Posts Tagged ‘Africa’

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New plan to eliminate NTDs in Kenya

November 10th, 2011

Mass drug administration of Albendazole in conjunction with the launch of the Kenyan national plan for NTD control and elimination.

“Africa bears 50% of the global burden of neglected tropical diseases.” Quoted from an article published in Africa Science News, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are perpetuating the cycle of poverty,  prohibiting African populations from reaching their potential. In Kenya alone, 1 in 2 people suffer from NTDs. Recognizing this burden, the Kenyan government has launched a five-year long national plan to address NTDs such as schistosomiasis, trachoma, leishmaniasis, intestinal worms, elephantiasis and Hydatid disease. Kenya is the first African country to launch such a plan, which will bring the country closer to becoming free from preventable diseases. Eliminating NTDs in  Kenya is also in line with Millennium Development Goal 6, along with achieving Vision 2030, which aims to turn Kenya into a middle-income nation by 2030.

Read more about Kenya’s national NTD plan on Africa Science News.

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The Global Health Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases

October 18th, 2011

The World Health Summit will take place next week from October 23-26 in Berlin, Germany. The Global Network’s Managing Director Dr. Neeraj Mistry will be in attendance. To promote the summit and advocate for NTDs, Dr. Mistry authored a blogpost for the ONE Campaign Germany. Find the English version below:

By: Dr. Neeraj Mistry, Managing Director of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases

Two years ago, out in the farthest reaches of Burundi’s Rutana province, deep in terrain that could have been lush with agriculture, a community rejoiced. Its population had been plagued by river blindness, a disabling and blinding disease which is transmitted through the bite of a black fly. The flies come from the streams and rivers that keep the land fertile, making the water both a blessing and a curse. However, in 2009, Burundi’s ministry of health found this remote community and with the help of global health partners, delivered enough ivermectin to treat everyone in the area. Leonard Medina, the 37-year-old chief of the community, said that people are now returning to work, children are going back to school, and communities broken by genocide, civil war and disease are finally getting the opportunity to rebuild. Without the heavy burden of disease, the land and the people are getting their chance to flourish.

River blindness is in a group of diseases called the neglected tropical diseases or NTDs. Over 1 billion people around the world are affected by NTDs, most of whom live on less than $1.25 per day (US dollars). One in every six people globally has at least one of the seven most common NTDs. That means that every day, half a billion children are forced to go to school feeling tired and malnourished because of a common parasite infection that leads to blood loss and anemia. Millions of people are slowly losing their eyesight because of an infection that turns their eyelashes inwards, scratching their corneas each time they blink. Millions more are left disabled and disfigured by the swollen limbs and genitalia caused by another all too common parasite. These diseases stigmatize, disable and inhibit individuals from being able to care for themselves or their families—all of which promote poverty. » Read more: The Global Health Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases

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More good news – New test may improve diagnosis of African sleeping sickness

September 19th, 2011

By: Alanna Shaikh

When I was a kid, I thought sleeping sickness sounded like a nice thing to get. Compared to chicken pox or Coxsackie virus, a disease that just made me nod off sounded pleasant. Kind of cozy in a way. Every time I got bored I could just take a little nap, and all the grown-ups would say “Don’t mind her, she has the sleeping sickness.” It would be like being a kitten or a puppy.

Long-time readers of this blog know just how wrong I was. Sleeping sickness is awful. It does not involve a lot of comfy naps. Sleeping sickness – trypanosomiasis – is a deadly parasitic disease transmitted by the tsetse fly.[i] It’s called the world’s deadliest disease.

One especially tricky thing about trypanosomiasis is that it’s very hard to diagnose. The symptoms are varied, and look a lot like the symptoms of everything else. Red sore from the fly bite, fever, headache, irritability. It sounds a lot like ordinary life until it worsens into an infection of the central nervous symptom and then kills you.

The disease actually has no specific clinical symptoms; you have to have a diagnostic test or you’re just guessing. Right now, health workers identify suspected cases of sleeping sickness by looking at symptoms; then they do a spine puncture to draw out fluid and look at it under a microscope to see if the trypanosomiasis parasite is present. It’s a lengthy process that depends on good clinical skills, functional microscopes, and staff with the ability to use them.

Prompt and accurate diagnosis is important to treating trypanosomiasis. The treatment is toxic, for one thing, so you need to be sure it really is sleeping sickness before you treat someone. You can’t treat on a guess. The treatment is also not very effective, so your likelihood of a cure really improves if you fight the infection early. » Read more: More good news — New test may improve diagnosis of African sleeping sickness

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Reading List 9/12/2011

September 12th, 2011

Get your week started off right with the latest in NTD and global health news! Today we’re reading about:

GSK gives update on agreement with WHO to support de-worming of school age children in endemic countries
“- First African countries, Togo and Rwanda, receive albendazole donations to scale-up school based de-worming programmes for children at risk of intestinal worms. Donations to go beyond Africa to include endemic countries in Asia Pacific and Latin America GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) today announced progress on its commitment to expand the donation of albendazole to the World Health Organization (WHO) to treat school age children at risk of intestinal worms, known as soil-transmitted helminths (STH).”

Mozambique: Campaign Against Bilharzia
“The Maputo city health authorities have announced that a week-long intensive campaign against bilharzia will be launched throughout the city next Monday. Bilharzia, otherwise known as schistosomiasis or snail fever, is a disease caused by several species of parasitic worms of the genus schistosoma. The worms first infect a freshwater snail. Larval worms emerge daily from the snail host, and infect mammals, including humans, who enter the water.”

African program to prevent blindness wins prize
“An African health program that fights the debilitating disease called river blindness has won a euro1 million ($1.4 million) prize from a Portuguese foundation. The African Program for Onchocerciasis Control on Friday won the Lisbon-based Champalimaud Foundation’s annual Vision Award. The foundation said the public-private partnership has for the past 15 years coordinated more than 100 projects aimed at preventing onchocerciasis, or river blindness.”

New devices like motorcycle ambulances help poor
“A bit of creativity never hurts, especially when it comes to solving health problems in developing countries. Instead of the usual donated medicines and health equipment, some experts are inventing new products for the poor, like a solar-powered hearing aid or a motorcycle ambulance. Both inventions were showcased at an engineering conference in London.”

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