excellent disaster relief during the tsunami."

***

Bill Clinton, Bill Gates discuss global health: video

From Implementation of the Global Health Initiative: Consultation Document:

"President Obama’s Global Health Initiative addresses the challenges faced by this woman and her family – and millions of others in similar circumstances. The GHI will help partner countries improve health outcomes through strengthened health systems, with a particular focus on improving the health of women, newborns and children through programs including infectious disease, nutrition, maternal and child health, and safe water. Achieving major improvements in health outcomes is the paramount objective of the Initiative. To that end, the GHI supports the following goals and targets:

HIV/AIDS: PEPFAR will: (1) support the prevention of more than 12 million new HIV infections; (2) provide direct support for more than 4 million people on treatment; and (3) support care for more than 12 million people, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children.

Malaria: Reduce the burden of malaria by 50 percent for 450 million people, representing 70 percent of the at-risk population in Africa. This effort will include the expansion of malaria efforts into Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Tuberculosis (TB): Save approximately 1.3 million lives by reducing TB prevalence by 50 percent. This will involve treating 2.6 million new TB cases and 57,200 multi-drug resistant (MDR) cases of TB.

Maternal Health: Save approximately 360,000 women’s lives by reducing maternal mortality by 30 percent across assisted countries.

Child Health: Save approximately 3 million children’s lives, including 1.5 million newborns, by reducing under-5 mortality rates by 35 percent across assisted countries.

Nutrition: Reduce child undernutrition by 30 percent across assisted food insecure countries in conjunction with the President’s Feed the Future Initiative.

Family Planning and Reproductive Health: Prevent 54 million unintended pregnancies. This will be accomplished by reaching a modern contraceptive prevalence rate of 35 percent across assisted countries, reflecting an average 2 percentage point increase annually, and reducing to 20 percent the number of first births by women under 18.

Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs): Reduce the prevalence of 7 NTDs by 50 percent among 70 percent of the affected population, contributing to: (1) the elimination of onchocerciasis in Latin America by 2016; (2) the elimination of lymphatic filariasis globally by 2017; and (3) the elimination of leprosy."

2010-03-08T23:24:00.002-06:00

Shower of Aid Brings Flood of Progress

From the article:

"His intent was to show that tightly focused, technology-based and relatively straightforward programs on a number of fronts simultaneously — health care, education, job training — could rapidly lift people out of poverty.

In Sauri, at least, it seems to be working. Some of the goals were literally low-hanging fruit, like teaching banana farmers to rotate their crops. Other programs were more sophisticated, like the battle against malaria, which employs cutting-edge mobile technology against a disease that kills more than one million children each year."

2010-03-08T16:19:00.001-06:00

Happy International Women's Day!

From WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan's statement:

"We will not see sustainable progress unless we fix failures in health systems and society so that girls and women enjoy equal access to health information and services, education, employment and political positions."

From UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé's statement:

"Gender inequities, violence, lack of access to education, health and economic opportunities are making women vulnerable to HIV."

2010-03-06T14:10:00.002-06:00

Among the Ruins, Education Is Also Lost

2010-03-06T11:35:00.001-06:00

A friend worked on this ...

2010-03-05T01:54:00.002-06:00

Haitian Singer and His Guitar Fight Urge to Weep

Singing the Suffering of Haiti

Haiti's Enduring Creativity

2010-03-02T14:46:00.003-06:00

UNAIDS takes action to empower women and girls to protect themselves from HIV

From the release:

"UNAIDS, together with celebrated artist and activist for women and HIV, Annie Lennox, has launched an Agenda for Accelerated Country Action for Women, Girls, Gender Equality and HIV (2010–2014), which has been developed to address gender inequalities and human rights violations that continue to put women and girls at risk of HIV infection.

...

1. HIV is the leading cause of death and disease among women of reproductive age (15-49 years) worldwide.
2. In Southern Africa, HIV prevalence among young women aged 15–24 years is on average about three times higher than among men of the same age.

...

As of December 2008, 33.4 million people were living with HIV worldwide, of which 15.7 million ─ almost half ─ were women. The proportion of women infected with HIV has risen in many regions over of the world over the past 10 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60% of people living with HIV are women. Nearly 30 years into the HIV epidemic, HIV services do not sufficiently address the specific realities and needs of women and girls.

...

The actions include:

1. Improving data collection and analysis to better understand how the epidemic affects women and girls.
2. Reinforcing the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women campaign through the AIDS response.
3. Ensuring that violence against women is integrated into HIV prevention, treatment, care and support programmes.
4. Analyzing the impact of socio-cultural and economic factors that prevent women and girls from protecting themselves against HIV.
5. Supporting women’s groups and networks of women living with HIV to map commitments made by governments on women and HIV.
6. Scaling up engagement of men’s and boys’ organizations to support the rights of women and girls."

2010-02-28T16:25:00.002-06:00

Learning From the Sin of Sodom

Kristof writes:

"Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria...

Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars."

2010-02-25T13:31:00.000-06:00

Where Shoddy Construction Could Mean Death

"Istanbul is one of many urban areas in earthquake zones. Those mapped here have more than one million people and large districts of poorly constructed housing typical of poverty-stricken cities. Even moderate shaking in these places could result in the destruction of many buildings."

2010-02-25T05:29:00.002-06:00

MSF Haiti Field Blogs

Dr. Wendy Lai writes, "The tragedy is in fearing for those in the refugee camps. I have seen some camped by the side of the road, but I have not visited any of the bigger gatherings. Apparently they are impressive; tens of thousands of people, packed like sardines without a single square inch of extra space. Many of the shelters are sticks and bedsheets. During the predawn rain yesterday, I got up from my cot to watch it fall in the darkness, my heart breaking for the additional misery it will bring to the too-many homeless. It was a hint of the beginning of rainy season. And rainy season is followed by hurricane season."

2010-02-24T01:58:00.001-06:00

Questions Surface After Haitian Airlift

From the article:

"But for 12 of the children, last month’s airlift transported them from one uncertain predicament to another. As it turns out, those children — between 11 months and 10 years old — were not in the process of being adopted, might not all even be orphans and are living in a juvenile care center here while the authorities determine whether they have relatives in Haiti who are able to take care of them.

...

Matt Chandler, a spokesman at the Department of Homeland Security, said: 'This was an extraordinary situation. There wasn’t the benefit of time. And there was a gut decision that the administration believed was in the best interests of the children.'

Child-protection advocates, who generally believe that hastily removing unaccompanied children from areas hit by disasters risks severing family bonds and exposing the children to further trauma, took a different view."

2010-02-23T00:19:00.003-06:00

New Amputees Face Challenges

Countless Lost Limbs Alter Life in Haiti’s Ruins

From the article:

"The Haitian government believes that 6,000 to 8,000 people have lost limbs or digits. Handicap International estimates that 2,000 to 4,000 Haitians underwent amputations, and many thousands more suffered complicated fractures, some of which could turn into amputations if not managed well.

Dr. Péan, who is blind and serves in a relatively new post as government advocate for people with disabilities, said that Haiti’s disabled — some 8 percent of the population even before the quake — had long been treated as second-class citizens."

***

A New Exit to Space Readies for Business

From the article:

"This is Spaceport America, a $198 million endeavor by the State of New Mexico to plumb the commercial potential of the suborbital heavens — a place once known only to astronauts, dreamers and the occasional chimp.

...

President Obama’s call last month for fundamental changes in the mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration seemed to open the door, or roof, ever wider to private industry. Some people here interpreted his words to mean that your seat back and tray table should be in their full upright positions, because commercial space travel is about to blast off."

2010-02-20T16:57:00.003-06:00

Cries for Help via Text Messages Are Used to Direct Aid to Haiti

From the article:

"To get the word out about the new program, the distress code number — 4636 — was sent to every cellphone on the Haitian network. Word of the program also went out on local Haitian radio stations.

Text messages from Haitians saying that they needed food and water helped identify a tent city that the American military and relief workers were previously unaware of, Mr. Bank said. And more Haitians are using the service every day, he said, noting the increase in volunteers needed to translate the messages from Haitian Creole into English.

Once the messages make it to his computer screen, Mr. Bank passes the information along to military personnel at the United States Southern Command in South Florida, which in turn coordinates with American military personnel in Haiti to help them locate those in need.

The choice to base the emergency network on text messaging was because of the damage Haiti’s telecommunications system suffered in the quake. Fallen cell towers and overloaded networks made telephone calls nearly impossible.

However, text messaging was still available and widely used among Haitians trying to locate friends and loved ones among the rubble. (Text messages are not as “bandwidth heavy” as phone calls are, Mr. Bank said.)

Even the least sophisticated of cellphones has a text-messaging option, noted Josh Nesbit, co-founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic, an aid group that provides free open-source software communication for medical workers in developing countries. He helped set up the Haiti emergency program.

Since its conception just hours after the Jan. 12 earthquake, the joint program has expanded to include regular news and information updates to those who have reached out through the emergency line, telling them where to find food relief and seek medical attention."

2010-02-19T20:10:00.003-06:00

Pictures of the Day: Friday, Feb. 19, 2010

From the caption:

"People searched for salvageable items on Friday in a dump in Cite Soleil, a slum in Port-au-Prince, where a pit in one corner is being used to dispose of human and medical waste."

2010-02-18T22:12:00.006-06:00

UN Appeals for Nearly $1.5 Billion for Haiti

From the article:

"Clinton told the diplomats the appeal is important to begin long-term rebuilding but first the world must help millions of Haitians living day-to-day and facing many problems: Will their children get diarrhea and die because of contaminated water in camps for the displaced? Will their tents be blown away when the hurricane season starts? Will they have enough food?"

***

Image credit: NYTimes

A Dutch Home With Some Serious Whimsy

Modern and Quirky

***

Miike Snow - Burial from slowtumb on Vimeo.

2010-02-16T22:26:00.002-06:00

Haiti reconstruction cost may near $14 billion, IDB study shows

From the article:

"While the results are subject to many caveats, the study confirms that the Haitian earthquake is likely to be the most destructive natural disaster in modern times, when viewed in relation to the size of the Haiti’s population and its economy.

...

Moreover, a separate forthcoming study by Cavallo and others indicates that countries hit by disasters on this scale suffer an economic setback that can take decades to reverse. In several such countries, investigators found that even with big inflows of outside aid, GDP per capita was up to 30 percent lower 10 years after the disaster than it would have been if the country had been spared."

2010-02-15T17:42:00.002-06:00

Haiti Emerges From Its Shock, and Tears Roll

From the article:

"Many victims were not accepted as dead until the search missions were over, and many bodies were never recovered or were dumped in mass graves. But belatedly, funerals and memorial services are taking place daily, and the traditional word-of-mouth network known as telediol has reawakened, delivering death notices."

***

Missionaries in Haiti Skeptical of Newcomers’ Motives and Methods

From the article:

"'You had missionary doctors parachuting in here doing amputations rather than setting or treating wounds because they knew their charter jet was leaving in two days and they would not be able to oversee follow-up,' said Dr. Scott Nelson, an American orthopedic surgeon and Adventist missionary, as he lifted a moaning man onto a soiled stretcher.

...

Dr. Nelson and other veteran missionaries faulted the new arrivals for frequently acting on their own instead of collaborating with more established missionary groups that plan on staying in Haiti for the long haul. It is a tension, some experts say, that can arise from the differing reasons missions have for being here.

'The new or short-term groups see themselves as being there to save souls first and lives second,' said Jonathan J. Bonk, director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center in New Haven. 'The older less conservative missions often see it the other way around.'

But the new arrivals say they have a legitimate role to play as well.

'Right now, with the situation being a disaster, we mostly focus on food and water and supporting the doctors; that’s our mission,' said Pat Harney, a spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology, which has several hundred health professionals and volunteer ministers in Haiti.

Some of them arrived on John Travolta’s Boeing 707, which he flew down loaded with tons of relief supplies, and when not doing relief work they sang classic rock songs at a crowded bar full of aid workers inside the United Nations compound. At the General Hospital in Port-au-Prince, where Scientologists in bright yellow T-shirts have assisted as volunteers, some have carried out what they call touch therapy, in which they say they realign patients’ nervous systems by touching them through their clothes.

The hospital director, Dr. Alix Lassegne, said he told the group’s doctors to stick to traditional medicine and other volunteers to stay away from trying to convert anyone."

2010-02-13T12:07:00.001-06:00

... And One for Doctors, Too

From the piece:

"History has shown that there is a significant correlation between adequate health care and a country’s stability and security. It is no coincidence that terrorism often thrives in places that lack basic services like education, clean water and rudimentary medical care.

...

In military terminology, improved health care should be seen as a force multiplier. Populations with adequate medical treatment are more prosperous, live longer and have lower birth rates. Healthier societies are better equipped to combat poverty, to provide clean water, education and safe housing, to uphold good governance and social equity."

2010-02-12T19:19:00.000-06:00

Doctors Haunted by Haitians They Couldn’t Help

From the article:

"The foreign doctors who performed the first amputations after the earthquake used hacksaws. They relied on vodka for sterilization, substituted local numbing for general anesthesia, jury-rigged tourniquets from rubber gloves. Working around the clock in improvised operating rooms, they sacrificed limbs and lost patients to injuries that are no longer supposed to be disabling or deadly."

2010-02-09T12:07:00.002-06:00

Paperwork Hinders Airlifts of Ill Haitian Children

From the article:

"After the earthquake struck, pilots and doctors were getting in shouting matches daily on the runway, with pilots saying they feared losing their licenses and being fined $400,000 if they did not have the medical parole forms from Customs.

The impact of the evacuation delays could not be more evident. Leaning over a premature baby girl at the field hospital here, doctors took turns squeezing an air bag to keep her lungs functioning and used heating packets from ready-to-eat meals to raise her body temperature because they lacked an incubator."

2010-02-06T17:52:00.002-06:00

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Thomas

2010-02-06T12:44:00.004-06:00

Haitian Radio Returns to the Air

"'We try and orient people to where aid is being distributed, and every day we announce messages about people who are still missing,' says Wendell Theodore, the silken-voiced news director of Radio Metropole in the capital's Delmas region. His own home destroyed, Theodore now broadcasts the names of the missing from under a tree in the radio station's yard, next to the tent he has slept in since his house collapsed.

...

Francois now spends his days combing the capital, trying to paint an audio picture of what is happening and to get information on the air about where aid is being distributed, the location of feeding and medical centers, and other important information. Many of the station's employees, fearful of aftershocks, refuse to enter the building."

***

Haiti Hospital’s Fight Against TB Falls to One Man

From the article:

"In normal times, Haiti sees about 30,000 new cases of tuberculosis each year. Among infectious diseases, it is the country’s second most common killer, after AIDS, according to the World Health Organization.

The situation has gone from bad to worse because the earthquake set off a dangerous diaspora. Most of the sanatorium’s several hundred surviving patients fled and are now living in the densely packed tent cities where experts say they are probably spreading the disease. Most of these patients have also stopped taking their daily regimen of pills, thereby heightening the chance that there will be an outbreak of a strain resistant to treatment, experts say."

***

Bill Clinton, in Haiti, Emphasizes Urgent Need for Sanitation and Health Care

From the article:

"Dr. Paul Farmer, the deputy special envoy to Haiti who toured the clinic with Mr. Clinton, said: 'For sanitation and health, the key is going to be to create community-based solutions, which basically means hire Haitians and lots of them to begin tracking infectious diseases, doing follow-up on treatments, as well as building latrines and water infrastructure. It shouldn’t be seen as some radical notion that we need to inject the money into the Haitian population, because they are the ones who can actually do the follow up.'"

2010-02-04T01:38:00.002-06:00

Port-au-Prince, three weeks after the earthquake.
Image credit @Astro_Soichi

2010-02-03T09:38:00.002-06:00

Piece describing Dr. Joia Mukherjee's experiences in Port-au-Prince. Mukherjee is PIH's medical director.

From the article:

"After her first day—a day during which she, along with PIH physician David Walton and a team from Medicines Sans Frontiers Belgium, treated over 800 people—Joia asked the Zanmi Lasante driver 'Kote Neg Mawon?' (Where is Neg Mawon?) He brought her to the destroyed National Palace, and there in front of it was the statue of Neg Mawon. The symbol of Haiti, Neg Mawon means at once marooned man, the runaway man and the free man.

In 1804 the Haitian slaves defeated the army of Napoleon making Haiti the first and only nation founded by a slave revolution. At the time of the revolution, 70 percent of the slaves had been born free men and women in Africa. This victory resulted in Haiti being feared by the world’s powerful countries and thus politically marginalized or dominated for the next 200 years. Symbolizing this epic struggle, Neg Mawon stands, shackles broken, machete in hand, defiant and unafraid. He blows a conch to call others to freedom.

Joia found herself weeping in front of the statue when a Haitian woman—a survivor who until that moment was a stranger—approached her. She too was crying and as she put her arms around Joia, she said 'Neg mawon pap jamn kraze.' The free man will never be broken.

Back in the United States, Joia is frequently asked about how Haiti can rebuild in the face of this tragedy. Her response is an optimistic one. 'Haiti’s strength is her people,' she says with confidence. Insisting that if foreign aid can invest in the public sector--particularly health and education-- and communities are actively engaged in the process, Haiti can be built back better."

2010-01-31T18:50:00.005-06:00

The White House is resuming the military airlift of critically injured Haitians.

From CNN:

"Airlifts stopped after there were 'concerns about the strain on domestic health capacity,' Vietor said. But officials have increased the ability to care for patients through a network of nonprofits and U.S. hospitals, he said.

But earlier reports also cited questions over who would pay for patients' care.

...

The flights stopped Wednesday when some states refused to allow entry to Haitians needing care, according to Navy Capt. Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for the U.S. Transportation Command. He would not say which states objected."

***

Views from inside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Port-au-Prince

2010-01-30T11:53:00.001-06:00

Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims

From the article:

"Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole — in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency — by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services."

2010-01-29T16:48:00.000-06:00

Building Haiti's Economy
From the piece:
"But Haitians need something more fundamental than relief from the present situation; they need jobs that they can count on for years ahead."

2010-01-26T23:09:00.001-06:00

Image credit: NYTimes

Haiti’s Children Adrift in World of Chaos

From the article:

"'There are health concerns, malnutrition concerns, psychosocial issues and, of course, we are concerned that unaccompanied children will be exploited by unscrupulous people who may wish to traffic them for adoption, for the sex trade or for domestic servitude,' said Kent Page, a spokesman for Unicef."

2010-01-25T22:33:00.001-06:00

Girls’ Rescue From Haiti Expands Family by Two

From the article:

"But beyond those with adoptions in process, tens of thousands of children are believed to have been orphaned in the quake, and their fate remains unclear, aid groups say."

2010-01-22T00:23:00.000-06:00

2010-01-19T10:20:00.002-06:00

Trying to Save Lives in Port-Au-Prince

Moving op-ed piece by Dr. Jeanne Cabeza, MSF's medical coordinator in Haiti, and Michelle Chouinard, MSF's head of mission in Haiti.

Dr. Cabeza writes, "Even though it seems like everyone has lost someone, their home, their way of life, it is amazing how people are helping each other. A lot of children have been orphaned. There is one beautiful little boy, who is about four years old. I don't know where he came from or how he got into our makeshift hospital compound, because he doesn't really have any injuries. I asked him if he was alone, and he told me, 'Yes, I am alone, but I'm here with my friends.' I look around and all of his friends are people he doesn't know, all waiting for surgery."

2010-01-19T10:11:00.002-06:00

Highly-rated charities providing relief in Haiti, and tips for donating.

2010-01-19T10:09:00.000-06:00

Daniel Irwin: Using NASA technology to solve disaster, environmental conditions

From the article: "Irwin heads a NASA program known as SERVIR. Using satellite technology, SERVIR helps officials in Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Africa understand and respond to natural disasters, combat environmental problems, improve agricultural practices and monitor air quality.

Irwin describes his program -- which means 'to serve' in Spanish -- as 'a space-to-village relationship' that employs 'eyes in the sky and uses it for societal benefit.'"

2010-01-18T21:07:00.005-06:00

Sanjay Gupta, the good doctor

"...determination and altruism are muddied by uncertainty and self-preservation."
-Dr. Rahul K. Parikh, on physicians in Haiti and other dangerous, disaster-stricken places

2010-01-18T21:07:00.001-06:00

2010-01-17T13:28:00.005-06:00

Profile of our new USAID chief, Dr. Rajiv Shah, and his recent efforts on behalf of Haiti:

Officials hail USAID chief's crisis management skills

From the article:

"Five days into his new job, Rajiv Shah found himself in the White House Situation Room, seated four chairs from President Obama and overseeing the U.S. government's response to the earthquake that has devastated Haiti."

(Jack Shafer dislikes the above article)

2010-01-16T17:05:00.002-06:00

Crisis mapping brings online tool to Haitian disaster relief effort

From the article: "Taken individually, these bits of data might not be terribly useful. The goal is that by aggregating the incidents in a visual format, people and organizations using the site will be able to see patterns of destruction, to determine where services should be concentrated. A red dot on the map, for example, signifies that looting is happening near a town called Pétionville; another shows that Hotel Villa Creole has become a site of medical triage."

Here is the link to Ushahidi's Haiti site: http://haiti.ushahidi.com/. You can browse by category: emergencies (subcategories include collapsed structures, people trapped, contaminated water supplies, and medical emergencies), threats (includes pillaging), logistical lines (includes blocked roads and power outages), responses (includes health services, shelter, food distribution, and water sanitation), and search for deaths and missing persons.

Short video from the Ushahidi website:

What is Ushahidi? from Ushahidi on Vimeo.

2010-01-14T14:36:00.002-06:00

Haiti Lies in Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead

From the article:

"And the poor who define this nation squatted in the streets, some hurt and bloody, many more without food and water, close to piles of covered corpses and rubble."

2010-01-11T16:47:00.002-06:00

2010-01-11T16:47:00.001-06:00

Religion and Women - Nicholas Kristof, NYTimes