Monthly Archives: November 2010

Rwanda National Campaign Against NTDs!

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The Ministry of Health and the Access Project are launching their fifth campaign to fight against Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDS). Starting November 29th- December 2, all 29 districts of Rwanda will have access to mass drug administration directly targeting NTDs. An estimated 4.5 million people are expected to receive de-worming tablets during this week. Other health initiatives will be: polio vaccinations for children under 5, mosquito nets for pregnant women and, vitamin A for children 6 months to 5 years old.

To learn more about this initiative and others please contact The Access Project at:
In Rwanda: Raissa Kalinganire:
In the USA: Meredith Stricker:

Full press release available here.

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Adoption of the Luanda Declaration at the Second Inter-Ministerial Conference on Health and Environment

Africa, Global Health, NTDs, , , guinea, Human African trypanosomiasis:, , Second Inter-Ministerial Conference on Health and Environment, , water sanitation

By: Alanna Shaikh

On Friday November 26, the Second Inter-Ministerial Conference on Health and Environment in Africa came to a close. The 46 countries that attended adopted a declaration – the Luanda declaration – that lays out future health and environmental priorities. It looks like good news for the fight against NTDs.

The list of priorities, honestly, looks like pretty much everything that has to do with health and the environment: “…provision of safe drinking water; Provision of sanitation and hygiene services; Management of environmental and health risks related to climate change; Sustainable management of forests and wetland and Management of water, soil and air pollution as well as biodiversity conservation.

Other priorities are Vector Control and management of chemicals, particularly pesticides and wastes; Food safety and security, including the management of genetically-modified organisms in food productions; Children’s health and women’s environmental health; Health in the workplace and the Management of natural and human-induced disasters.”

Looking deeper, though, it is very interesting what made the list. We’ve done well, within the limitations of global financial support to NTDs, with the medical approach to eliminating the diseases. Mass drug administration, health care provider training, research into vaccines and better treatments. There has been an impressive amount of progress considering the small funding pool. (But no, that does not mean we can stop calling them neglected. NTD programs are good at making do, but wow they could do a lot more with some serious financial support.)

We’ve done less well on addressing the social and environmental determinants of the NTDs. It’s more complex in a lot of ways, and it’s been simpler to focus on medicine. However, we’re not going to treat our way out of the NTDs. We need to look at transmission and context. That’s where this declaration fits in. It reads like a set of WHO guidelines on battling neglected tropical diseases, and that is a very good thing.

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New 2011 Hunger Report Released by Bread for the World Institute

Global Development, Global Health, poverty, Public Health2011 World Hunger Report, Bread for the World, , , ,

By: Linda Diep

Today, 925 million people in the world are hungry. Between 2005-2007, an estimated 14 percent of the world’s population was undernourished, or did not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Two-thirds of children under five years old are malnourished, or do not consume a nutritious diet. The most impoverished groups who are most severely affected by hunger reside in Asia, comprising approximately 578 million out of the 925 million who will go to bed hungry every night.

This past Monday, November 22, 2010, the Bread for the World Institute – part of Bread for the World, which provides policy analysis on hunger and educates opinion leaders, policy makers, and the public about hunger in the United States and abroad – released its 2011 Hunger Report. The report covers the role of the United States in mobilizing global commitments to increase investments in agriculture, food security, and nutrition in developing countries. Following rising food prices in 2007-2008, the U.S. government developed the initiative to provide support for the hungry. This initiative seeks to increase  investments to help smallholder farmers and address the nutritional status of mothers and children. Feed the Future will work in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Central America, and the Caribbean.

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Toilets, Nerds, and the Importance of Advocacy

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Last Friday November 19 was World Toilet Day, and many events took place to observe this occasion. One of which took place in DC, an event called Nerd Nite. This event occurs once a month and features intellectual presentations on a variety of topics, with entertainment in between each presentation. The latest Nerd Nite included a presentation by Hope Randall of Path. End the Neglect was there to capture Hope on film (which we will have up shortly), and she’s been kind enough to provide us a blog post below:

Reprinted with permission from DefeatDD.org.

By: Hope Randall, Program Assistant for PATH’s diarrheal disease communications and advocacy team

I spent last Friday evening celebrating toilets and talking to a group of nerds about the deadly global impact of diarrheal disease and the solutions to defeat it.

Public speaking doesn’t typically make me nervous, but on Friday, I took advantage of my free drink ticket before taking the stage to talk to a group of young DC professionals about diarrhea. While this topic is familiar enough in global health circles, I’m never quite certain how the public at large will react. Will they laugh without taking the message seriously? Wrinkle their noses in disgust? Lose attention completely?

My concerns were completely unwarranted. As I presented “The Scoop on Poop,” we laughed together at potty humor and edgy communications strategies, then easily segued to the heart of the matter: that while we have the luxury of laughing about toilets and poop jokes, children around the world are dying from a lack of water and sanitation commodities that we consider as basic as air. I was touched by the level of instant engagement and the genuine eagerness of the average person to lend a hand. I felt a sense of camaraderie when I announced that it was World Toilet Day and the crowd whooped and cheered. Continue reading →