End the Neglect

Blogging on behalf of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases

Posts Tagged ‘malaria’

World Malaria Report 2010

December 15th, 2010

Yesterday the World Health Organization released the 2010 World Malaria Report. Some highlights from the report can be found below:

Indoor residual spraying protected 75 million people, or 10% of the population at risk in 2009.
In Africa, a total of 11 countries showed a greater than 50% reduction in either confirmed malaria cases or malaria admissions and deaths over the past decade.
Morocco and Turkmenistan were certified by WHO in 2009 as having eliminated malaria.
Resurgences in cases were observed in parts of at least three African countries, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Zambia.
Financial disbursements reached their highest ever in 2009 at $1.5 billion, but new commitments for malaria control appear to have leveled off in 2010, at $1.8 billion.
In 2010, more African households (42%) owned at least one insecticide treated bednets, and more children under five years of age were using an insecticide treated bednet (35%) compared to previous years.
By the end of 2009, 11 African countries were providing sufficient courses of artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) to cover more than 100% of malaria cases seen in the public sector.
The number of deaths due to malaria is estimated to have decreased from 985,000 in 2000 to 781,000 in 2009.

Click here to read the full report.

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Posted in Africa, malaria

mNTDs

November 10th, 2010

By: Eteena Tadjiogueu

Can mobile technologies be used to monitor and control infectious diseases? “Yes” said six panelists at a mHealth Summit session I attended yesterday afternoon. In the case of malaria, HIV and TB, panelists cited specific technologies—gadgets and software—that are used to manage, monitor or control the diseases in the U.S., Thailand, Kenya, and Uganda.

One gadget that I found especially captivating is the Wisepill™, a device which monitors when patients take their medication and then collects and sends the data to a physician or health center. Jessica Haberer, MD, MS and her colleagues at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health who developed the Wisepill™ have found that real-time wireless adherence monitoring is feasible in rural, resource-limited settings like Mbarara, Uganda where their study was conducted.

Interestingly enough, in many poor and remote areas of the world one can still find a large number of cellphone users. One panelist, Dr. Richard Lester, a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine, found that in Kenya, where an estimated 40 percent of the population is unemployed, over 80% of the population has access to cellphones.

Clearly, innovation in the mobile technology sector can have positive benefits for global health, but how can this innovation translate into reduced neglected tropical disease burdens? Should national governments text their residents about upcoming mass drug administration campaigns? Could local health workers send counseling information to patients who have been previously treated for an NTD to prevent a relapse? How can the NTD community tap into the growing mHealth sector and start a mNTDs trend?

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Posted in Global Development, Global Health, NTDs, Public Health

Tags: Africa HIV/AIDS malaria mhealth summit NTDs Tuberculosis uganda Wisepill

Increasing Global Access to Medicines through Technology

November 9th, 2010

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUtcUJhRZFc

We all know that one of the biggest problems in the developing world when people get sick is access to medicines. If discovering and producing the appropriate medicines to treat some of the world’s most chronic diseases wasn’t enough of a challenge, getting them into the hands of an individual in a peri-urban or rural setting, at a low cost, is even more daunting.

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Posted in Global Development, Global Health, Maternal Health, poverty, Public Health, Uncategorized, Water and Sanitation

Tags: advocacy Africa education Global Health malaria mhealth summit mobile technology NTDs research TB technology

“The Only Source of Knowledge is Experience”

November 3rd, 2010

All week, my colleagues and I are attending various sessions at the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. We will be listening to global health experts speak on a cadre of “hot” global health topics including schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis, water and hygiene, malaria, tuberculosis, human rights and integrated control of Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs).

This includes presentations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Children without Worms, Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Helen Keller International (HKI), Taskforce for Global Health and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), among many others.

To kick off what will be a week chock-full of the latest research and data, as well as fruitful discussion and debate in the dynamic realm of tropical medicine, tonight’s opening plenary session featured Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.