GHEC Mexico

I'd like to recommend a few specific talks from the GHEC (Global Health Education Consortium) Conference, being held now in Cuernavaca, Mexico. You can find the entire list on the Kaiser Global Health site.

I've particularly enjoyed
The talk on Ethics and Equity



Walter Patrick on Alliances in Global Health


Paulo Buss on Social Determinants of Health, from Fundacion Oswaldo Cruz (Brazil)


The discussion on "Global Health Diplomacy" was well-moderated by James Sepulveda of the Gates Foundation, and in part revealed H1N1 from Mexico's perspective, which was quite revealing.

Today's plenary session was by Paulo Buss and was also quite good. That should be posted on the site soon.

Plumpy-Nut and patent

This has been brewing for a couple of years:


Legal fight over Plumpy'nut, the hunger wonder-product

By Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris

Should a revolutionary humanitarian food product be protected by commercial patent, when lifting restrictions might save millions of starving children?

Update on Haiti Project

The Child Health Campaign in Pestel is going great! This is the project supported by Variety International, the Children's Charity.

The health workers have already reached over 2800 kids in the first 3 weeks! Sister Fidelis has been out-and-about, taking lots of photos of the workers in action, so I'm anxious to see those. I will send some along when I get them.

The workers are finding a lot of malnutrition, and we'll be able to report exact numbers from their data. Also, the deworming (anti-parasite) medication is a big hit! The parents are thrilled to see the dead worms after the medication is given! One kid had about 60 worms!
And another kid had over 100 worms (they counted them!).

This is going to lead to BIG improvements in their growth and health. We'll measure the kids again later this year to see what kind of growth improvements occurred as a result of this. We received the donations from a very generous organization called Vitamin Angels. They have been fantastic to work with. For places like Pestel these kinds of programs accomplish a great deal for very little money, as you know. You can imagine that the villages are likely to be even more receptive to the campaign when we run it again at the end of this year because of how these seen the tangible results of the medication working. That'll allow us to build on this success and make strides in educational initiatives, for example.

We're also exploring a potential arrangement with a group that works in Haiti called Medika Mamba. They are graciously providing us with a $500 donation of "RUTF" = ready-to-use-therapeutic foods. RUTFs are the mainstay of therapy for severe malnutrition. They have a program to rehab severely malnourished children back to health. The challenge after that will be keeping them out of malnutrition, so if you have thoughts or want to help with that planning, let me know.

I'll plan to pick up the donation in Port-au-Prince on my next trip, and then Sister Fidelis will be piloting the project with one of her nurses. If we find that the program is successful, and if we can come up with a sustainable way to keep it going, we very well may embark on one of the most pressing and important campaigns for Pestel--malnutrition.

To put modern medicine in a bit of perspective, antibiotics will do very little good in a child with severe malnutrition. Antibiotics help the body fight infection. The key here is that the medications help the body. The body must still ultimately kill the remaining infection.

Post-Earthquake Video by Dr. Fredrick

These videos and photos were taken in early March 2010, and they tell a bit of the story of how the earthquake has affected the rural area of Pestel, Haiti. The PSU-COM Global Health Center has partnered with Variety International, The Children's Charity to begin to address the great and pressing health needs in Pestel.

Thanks to donations by many individuals, businesses, and the hard work of 40 medical students a new health campaign is underway in Pestel to provide Vitamin A and Albendazole (an antiparasitic medication) to all children. We anticipate reaching about 15,000 to 20,000 children with these important medications!

Video from Global Health Scholars Program

This video was produced by Sean Boley, a 2nd year Global Health Scholar at Penn State College of Medicine. Sean published a similarly-themed article in the International Journal of Healthcare and Humanities.

GHSP 2010 San Pablo, Ecuador SWOT Analysis from Sean Boley on Vimeo.

Haiti report 1/30/10

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/MUMA-8277PZ/$File/full_report.pdf

Food and shelter remain the priorities for assistance to hundreds of thousands of people in need.

• Health priorities include mobile clinics for first aid, psychosocial support and post-operative care.

Cases of tetanus have been reported. Suspected cases of measles were confirmed as chicken

pox.

• The WASH Cluster is reaching almost 500,000 people a day with water.

• The port has been declared unsafe for incoming ships following an in-depth assessment. Port-au-

Prince airport is operating at peak capacity with an average of 120 incoming flights per day,

although ‘no-shows’ are becoming an issue.

• The Government reports that some 340,000 people have now left Port-au-Prince with the largest

number of arrivals in Artibonite department.

• Crowd control requirements at food distribution sites remain a concern. Inflated prices for food and

other essentials are contributing to rising tensions among the population.

An isolated case of typhoid has been reported.

ACF and Concern are targeting an estimated 40,000 children for treatment of severe acute malnutrition.

Approximately 1,000 children requiring artificial feeding have been identified.

This looks to be a very useful website for raw data:

http://haiti.oneresponse.info

Haiti January 26, 2010

A few updates:

Haiti: Earthquake Situation Report #13

200,000 family sized tents are requested to support the one million people displaced by the earthquake. Only a fraction of the required tents are in country or in the pipeline, according to IOM.

• Tens of millions of ready-to-eat meals are required to meet the needs of 2 million people for 15 days.

• The distribution of assistance continues in Port-au-Prince and other affected areas such as Jacmel, Carrefour, Leogane and Petit Goave. Tents, food, health (post-operative care and epidemiological surveillance), sanitation and hygiene are the priorities for assistance.

From Twitter:

Following Montreal conference, Sec. #Clinton announced agreement was reached on initial steps in long-range plan for #Haiti

From CNN.com

150,000: Latest estimate of the death toll, from the Haitian Health Ministry. The European Union and the Pan American Health Organization, which are coordinating the health-sector response, have estimated the quake killed 200,000 people.
194,000: Number of injured
134: Estimated number of people rescued by international search teams since the quake

90: Percentage of schools in Port-au-Prince that have been destroyed