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World Population Day 2010!

July 12th, 2010

Yesterday, July 11th was World Population Day.

According to the United Nations Population Fund Website:

“This year World Population Day highlights the importance of data for development. The focus is on the 2010 round of the population and housing census, data analysis for development and UNFPA’s lead role in population and development.

Reliable data makes a difference, and the key is to collect, analyze and disseminate data in a way that drives good decision making. The numbers that emerge from data collection can illuminate important trends. What striking situation does research reveal in your country? What do the numbers tell you about progress toward meeting the MDGs? Are certain groups getting left behind?”

We encourage you to watch this great video by USAID on why population data matters!

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, Latin America and the Caribbean, NTDs, Obama Administration, Politics, Public Health, U.S Government, Vaccine Diplomacy, Water and Sanitation, policy, poverty

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Are Parasitic Worms a Root Cause of Global Poverty?

July 7th, 2010

by Eric Zuehlke, editor, Population Reference Bureau

Reposted with Permission

The damaging effects of HIV/AIDS and malaria on individuals, families, and communities in developing countries are well-documented. Public advocacy campaigns highlight the millions of deaths each year that can be prevented through basic immunizations that are taken for granted in developed countries. But did you know that 13 parasitic and bacterial infections, mostly worms and trachoma known as the “neglected tropical diseases,” are the most common afflictions of the world’s poorest people? “Neglected” tropical diseases affect about 1.4 billion people worldwide, mostly in rural areas of developing countries. Unlike AIDS and malaria, they aren’t fatal, but they are disabling, leading to lost income from missed work and lower IQs. A recent post on the Discovery magazine blog highlights recent research from the University of New Mexico that hypothesizes that the prevalence of these parasitic infections is the “most powerful predictor of average national IQ” – more than GDP, literacy rates, and school enrollment. The post questions whether correlation is causation and is skeptical about these diseases having effects on the IQ of entire countries:

“…a link between infections and IQ tells us nothing about whether infected people grow up to be less intelligent, or whether intelligent people are less likely to become infected. Intelligence, after all, could affect one’s understanding of what a disease is, how to avoid it, and how to seek help for an infection.”

I think the author misses the point here. The issue isn’t that intelligence may lead to greater knowledge and prevent infection. How does intelligence help in seeking treatment in the poorest rural areas in the world, with little or no medical care or resources to treat these diseases? In addition, lower IQs can have huge lifelong ramifications in terms of educational attainment and employment. Young children are often afflicted by these conditions, delaying mental and cognitive development. A wide body of research has shown that deficiencies in the first years of life have lifelong effects. Nutrition shortfalls have also proven to detrimentally affect IQ. For example, deficiency in iodine, an element that we take for granted in the United States, can lead to impaired cognitive development and is the leading cause of mental retardation worldwide. Given the sheer prevalence and disabling nature of these diseases, you would think there would be more discussion of their effects on productivity, economic development, and social stability. They are a major hidden root cause of poverty. Of course, lack of education and employment opportunities, weak markets for goods and foods for poor farmers, trade imbalances, and conflict over scarce resources are all major contributors to poverty, but without a foundation of good health, how can the other issues be overcome?

I recently interviewed Dr. Peter Hotez, research professor and the chair of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Tropical Medicine at George Washington University about the effects of these diseases on economic development and the interesting potential for “vaccine diplomacy.” He’s also the president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, an organization working to reach the millions of people affected by neglected tropical diseases. A “rapid impact package” of drugs that eliminate the seven most common tropical diseases can be administered for just 50 cents a person per year. Whether or not the neglected tropical diseases are the single “most powerful predictor of national IQ,” they are a major contributor to poverty.

Eric Zuehlke is a writer and editor at the Population Reference Bureau

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Posted in Global Development, Global Health, Politics, Public Health, U.S Government, Water and Sanitation, poverty

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In the field: A student’s descent into NTD research

June 7th, 2010

We’re very excited to feature a new summer blogger for End The Neglect! Seth Hoffman will author a series of posts while conducting NTD field work in Indonesia. While Seth isn’t doing a project specifically related with the Global Network, we think his perspective and experiences will provide readers with interesting firsthand encounters with NTDs.


By: Seth Hoffman

Its 2:30am on June 5th, 2010 and I am supposed to “get up” for my flight to Indonesia in about three hours. I’m also not nearly done with my packing.

Hi. My name is Seth Hoffman, and I am going to be a junior at Cornell University. This summer I am setting out for the experience of a lifetime.

I’ll be spending the next 8 weeks working with the University of Indonesia and Leiden University Medical Center at their field sites in Flores, Indonesia. Flores is right smack dab along the path less traveled, and that is my kind of party. The project aims to attend to the issue that in many parts of the developing world, malarial and helminth (i.e. hookworms) infections are co-endemic. Investigation on the immunological associations between helminth infections and malarial parasites in co-endemic areas holds the key to answer the question whether helminths, by downregulating immune responses, increase susceptibility to malarial parasites on the one hand, but protect from cerebral malaria on the other.

The purpose of this blog is to describe the experiences of an undergraduate trying to immerse himself completely in the broad (scientific, socio-political, anthropological, etc.) aspects of the field of Global Health, specifically in regard to neglected transmitted diseases (NTDs). I am going to be helping out the doctors and scientists in the study by conducting blood analyses, stool samples, physicals, PCRs, and much more. I personally am overjoyed at being given such an opportunity to develop my medical/scientific prowess, especially in regard to hookworm, an NTD that prior to becoming involved in the field study I had little knowledge of except for what I had learned in my medical parasitology class. I have done a lot of research with malaria, but helminths and NTDs are a whole new “can of worms.”

I will also be traveling to Flores with my best friend Michael Billingsley (University of Glasgow) and my younger brother Benjamin Hoffman (Stanford University) who both happen to be pursuing medical careers as well.

Furthermore, the three of us are members of a band called Nigeria that has had some local success, and whose debut demo album Mango is currently being passed around several major music labels (fingers crossed!). As a band we plan on writing and recording a lot of music heavily influenced by our exploits in Flores to be released at the end of the summer as a free digital-download mixtape. The three of us have grown up in families fixated on tropical diseases, and work in Global Health, and we have pledged a portion of the proceeds of our album Mango to Share Our Strength’s campaign to end childhood hunger.

I truly hope that this summer¹s experiences will help to enhance my parasitological knowledge and general understanding of the grand scope of Global Health; and that is precisely what I plan to communicate to you all through this blog. If I can impart just 25% of what I hope to learn this summer onto another reader, who will then hopefully pass that new found knowledge onto another, then my blog will have been a success.

More posts, pictures, video, and music to come! Until then…I’m going to go ahead and finish packing.


Seth Hoffman is a pre-med student at Cornell University, majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Global Health. He has worked for a number of years on identifying olfactory genes of Anopheles mosquitoes involved in mate and host seeking, and has published on his work in the scientific literature. He is a singer and guitarist for the band Nigeria.

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Posted in Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, Student Summer Series, Water and Sanitation, malaria

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Reading List 6/7/2010

June 7th, 2010

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a relaxing weekend. We have a new list of reads to kick start your week! Today we’re reading about National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) $15 million grant to establish a NTD research center at The George Washington Medical Center, which Dr. Peter Hotez will co-lead. We are also reading about how a plant found in western India used to treat roundworm could be useful in treating colon cancer, discussion about Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at an upcoming lecture by the Department for Development Cooperation in the Netherlands Antilles, and NTDs in urban New England areas.

$15 million NIH grant for NTD research center, GWU Medical Center (on page 7)
Experimental colon cancer model, Albert A Baskar, Savarimuthu Ignacimuthu, Gabriel M Paulraj, and Khalid S Al Numair, BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Department for Development Cooperation public lecture, Roddy Heyliger, St. Maarten Island Time
Dirt Roads Ooze with Life, Bill Amos, Times Argus

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Posted in Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, reading list

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Let’s Talk About Guinea Worm

June 4th, 2010

by: Alanna Shaikh

You may recall that back when I made my debut on this blog, I renamed Guinea Worm to “Spend a month pulling a long worm out of a hole in your body disease.” Well, if you ever wanted to see exactly what’s involved in that month-long process, I have a movie for you.

“Foul Water Fiery Serpent” is a new documentary that tracks efforts to eliminate Dracunculiasis (Guinea Worm) in Sudan and Ghana. I haven’t seen it yet, but I watched the trailer and the very cool animation of the guinea worm. (And yes, the trailer does show an actual worm extraction. That’s why it’s labeled “viewer discretion advised.”)

The film documents three years of eradication efforts in the two countries, and I think it’s an interesting insight into the difficult mechanics of disease eradication. As the film’s website states, they follow health workers as they “distribute filter cloths, treat water sources with safe pesticide, educate villagers about avoiding the worms, and treat victims suffering from the disease.”

It’s unusual to have a film that really looks at this kind of prevention work. It’s a lot easier to hook an audience if you focus on sick kids and glamorous cures. Taking the time to look at where a disease like Guinea Worm comes from and how you can keep infection from spreading is a lot harder but, I think, makes for a better story in the end. It’s not really a story if you only tell 20% of it, right?

I admit the film’s website is a little over the top:

“Through a relentless cycle of successes and failures, facing ignorance and superstition in a vast landscape ravaged by war, the heroes in this story are making medical history in an epic struggle to drive an ancient enemy into extinction…Following the victory against smallpox, Guinea worm is likely to be the next disease in the history of mankind to be eradicated from the Earth.”

They have a point, but I suspect they could have made it with fewer adjectives. Though I guess you have to respect anyone who can get that excited about a tropical disease. I seem to be seeing all sides of this discussion.

Whatever you think about the language of the website, it is a compelling movie on a topic that can be very dry. If you work in global health, and you’ve ever wanted to show your friends what you do for a living, this movie might be your key to seeming extremely cool. (Then you have to admit that you plan and administer efforts like these and don’t ever actually talk to Sudanese villagers, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Aside from making public health professionals look cool, the movie rightfully highlights the incredible efforts that have been made to eradicate Guinea Worm. We’re not going to eliminate tropical disease with a lot of this kind of spade work, and this film shows us exactly what that work will look like.

(Possibly my favorite thing about the movie, by the way, is this accompanying interview with Makoy Samuel Yibi)

Alanna Shaikh is an expert in health consulting, writing about global health for UN Dispatch and about international relief and development at Blood & Milk. She also serves as a frequently contributing blogger to ‘End the Neglect.”

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, poverty

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Reading List 6/2/2010

June 2nd, 2010

Lots of interesting happenings in the world of NTDs and global health on this warm Wednesday! Today’s reading list includes the launch of a new campaign to fight against Elephantiasis in Sierra Leone, the announcement of a $3 million research grant for schistosomiasis studies in western Kenya, World Vision’s provision of water pumps in Niger, and last but not least, a blog post about foreign aid provided by the U.S. Enjoy!

Campaign against Elephantiasis in Sierra Leone, Bampia Bundu, Awareness Times – Sierra Leone
UGA prof gets $3M to study schistosomiasis, Atlanta Business Chronicle
World Vision Gives Succor to Niger, Provides Clean, Safe Water, Success K. Uchime, All Voices
Restoring U.S. foreign aid to health, Members of the Steering Committee of the Global Health Technologies Coalition, The Hill’s Congress Blog

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Politics, Public Health, U.S Government, Water and Sanitation, policy, poverty, reading list

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Dengue Fever in the Americas: More than 900,000 Infected Annually

June 1st, 2010

By Edward L. Kadunc, President, Pan American Health and Education Foundation (PAHEF)

Dengue fever is not a household name in the developed world, yet 40 percent of the world’s population is at risk of contracting it—including the developed world. Dengue, a mosquito-borne tropical disease, is spreading rapidly throughout urban and semi-urban regions. It is not a tropical disease affecting just those in far off countries, but also a growing public health threat here in the Americas. In the past year, for example, there was an outbreak in Florida.

The public and private sectors are beginning to see that dengue can no longer be ignored. The Pan American Health and Education Foundation (PAHEF) is a leader in health education throughout the Americas that mobilizes resources to jointly address key health, education, and training priorities.  As president of the PAHEF, I know that fighting dengue will take the action of multiple partners making strong commitments to eradicate this disease.

Dengue: A Worldwide Problem

Dengue can be found in more than 100 countries. The World Health Organization estimates that up to 50 million people are infected every year.

Several days after being infected by a dengue-carrying mosquito, symptoms that may include severe headache, painful body ache, rash, and a fever begin. As symptoms closely mirror those of the flu, the patient may be inaccurately diagnosed.

On its own, dengue is not often life-threatening, but it can lead to dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) which may be fatal. Nearly 500,000 people worldwide are hospitalized with DHF every year, which causes untold days missed from school or work.

Back from the Brink of Eradication in the Americas

Dengue has plagued the Americas for centuries. In 1635, the first outbreaks in the region were recorded in the Caribbean. From 1824 to 1828, a dengue pandemic claimed countless lives in Bermuda, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, Venezuela, the Virgin Islands, and the Southern United States. New Orleans, with its humid climate and swamps where mosquitoes breed, suffered through a three-year pandemic in the 1870s that saw an estimated 40,000 people become infected.

Massive eradication efforts of mosquitoes and their breeding places in the Americas during the 1950s and 1960s lead to a formidable shrinking of endemic areas. Once dengue was widely eradicated, it fell off many governments’ political and financial agendas. This situation paired with a rapid, unplanned urban explosion in tropical areas to create the perfect storm for dengue to quickly reclaim territory across the Western Hemisphere. As a result, the number of dengue cases throughout the Americas grew from 66,011 in 1980 to over 900,000 in 2008.

Battling Dengue Today

Today, dengue is prevalent in dozens of countries in the Americas. Many of the mosquito carriers are resistant to insecticides and there is often a lack of funding to launch effective campaigns. While vaccine development is underway, nothing currently exists to immunize those at risk. Community education and training medical personnel to recognize the symptoms early will be key to reversing the trend. At PAHEF, we know this well. Our foundation has a history of supporting projects that use education and training to address neglected tropical diseases. PAHEF has supported successful initiatives to combat malaria, lymphatic filariasis, and river blindness. Fighting dengue will take nothing less than an integrated solution built on educating medical professionals as well as the public.

PAHEF works every day to improve the health of people in the Americas. Our neighbors need our assistance to help them live lives free from the worry of a mosquito bite leading to severe illness or death. Malaria rates in the Americas have been successfully reduced through health education and community partnerships to destroy breeding grounds. We are confident the same can be done for dengue.

Edward L. Kadunc is the president of the Pan American Health and Education Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, that improves health in the Americas through promotion, education, and training. For over 30 years, Mr. Kadunc has advised governments and the private sector on prevention and education issues regarding tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS and planning and management of public health and primary health care programs. Mr. Kadunc received the Presidential Meritorious Honor Award and the Outstanding Career Achievement Award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, poverty

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Tropical diseases need an integrated approach

May 28th, 2010

by: William Brieger, Malaria Matters blog

A common critique of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is that there are other major contributors to the burden of disease in tropical countries.  Some are infectious like pneumonia while others are non-communicable like injuries.

From the standpoint of malaria, integration makes sense. From the start, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership made it clear that malaria control (end eventual elimination) could not succeed unless health systems were strengthened. These are the same systems that are supposed to control filariasis, helminthic diseases, diarrheal diseases, and pneumonia as well as promote maternal health, child growth and development as well as immunization programs. It was a weak health system that contributed to the failure of the first effort to eradicate malaria fifty years ago.

Two recent articles exemplify the need for integrated prevention and control services because tropical communicable diseases themselves are ‘integrated’ into the environment and the human host.

Abraham Degarege and colleagues examined Malaria and helminth co-infections in outpatients at Alaba Kulito Health Center in southern Ethiopia. Fifty-four percent of patients having malaria parasites also had at least one of three helminth infections including hookworm, A. lumbricoides and/or T. trichiura. Those with both worms and malaria (P. falciparum and/or P. vivax) had higher rates of anemia. These negative synergies require an integrated approach to patient management as well as to community prevention programs.

Marcia C. Castro and her co-researchers looked into local water sources for larval development of lymphatic filariasis and malaria vectors in Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania. Larvae of both anopheles and culex species were found in puddles, swamps, mangrove swamps, drains/ditches, human-made holes, water storage, agriculture, rivers/streams, and ponds.

Polluted urban environments are less conducive to anopheles breeding, and culex were more likely to be found in all these urban sites in Dar es Salaam, especially in drains/ditches, but again in this environment both types were found, meaning that both filariasis and malaria ‘co-existed’. Integrated control through larviciding and ITNs would help prevent both diseases.

If basic health services are well funded, staffed and supplied, no tropical disease needs to be neglected.

Bill Brieger is currently a Professor in the Health Systems Program of the Department of International Health at Johns Hopkins University as well as the Senior Malaria Adviser for JHPIEGO, JHU’s family and reproductive health affiliate. He was a Professor in Health Education at the African Regional Health Education Centre, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, from 1976 to 2002. His research interests have focused on the social and behavioral aspects of tropical disease control, and in the area of malaria research, funded by the Unicef/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Tropical Disease Research program (TDR) and USAID implementing partners, this has included acceptability of pre-packaged antimalarial drugs, urban malaria, role of patent medicine sellers in malaria treatment, and community and cultural perceptions of malaria as a basis for village health worker training and health education

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, malaria, policy, poverty

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Anyak vs. the Guinea Worm

May 24th, 2010

Anyak vs. The Guinea Worm

Check out this amazing video op-ed by Nicholas D. Kristof from The New York Times. Meet Anyak, a young Sudanese boy who is infected by a guinea worm. He lives in a remote area of Sudan where clean water is not easily accessible, which is a contributing factor in his contraction of the water-borne parasite. Follow his journey as he receives treatment from the Carter Center by way of a campaign called The South Sudan Guinea Worm Eradication program; this village-run program will bring our global community that much closer to eradicating this painful disease, leaving the world free of guinea worms for good.

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, poverty

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Reading List 5/19/2010

May 19th, 2010

We’ve been getting a lot of interesting analysis and attention on Dr. Hotez’s New York Times editorial, along with his newly published NTD debate paper in PLoS Medicine that have both been released this past week. So on today’s reading list, we’ve provided you with a sample of what people are saying about the pieces and the engaging discussions that they have sparked. We’ve also included materials in other NTD and global health news, particularly about the decrease in deaths of children under five years old, and the importance of water sanitation. Enjoy!

Millions could be spared with funding increase, VOA News
Researchers Call for ‘Social Offset’ to Tackle NTDs, Science Daily
Neglected diseases: Teach or treat?, Megan Scudellari, The Scientist
WHO says under-5 deaths drastically reduced, Afrique en ligne
Nigeria: When Water Becomes a Curse, World News
South Africa: Benefits of Working Together on Water, Terna Gyuse, All Africa

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Posted in Africa, Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Obama Administration, Public Health, Water and Sanitation, poverty, reading list

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