Monthly Archives: April 2014

Update from Vaccination Week: Highlighting Honduras’ Integrated Approach to Health

integration, Latin America and the Caribbean,

 

webBannerVWA2014alt

By Karen Palacio and Alex Gordon

This afternoon, hordes of journalists and TV newscasters huddled around one small toddler, creating a semi-circle two rows deep as they waited in anticipation. Moments later, the toddler opened her mouth and received deworming medicine — a simple but life changing act that on any other day may go unnoticed.

But today was different. In honor of Vaccination Week in the Americas (VWA), Members from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Ministry of Health of Honduras, and representatives from the Office of the President of Honduras, hosted a high-profile ceremony, highlighting the importance of vaccination, deworming and the integrated delivery of other health interventions.

Panelists at Honduras’ 2014 Vaccination campaign launch in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. From left to right: Dr. Karina Silva, local health department, Dr. Ida Molina, EPI Program Manager, Ministry of Health Honduras, Mr. Ricardo Alvarez, Representative from President Hernandez’s office, Dr. Yolani Batres, Minister of Health, Dr. Jon Andrus, PAHO Deputy Director, Dr. Alma Fabiola Morales, PAHO Honduras, and Dr. German Laborel, Representative from the faith-based community

Panelists at Honduras’ 2014 Vaccination campaign launch in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. From left to right: Dr. Karina Silva, local health department, Dr. Ida Molina, EPI Program Manager, Ministry of Health Honduras, Mr. Ricardo Alvarez, Representative from President Hernandez’s office, Dr. Yolani Batres, Minister of Health, Dr. Jon Andrus, PAHO Deputy Director, Dr. Alma Fabiola Morales, PAHO Honduras, and Dr. German Laborel, Representative from the faith-based community.

As Dr. Mirta Roses Periago mentioned in her previous blog post, VWA provides a much-needed platform to celebrate, showcase and implement the public health interventions that save lives and keep children and families thriving.

In Honduras, the ceremony that launched the two week campaign began with a prayer led by Padre Pablo Hernandez and the country’s national anthem.

Next, Dr. Ida Berenice Molina, head of Honduras’ Extended Program for Immunization (EPI) program, delivered remarks on the 12th anniversary of Vaccination Week of the Americas and Honduras’ consistent and impressive coverage rate of over 90 perecent for vaccinations since 1991.

Following Dr. Molina, Dr. Jon Andrus, Deputy Director of PAHO, highlighted the importance of the integration of vaccination and other health interventions such as deworming. This year’s slogan, “Vaccination, Your Best Shot” was selected as the call to action in the context of this year’s upcoming World Cup in Brazil. It is estimated that more than 63 million people in 180 countries and territories in the Americas will be vaccinated over the next two weeks.

Dr. Andrus also highlighted the opportunity that Vaccination Week offers to deliver other critical interventions such as deworming, Vitamin A, health education and lactation consultation, among others.

Historically, Honduras has been one of Latin America’s leaders in health and integration. In addition to holding high vaccination rates, Honduras was also the first country in the Americas to launch a national plan of action against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in 2012. After the plan’s launch, Honduras quickly began a demonstration project that expanded deworming to preschool children as part of vaccination week in six municipalities.

Now, two years later, the deworming of preschool children has been institutionalized as part of national vaccination week activities. This compliments the national campaign for school age children which is implemented in coordination with World Food Programme, UNICEF, Operation Blessing and other stakeholders.

Continuing with the presentations, Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, a representative from President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s office gave remarks on the political commitment to saving lives through vaccine preventable diseases and essential medicines that prevent and control NTDs.

And lastly, Dr. Edna Yolani Batres from the ministry of health remarked that VWA offers some of the best investments in public health. She called on partners to continue to join the Ministry of Health of Honduras in assuring the quality of life of millions of Honduran children and families continue to be improved through the services provided during Vaccination Week.

The speeches and presentations were followed by a series of vaccinations and the provision of deworming medicine and vitamin A supplementation. Members from PAHO and the Ministry of Health ceremoniously aided in the delivery of the health interventions as crowds gathered to watch babies, toddles, and pregnant mothers receive vaccines, deworming medicine and vitamins.

We were extremely happy to see these cost-effective health interventions and the nurses and doctors delivering them, receiving the attention they deserve. Through an integrated approach to public health, Honduras is providing smart opportunities for its population to remain healthy and thriving.

 

Kicking Off World Immunization Week with a Honduran Celebration

Latin America and the Caribbean, ,

 

A

This post was originally published on the Sabin Vaccine Institute’s blog as part of their World Immunization Week blog series. 

Honduras will kick off Vaccination Week in the Americas (VWA) today with a day-long ceremony highlighting the importance of vaccines and other health interventions like deworming and vitamin A supplementation in improving health. The Honduras ceremony, taking place on Monday the 28th in Tegucigalpa, will run alongside World Immunization Week.

VWA represents a unique opportunity to deliver vaccines and other life-saving health interventions to those who need them most. Deworming, vitamin A supplementation, screenings for diabetes, Body Mass Index and blood pressure measurement, will all occur under the umbrella of VWA. In addition, VWA will serve as a platform for civil registration of children in remote communities, sexual and reproductive health education, and delivery of medical and dental care to out-of-regular access groups, among others.

In addition to partners from PAHO, UNICEF, GAVI and the government of Honduras, Sabin will be attending the VWA launch event to further promote vaccines, deworming, and a holistic, integrated approach to ensuring good health and well being.

Because Sabin’s Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases focuses on mass drug administration for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) like intestinal worms, the integration of deworming into VWA is of particular importance. The benefits of controlling intestinal worms through deworming extend to better health, better growth, better learning, and better earning.

The inclusion of deworming as part of VWA – and even more – as part of the regular schedule of vaccines –is extremely cost-effective. All children at risk for intestinal worms at the national level could receive treatment at almost no additional cost. Nurses and community health workers who give children their shots can easily administer deworming pills to these children during these scheduled immunization campaigns.

Additionally, treating intestinal worms helps make other interventions more effective, since the bodies and immune systems of children free of parasites are better prepared to benefit from nutrition, health care and immunizations.

In Honduras, more than a million school-aged children are at risk for intestinal worms and the prevalence of intestinal worms is estimated to be greater than 50 percent in almost half the municipalities. Countries like Honduras have a lot to gain from integrating deworming into regular vaccination programs. This is an effective solution that will boost economic potential and the health of the country’s population.

The integrated delivery package in Honduras’ Vaccination Week in the Americas (launch) is an excellent example for how vaccination and deworming can work together to provide better health for all. We’re looking forward to promoting and participating in such an important event and we encourage other countries to follow the example.

Social Media: For a recap on today’s events, check out the Global Network blog later tonight, 4/28, and follow along with the hashtag #VWALaunch. 

Applauding the Role of Development Banks in NTD control and elimination

ADB, Africa, Asia, IDB, Latin America and the Caribbean, The World Bank

 

By Deepanjali Jain and Anupama Tantri

Pallgant School - MDA

Photo by Esther Havens

Partners from multiple sectors,  including development banks,  play an important role in the response to control and eliminate NTDs – a point highlighted by the report, “Delivering on promises and driving progress: the second report on uniting to combat NTDs”, released in tandem with the commemoration of the second anniversary of the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) earlier this month. ,.  In a resource-limited environment, the contributions of development banks, such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Asian Development Bank, present unique and innovative models to finance national NTD programs. These models also signal the prioritization of NTDs by endemic country governments and the recognition of NTDs as a cross-cutting issue that is tied not only to health, but also to efforts to improve education, gender equity, agriculture, and water and sanitation.

The World Bank and the African Development Bank have understood this connection for decades—their investments in NTD control and elimination began in the mid-1970s with support for what eventually became the African Program for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC).  Onchocerciasis, or river blindness, is a devastating disease that is endemic in 30 African countries.  Easily preventable, onchocerciasis is the second leading infectious cause of blindness, just behind another NTD, trachoma. APOC, funded by several public and private donors including national governments, foundations, the private sector, the African Development Bank,  and the World Bank– the latter of which also manages the  trust fund that pools the  resources from  all partners–implements an onchocerciasis control program that reaches over 100 million people annually in Africa.   Given the success of the APOC model and the overlap between onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis (LF), the program is now being expanded to address LF.

This past year, the World Bank committed to expanding its investment in NTDs by working with endemic countries in Africa to access $120 million in International Development Association (IDA) funds to support NTD control and elimination efforts. The investments are part of broader development efforts to address poverty in countries along the Senegal River basin by supporting fisheries, irrigation and water resources management, in addition to NTDs such as schistosomiasis. This effort has also supported NTD efforts in Madagascar, Yemen and the Sahel region.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is also a strong partner in the NTD response in the Americas.  In partnership with the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, IDB established an initiative to provide technical and financial support for the control and elimination of NTDs in Latin America and the Caribbean. The aim of this partnership is to support projects that employ an integrated, community-based methodology that go beyond short-term curative measures to include longer-term solutions that tackle the social and environmental determinants of disease transmission.  In Guyana, IDB supported an integrated project to reduce the burden of LF that included water and sanitation system improvement, gender-equity programming, vector control via the distribution of bed nets and drug administration. Watch the video about this project here and find more details on the initiative here.

In Asia, emerging infectious diseases and nutrition threaten the rapid economic growth and development across the region. Recognizing these links, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has integrated NTD components into a variety of broader health and development programs. One example is the Greater Mekong Subregion Communicable Disease Control Project which has supported scaling up of LF and STH programs in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam as part of a program to address vector-borne and other emerging infectious diseases. Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, a conditional cash transfer program launched in the Philippines with the support of the ADB and the World Bank, includes deworming of children as a condition for families to receive cash assistance, underscoring the links between health and poverty.

Recently, the ADB announced several initiatives in collaboration with the World Health Organization Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) that reinforce their commitment to addressing global health and communicable diseases in Asia and present an opportunity to do more on NTDs.  Building on the vision of regional cooperation and leadership articulated by the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA), the ADB created the Regional Malaria and Other Communicable Disease Trust Fund (RMTF) that will help fund communicable disease control projects in recipient countries.   ADB has also announced that they will increase their operations in the health sector to between 3 and 5 percent of their annual spending, up from 2 percent from 2008-2012, an opportunity to contribute more resources to support national NTD control and elimination programs.

Although funding for the global NTD response increased in 2013, the funding gap between current resources and those needed to reach the 2020 control and elimination goals is still US$200 million per year.  Development bank programs, like those initiated and supported by the World Bank, IDB and ADB, create innovative and sustainable funding models that support endemic country initiative and bolster existing investments in NTD control and elimination programs. The ability to bring together diverse partners and encourage cross-sectoral coordination is a hallmark that is unique to these development banks and is critical to meeting the 2020 NTD control and elimination goals.

Health Care Workforce Shortage=Failure to Meet MDGs

Global Development, Global Health, Ashley Schmidt

 

Health workers in Honduras

Health workers in Honduras. Photo by Olivier Asselin

Did you know 83 countries do not have enough health workers to meet the World Health Organization’s minimum standard to provide basic health services (No Health Without a Workforce, 2013)? The importance of the health workforce cannot be overstated and without concrete efforts from the international community to strengthen the frontline community of health workers, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and those health goals being outlined for the Post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda, will not be met.

Congressional Briefing Highlight

 Recently, I attended a congressional briefing led by International Medical Corps (IMC) and Management Sciences for Health (MSH) in cooperation with Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dibba F. Edwads and Representative Kristi Noem and Doris O. Matsui. The briefing, titled,“Saving Women’s and Children’s Lives; Strengthening the Health Workforce in Fragile Countries” discussed the needs of the frontline health workers today and highlighted a few examples of programs addressing these gaps successfully.

Saving Mothers, Giving Life, was one program highlighted as a model of best practice.  The program is currently operating in Uganda (a fragile state) and Zambia, and is focused on maternal and child health.  Saving Mothers, Giving Life pays special attention to the needs of individual health care providers by offering training and mentoring services to improve contact with patients and grow the workforce of community health workers in these cities.  The program also focused on the health facilities themselves, working to improve access to health services overall.  By focusing on the health workforce and the health workplace, this program has seen a 30% reduction in maternal mortality in both countries. The multitude of public and private partnerships involved has also been an innovative piece to the model of this program design worth noting.  A few other “best practice models” were highlighted at this briefing, including examples from other fragile states (ie: Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan), but the resounding message from all examples was clear: the importance of individual health workers’ needs and the need for infrastructure to support their endeavors improves health outcomes for the community.

Multi-Talented Workforce Easily Overworked

Health workers are a huge asset to improving population health and they often are trained to care for a multitude of ailments (ie: maternal child health care workers can offer services for nutrition needs, routine immunizations, malaria, HIV/AIDs, TB, and neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and NTD health workers distributing mass drug administration pills can also distribute malaria nets and vitamin A supplements).  While this integration of health services provided by the health workforce is ideal, often times the health workforce becomes overburdened, or worse, burnt-out. A contributing factor to the overburdening of the health workforce is the chronic health workers shortage. It will be no surprise when the MDGs are not met given the current health workforce shortage, an estimated 4.2 million health workers, with 1.5 million needed in Africa alone. However, looking ahead to the UN Post-Development Agenda, increasing the health workforce significantly will be imperative to success.

Health workers are the backbone of a healthy society and without them, health goals of the international community will not be reached.  While World Health Workers Week has come and gone acknowledging the backbone of a health society should be a constant effort.

Follow #healthworkerscount and for more on this topic.