All posts by Amber Cashwell

Celebrating Victories, Together with a Public Health Champion

Latin America and the Caribbean, vaccines

 

A pregnant woman speaks with a health worker during a vaccination session at the primary school in the town of Coyolito, Honduras on Wednesday April 24, 2013.

A pregnant woman speaks with a health worker during a vaccination session at the primary school in the town of Coyolito, Honduras.

The Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region continues to inspire the world, showing how unwavering determination can help achieve public health elimination targets.

For example, earlier this year the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and other leading global health experts said goodbye to rubella in the Americas, a virus also known as German measles. This exciting accomplishment is the result of a concerted 15-year initiative to provide widespread provision of the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella).

Announced on April 30th, this historic achievement generated even more energy and excitement during Vaccination Week in the Americas (VWA), held during April 25th – May 2nd.  VWA, a regional flagship initiative of PAHO, is an extraordinary effort led by countries to vaccinate people of all ages against rubella, measles, polio, pneumonia and other diseases. These vaccination campaigns are also used to deliver a package of life-saving health interventions, including Vitamin A supplements to boost children’s immune systems, deworming treatments that rid people of intestinal worms (a type of neglected tropical disease) and distribution of insecticide-treated nets to prevent malaria. The Guardian has highlighted VWA as one of five memorable public health movements that save millions of lives.

We are especially excited to celebrate these recent victories with a public health champion from Córdoba, Argentina, Dr. Mirta Roses, who recently visited the Sabin Vaccine Institute office in Washington, D.C. Holding medical and public health degrees, serving two terms as Director of PAHO and representing the LAC region on the Global Fund Board provides only a small snapshot of her passion for equitable access to health. We are proud to have her serve as Special Envoy for the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, speaking out on behalf of the hundreds of millions of people suffering unnecessarily from preventable diseases.

Dr. Roses began working at PAHO in 1984 – and became Director 20 years later. She took action quickly as Director, spearheading the first-ever Vaccination Week in the Americas in 2003. This annual campaign was inspired by the Sucre Agreement, signed 23 April 2002 by the Andean Ministers of Health (Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela) plus Chile, recommending simultaneous implementation of their national immunization weeks. Following a 2002 measles outbreak in Venezuela and Colombia, this coordinated effort was planned to prevent future outbreaks across the Andean Region.

During the final stages of polio eradication in the Americas in 1991, Dr. Roses witnessed how the power of social communication and community involvement transformed vaccination campaigns into health celebrations. Entire villages, countries, leaders and celebrities were eager to participate, injecting a vibrant, dynamic energy into the campaigns.

Building off the momentum and success of this approach, annual Vaccination Weeks in the Americas helped create an even larger health celebration by sharing educational materials, screening for communicable and chronic diseases and delivering deworming treatments. This platform also helps early detection of NTDs, disabilities and micronutrient deficiencies.

As an example, in Honduras, the Ministry of Health uses this campaign to deliver deworming treatments to children across at the country alongside vaccines and other interventions. Honduras has also integrated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) practices, as well as vitamin A supplementation, as part of this effort. Since poor WASH contributes to increased intestinal worm infections, and intestinal worms can worsen and intensify malnutrition, integrating these three health interventions is essential for maximizing the health of children.

This unprecedented model caught the attention of people across the world. One by one, countries from all six WHO regions started employing the same approach – beginning with countries from the Eastern Mediterranean, reaching all the way to South-East Asia. By 2011, the World Health Organization made it official: World Immunization Week will happen every year during the last week of April.

These successes demonstrate the sharp and unwavering determination of people, communities and partnerships in the LAC region. We look forward to celebrating future success with Dr. Roses, PAHO and other partners, and inspiring other countries and regions to learn from lessons learned and best practices.

Toward a Healthy Future: Working Together to End Neglected Tropical Diseases & Malnutrition

NTDs, nutrition

 

healthyfuture1

Together with a wide range of experts and advocates from the neglected tropical disease (NTD), nutrition and broader development community, the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases is excited to launch a new policy brief.

Toward a Healthy Future: Working Together to End Neglected Tropical Diseases & Malnutrition – examines the relationship between NTDs and malnutrition, and the actions needed to address both of these challenges. The evidence linking intestinal worm infections and schistosomiasis underscore the importance of tackling these two problems together:

  • NTDs and malnutrition are geographically linked: all of the 34 countries carrying the highest levels of malnutrition are also endemic for NTDs.  In fact, ten of these countries make up 90 percent of the global NTD burden.
  • Poor nutrition increases susceptibility to parasitic disease infections, while NTDs, like intestinal worms and schistosomiasis, are underlying causes of stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies.
  • Poor access to water, sanitation and poor hygiene practices are well-known contributing factors to the spread of NTDs

Encouraging work is being done to address these issues. A number of multilateral organizations, governments, NGOs and endemic countries are already implementing programs that deliver treatments for intestinal worms and schistosomiasis alongside other nutrition and health interventions, effectively leveraging policies and delivery strategies. The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014, published by the Food & Agricultural Organization, revealed that the children suffering from undernutrition has fallen by 100 million over the last decade. The United to Combat NTDs: Delivering on Promises and Driving Progress report showed that in 2013, nearly 1.35 billion NTD treatments were donated and over 70 countries developed national NTD plans.

While these are important steps in the right direction, a funding gap stands in the way of ensuring that these treatments reach the people who need them. To reduce malnutrition and control and eliminate NTDs, the global health community must build upon this work and scale up deworming alongside nutrition interventions, such as Vitamin A and iron supplementation.

The Global Network’s policy brief calls for international policymakers and advocates to:

  • Recognize the impacts of NTDs and malnutrition and the clear benefits of addressing these issues in tandem.
  • Expand access to routine deworming treatments for all populations at risk, including pre-school- and school-aged children, women of childbearing age and pregnant women through existing treatments and delivery platforms.
  • Include deworming as a strategy to improve health and nutrition for mothers and children
  • Ensure sustainability by simultaneously investing in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and other social determinants of health.
  • Increase resources and link policies that facilitate joint programming and partnerships
  • Mobilize greater political and financial support for NTDs and malnutrition during international and regional fora.

We hope you’ll read the policy brief here, and contribute to the conversation on Twitter by joining our Twitter chat on Wednesday, October 22 at 2:00PM EDT using the hashtag #NTDsNutrition.

Global Health: The Elephant in the G20’s Living Room

g20, policy, ,

 

As the world gears up for the next G20 Summit in Brisbane, Australia, the Global Network is focusing in on the Summit’s agenda in a push to get global health included as a key policy issue. To do this, we submitted a concept note today to the C20, which outlines why global health matters to the G20.  The C20 is the Australian Civil Society Steering Committee, which will ensure that community-level views help shape the G20’s discussions and outcomes.

We are looking to the G20 – the world’s leading economies – to take concrete, tangible actions on global health and development this year. Considering the G20 makes up 90 percent of global GDP and gives the vast majority of global foreign aid, it is in an exceptional position to leverage its resources and convening power to make a real difference in the developing world.

Global health has not been a part of the G20’s agenda in the past, but the Global Network strongly believes that the G20 must address it in order to advance its goal of sustainable, inclusive growth. One easy example: NTDs keep children out of school and prevent parents from working, which decreases human capital, worker productivity and gross domestic product.

As host of the 2014 G20, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has pledged that the 2014 Summit “won’t be a talkfest.”   As a way to encourage dialogue and collaboration among partners, the Australian government followed Russia’s successful model and developed an online engagement platform – a space where global civil society organizations can exchange viewpoints and weigh in on various policy issues.

Over the next year, we will continue to push the G20 to take up the issue of global health and NTDs, and hope that others will join us.

We know that we can have a greater impact by collectively calling for the G20 to address global health as a unified group of civil society organizations, academic partners and individuals―in the online platform and beyond.

An easy way to support the cause is to nominate which polices YOU think the C20 should focus on for the 2014 G20 Summit. It’s easy!

  1. Just go to http://www.c20.org.au/nominate-policies/ and drag and drop the issues in the order you want them. Global health is not an option yet, but the post MDGs, inequality, food security, and financial inclusion are also relevant to the fight against NTDs.
  2. Additionally, you can make an even bigger impact by submitting a proposal to the C20 about why you think global health should be on the agenda of the 2014 G20 Summit. Just send a statement of 400 words or less to by December 21, and feel free to reference ours as a guide. Thanks for joining us!