Global Health
Please check back as we continue to update our Interest Areas. In the mean time, please send any relevant news on global health to team@saluddelsol.org, thanks!
July 1, 2009
Lori Hanna was interviewed by Nancy Scola of WorldChanging.com to describe the solar autoclave and the application to rural clinics in undeserved areas. The article highlights the solar autoclave for Nicaragua and FrontlineSMS:Medic of Malawi, Africa as two examples of social innovations that are closing the gaps in healthcare delivery.
Two projects led by US students and their international allies are helping to fill gaps in health care gaps in the Global South. Though one project involves cell phone text messaging and the other equipment sterilizers powered by the sun, they have the same inspiration: using simple technology to build on the value of existing social capital.
These innovations are developing in Malawi and Nicaragua, both counted amongst the all-too-many places on the globe where the holes in the net of public health are so gaping that many people slip right through. Numbers tell that story. Of the fifty thousand Malawians who contracted tuberculousis last year, for example, an estimated 70% of them are also carry HIV. And that’s just a small portion those with HIV; nearly one million of Malawi’s 14 million people are infected. Yet in all of the country, there are just 250 or so doctors. Nicaragua is somewhat better off, yet nearly half of all of births happen there with no medical professional in attendance. Into those breaches have, in many cases, stepped community health workers (CHWs), local laypeople who work with the local health care system, often as volunteers. The two projects profiled here are equipping those CHWs with simple, appropriate ways to shrink the holes in their country’s health care nets.
You can read more of the article at the Worldchanging website, http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//010007.html
WorldChanging.com is a nonprofit media organization headquartered in Seattle, WA, that comprises a global network of independent journalists, designers and thinkers. We cover the world’s most innovative solutions to the planet’s problems, and inspire readers around the world with stories of new tools, models and ideas for building a bright green future. We have brought awareness to issues like refugee aid, renewable energy and innovative solutions for improving building, transportation, communication and quality of life. Our readers are ready to change the world, and Worldchanging connects them with the latest ideas on how to do that.
March 24, 2009
The past week, I had the opportunity to attend classes and speakers for an innovative course at MIT, D-Lab Health, taught by professor Jose Gomez-Marquez, who is also the program director of the Innovations for International Health (IIH) initiative. The multi-disciplinary course focuses on understanding global health challenges and designing medical technologies for these challenges through the lenses of engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and economics.
The D-Lab Health class is very similar to the ETHOS course offered at UD, so it has been enlightening to see how a different University teaches students about the philosophy of appropriate technology in developing countries. My personal interest in global health and work with Salud del Sol make this class a perfect opportunity to learn from other students and professionals in the field and coincidentally, the D-Lab Health class is working with partner organizations in Nicaragua!
I spoke with Jose and his co-worker from IIH, Amit Srivastava about the scope of the field of global health. There are many pieces to issues of global health, including the large scale burden of the lack of infrastructure, the brain drain of medical professionals from developing countries to the US, poor training for community health workers, and the lack of appropriate diagnostic equipment. D-Lab Health educates students on the larger picture of challenges in global health, and then applies this knowledge to the research and design of innovative solutions to address these challenges.
During the classes that I was able to attend last week, the students were learning about complex medical devices, such as ultrasound machines and optometry instruments. The students were tasked with evaluating how these product designs could be altered to be more appropriate for use in developing countries, by asking questions about the parameters of the product design such as the cost of replaceable pieces and the training is required to use the devices.
Another class with D-Lab Health involved a trip to the Operating Room of Shriner’s Children’s Hospital, to experience the conditions of an operating room in a developed country. This trip at the OR gave a point of reference to compare the resource deprived healthcare settings of developing countries.
This week, the D-Lab Health students are traveling to Nicaragua to observe healthcare workers and patients in a field assessment of the challenges in health care equipment and delivery that these professionals face on a daily basis. The students will be bringing these challenges back to the D-Lab for the remaining part of the semester to develop a medical technology kit to address some of the underlying issues that the discover within the clinics. They will be traveling to different locations around the country, including Ocotal! Over the weekend, I was able to talk with the students and Jose about my experience living in Nicaragua last summer, everything from practical financial and travel advice to not leaving the country with out trying ron con pasas ice cream from the Eskimo man and having a cup of coffee from locals. Essential for truly experiencing the culture!
D-Lab Health branches from the over arching D-Lab course of MIT, which uses engineering design principals to improve the lives of the bottom billion in developing countries. Along with attending the D-Lab Health courses last week, I was also able to participate in a product design review for the D-Lab class. It was a brainstorming session for students working on a range of products, including a chlorine dispenser, a cell phone enabled baby scle, a portable hydro powered lantern, an energy storage solution for communities in Tibet,a strong maker to recycle plastic bags, and an interlocking stabilized soil block maker.
March 18, 2009
Tonight, March 18, Innovations for International Health (IIH) is hosting a lecture by Ryan Scott Bardsley, Systems Manager at the CIMIT Simulation Group at Mass General Hospital and researcher at IIH.
His lecture, “Medical Simulation and Training for the Developing World” will explore the convergence of open-source architectures, micro-controllers, pervasive connectivity, and affordable fabrication technologies that are poised to introduce medical simulation into poor countries. Leveraging systems he has developed for the U. S. Army for the past 10 years, he will discuss how a well-designed simulation infrastructure can serve as a powerful platform for deploying medical expertise, assessing provider competency, and adapting training resources to meet local medical needs. Medical simulation will be the fourth computing revolution to hit global health on the heels of low-cost computing, wireless telecommunications, and medical information systems.
The lecture will be held from 6:00-7:30pm at the MIT Museum, located at 265 Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge, MA. For more information, please contact jfgm@mit.edu.
March 9, 2009
A recent article posted written by Marvin Lee, was posted on the New University web publication of the University of California, Irvine, about a lecture given last Friday (March 6) by Carol A. Dahl, Ph. D., director of Global Health Discovery team of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program. Dr. Dhal’s lecture “Science and Technology Discovery to Meet Global Health Needs” stressed the need for affordable medical equipment diagnosis of diseases. The Henry Samueli School of Engineering hosted the event as part of the Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Lecturer Series a the University of California, Irvine.
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corporation, and his wife Melinda Gates provide various programs to fight disease, poverty and other health and social issues, and improve education through the Gates Foundation, which also disperses grants to researchers with help from Warren Buffett and Gates’ father William H. Gates Sr. Lee listed that, according to Dahl, the Global Health Program of the Gates Foundation receives about 50 percent of the Gates Foundation’s funds, while the Global Development Program and U.S. Program receive 25 percent each. Read more
February 12, 2009
Hunger and malnutrition are both major causes of illness and major obstacles to effective treatment of many diseases. Malnutrition weakens immune systems, and greatly increases the likelihood of falling ill with and dying from many common infectious diseases.
During the Physicians for Human Rights Conference, Donna Barry of Partners In Health presented on the topic of Food and Health Safety and how this applies to the health and economic development of developing countries. She explained how Partners In Health is addressing this crisis of malnourished children and families through their work in Haiti, where they are providing food supplements and lunches to the children in the community. While current food programs are providing meals for those in need, the majority of the time the foods provided lack the general nutrition required by malnourished people. Not all food aid delivered to developing countries is good. For example, Haiti has become a food dependent country, where 92% pf the families are in food security programs. The staple to this program is a simple peanut butter like supplement called Nourimil. Now I cannot imagine how appealing it would be to eat peanut butter every meal of the day, however by providing children in Haiti with Nourimil,people in the community have experience dramatic health improvements. While it is a more expensive option, people in Haiti are spending less time in the hospital, which in the long run is saving money for the local health system.
Another benefit of Nourmil, is that it is locally produced. PIH has partnered with local agricultural farms to create a vertical supply chain to produce the Nourimil peanut butter product. In this way, they are providing jobs for local people and stimulating the economy. This is an important aspect of development programs, the ability to work with the local community while addressing crucial issues of health and economic development. Below is a summary of this collaborative project of PIH.
Community-Based Treatment of Severely Malnourished Children
According to UNICEF, almost a quarter of Haiti’s children suffer from chronic malnutrition, as evidenced by their stunted growth. Our nutrition program meets the immediate needs of severely malnourished children through a nutrition treatment which uses two products called Nourimamba and Nourimil – both produced through our Zanmi Agrikol program – given to children identified in our clinics and by our accompagnateurs, or community health workers. In cooperation with Zanmi Agrikol, PIH and ZL treated nearly 3,464 malnourished children in 2007 across Central Haiti and the Artibonite District, and created opportunities for agricultural training and production for over 100 Haitian farmers and families. We are also providing meals to over 9,000 children daily through our school lunch program. Read more
February 3, 2009
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to learn about issues in international healthcare, network with med students and other healthcare professionals at the Physicians for Human Rights Conference at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) CEO, Frank Donaghue, described the conference as a way of learning from other students and professionals dedicated to the availability of healthcare for all who need it and how to move from “rhetoric to reality” through the collective effort of the conference participants.
Key note speakers at the event included, Stephen Lewis, Co-Director of AIDS-Free World and former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa and Julio Frenk, current dean of Harvard School of Public Health and former Minister of Health for Mexico. Stephen Lewis set the tone for the conference with his speech addressing the over arching issues that are contributing to the healthcare violations in developing countries. Lewis talked about U2 singer Bono, who asked why is it possible for the US and other nations to find $700 billion in 3 months to help bail out Wall St. but not $250 million over 3 years for the agreed upon Millenium Development Goals from the 2000 UN Summit.
Julio Frenk spoke about the ethical framework in which he used to guide the development and implementation of a national health insurance reform during his tenure as Minister of Health in Mexico. Frenk strongly stated that health is a second generation human right, meaning it transcends citizenship. This implies that it is unethical to limits healthcare services for immigrants in the United States.
Along with the keynote speakers, there were sessions that developed skills in advocacy and also sessions that covered topics in the cross section of human rights and health, custody, and conflict. Out of the 40 sessions available, conference participants only had the opportunity to attend 4 different sessions. Tough decision! I tried to vary the topics of the sessions I was attending. The following are brief summaries of the different sessions I attended, Read more