Monthly Archives: May 2011

Our aid policy must focus on link between poverty and disease

Chagas, Global Health, NTDs, , ,

With the G8 summit wrapping up last week in Deauville, France, the global health community is abuzz with the results of the meeting. Charles Ebikeme, who has written for End the Neglect on African Sleeping Sickness and Buruli Ulcer in the past, shared his thoughts on why the G8 countries should pay more attention to neglected tropical diseases in this recent article published in The Guardian.

“A pro-poor aid agenda aimed at tackling health provides stunning economic rates of return. For every $1 invested in control of Chagas disease in Brazil, $7 is returned. Lymphatic filariasis control in China produces a 15-fold return. Guinea worm eradication has been calculated to produce an economic rate of return of 29%. All of this without even mentioning the most important return – the life saved.”

Read the article in its entirety here.

Looking for signs of global health in Deauville

Global Development, Global HealthG8 Summit 2011, , Global Health Council

Today marks the last day of the 2011 G8 Summit in Deauville, France. Read what David Olson of the Global Health Council captured from Day 1:

“DEAUVILLE, France — The G8 Summit opened today with little sign of global health on the agenda, a huge and disappointing change from the G8 Muskoka in Canada where maternal, child and reproductive health was one of  the signature issues.

The heads of state are arriving as I write this — Russia and Canada arrived last night and the rest are on their way now — and global health is nowhere visible on the agenda, neither in the French presidency’s official agenda on the website, or in the more detailed agenda we are now seeing here in Deauville.

We have heard that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the champion of the 2010 Muskoka Initiative and the co-chair of the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, plans a presentation on the commission’s newly-released report “Keeping Promises, Measuring Results,” but we have no details yet on where and when this will be done.

Last week, the G8 itself released its much-anticipated Deauville Accountability Report on G8 commitments on health and food security but the NGO reaction to it was universally negative..”

Read the full blog post on the Global Health Council’s Blog 4 Global Health.

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Trachoma control community to G8 leaders: Honor commitment to eliminate NTDs

Trachoma, , , , ,

Reposted with permission from International Trachoma Institute.

By: Elizabeth Kurylo

The trachoma control community wants G8 leaders to keep promises they made last year to help control or eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases.

With an advocacy ad in the official publication, G8 Summit France- 2011, the International Coalition for Trachoma Control (ICTC) is urging leaders of the G8 nations to fulfill their 2010 commitment to  “support the control or elimination of high-burden NTDs.”

The ad, available in English and French, also announces the coming availability of ICTC’s “2020 INSight” plan to finish the job of eliminating blinding trachoma by 2020.

The 2011 G8 summit will be held in Deauville, France, on May 26th and 27th.

The G8 is comprised of the eight main industrialized countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

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Joint G8 and science academies’ statement on Water & Health

Water and SanitationG8 summit, , ,

The 37th G8 Summit will be later this week May 26-27, 2011 in Deauville, France. In light of this event, the science academies of the eight member countries in partnership with five others released a report stressing the importance of water and sanitation, along with recommendations for governments to consider. The statements emphasize the importance of water sanitation in achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 and 7, and asserts that clean water is a human right. Read the short 2-page report here.

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