Monthly Archives: February 2012

Abby Emdin’s Inspiring Presentation on World Without Worms

de-worming, NTDs, parasites

In mid-February, Abby Emdin, gave an awe-inspring presentation to the Picton Rotary Club on neglected parasitic infections. Emdin’s informative presentation summarized the devastating effects of parasitic worm infections – that 600 million people worldwide are infected with worms, that 3.9 million children die annually from this cause, and that an alarming 40% of tropical disease burden is related to worms!

Emdin is the co-founder of World Without Worms (WWW), an initiative to raise money and awareness for school based deworming programs, the first such organization in Canada. Since Grade 9, Emdin has been involved in her school’s Social Justice Club and has hosted numerous fundraisers for neglected tropical disease and global child poverty. The funds raised are transferred to their partner organization, Deworm the World, which in turn are used to transport medication and provide education to at risk areas. To date, her work has raised over $14,000, which has allowed for the treatment of 30,000 children. All money raised by WWW in 2012 will be directed to school-based deworming projects in Bihar, India.

Learn more about Abby Emdin, and her organization, World Without Worms here.

A Trojan horse to fight trypanosomes

NTDs

By: Charles Ebikeme

From an ancient Latin poem comes a relatively simple concept — deliver the deadly blow within a Trojan horse. The Greeks used it to end the war against Troy after ten long years. In science it’s one of the new and unique ways researchers are coming up with to fight diseases in man. They’re using the new technique in the animals that transmit and spread disease to humans, such as flies and other insects. The goal is to eliminate the disease within the fly by using something common to the fly — the bacteria that lies within. It’s a common theme that is gaining popularity. In science we call it paratransgenesis– strategy that relies on weaponizing the simple bacteria that live inside the flies that transmit parasites.

The tsetse fly transmits trypanosomiasis, or African sleeping sickness. Photo credit: Steven Mihok

New open access research published in BioMedCentral‘sMicrobialCellFactories uses such a Trojan horse paratransgenesis technique. It represents a new way for researchers to fight African sleeping sickness.

The same way there are bacteria within our gut and digestive system — aiding our digestion, providing the nutrients that we are unable to synthesize ourselves, and generally contributing to our being — the tsetse fly also contains bacteria (bacterial endosymbiont). Sodalis glossinidius is one such bacteria. Continue reading →

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The landscape of global health financing as the MDG deadline approaches

Global Development, NTDs

Last month at a Global Health Council event, Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray asked the following question. What’s happening to development assistance for health as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline approaches? Dr. Murray is the director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which produces annual publications on global health financing, including the 2011 report Financing Global Health 2011: Continued Growth as MDG Deadline Approaches.

The report shows that as of 2011, development assistance for health (DAH) has risen even in hard economic times. DAH more than doubled in size between 2001 and 2008. Following the recession, DAH increased 3% from 2008 to 2009, and 4% each year between 2009 and 2011. The graph below shows the rise in contributions from specific government and non-governmental assistance organizations.

It was noted at the meeting that a slowdown in global health funding would make it difficult for countries to achieve the MDGs, a set of goals agreed upon by all United Nations member states to eradicate extreme poverty by 2015. MDG 6 calls specifically for development assistance to reduce diseases of poverty like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), as funding for these kinds of health interventions represents one of the most cost effective ways to help lift people out of poverty.

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Ghana Health Service (GHS) Launches Project to Prevent, Eliminate NTDs

NTDs

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) has just developed and launched the project, “End in Africa – Ghana and 2012 MDA’s for NTDs,” as a measure to address the debilitating effects of NTDS in Ghana.

The key objective of the project is for mass drug administration (MDA) to treat NTDs and the undertaking of clinical management across Ghana.The initiative will also provide public health education to all targeted endemic NTD communities. The primary NTD targets are: trachoma, lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis), onchocerciasis (river blindness), schistosomiasis (snail fever) and soil transmitted helminthiasis (roundworm, hookworm, and whipworm).

At the launch of the project, Ghana’s Minister of Health, Mr. Alban Suman Bagbin, emphasized the country’s disease profile, noting that Ghana is burdened, “with long list of NTDs…[that] come under one common denominator – they are known as ‘the poor man’s diseases; occurring almost exclusively among the poor, rural and deprived communities around the country”.

Ghana’s Health Ministry and GNS will continue to improve collaboration with a variety of partners such as other ministries and development departments and agencies. Some of these partners include USAID, Catholic Relief Services, FHI 360, African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), Mectizan Donation Programme, Liverpool Centre for NTDs, Sightsavers, World Health Organization and Africa Lymphatic Filariasis Support Centre .

Click here to learn more about the “End in Africa – Ghana and 2012 MDA’s for NTDs,” project.