U.S. Medical Aid to Africa

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it will donate $130 million to African medical schools to improve medical education throughout Africa. This generous donation will be distributed over five years and will go to medical schools and teaching hospitals in a dozen countries, and to about 20 American medical schools that have agreed to collaborate with them. Doctors will be trained in all sorts of skills including childbirth and infant care – skills that are of crucial need in rural parts of Africa. Some of the money will also go towards buying equipment for laboratories and teaching tools.

This is a big step forward for the U.S. and its foreign policy. Bringing more focus to poverty-stricken parts of the world through foreign aid will have far-reaching results for the world’s poor. A couple of positive results from this kind of foreign aid are: ending infant mortality through better education and the subsequent reduction in population.

- Clare O.

SOURCE: NYTimes

Medical Innovations

The cost of bringing medical equipment to impoverished countries is a vast sum for clinics operating on small budgets. In fact, one newborn incubator can cost up to twenty thousand dollars. Medical groups and doctors have trouble funding the equipment that they need to improve the life expectancy in poor countries. Luckily, the people that dream for more cost effective medical options have put their minds together. Social entrepreneurs working from their basements, garages and universities have come up with innovative designs for important medical equipment.

Whether they are using salad spinners to diagnose blood or making cell phones into microscopes, these scientific entrepreneurs create their designs for the same social purpose- cost efficiency. As a correspondent for the Take Part Website explains, “Centrifuges spin dense red blood cells from lighter plasma, separating blood for transfusions, tests, and super-concentrated vampire juice. But standard centrifuges require electricity and cash, both of which are hard to come by in many parts of the world.” At Rice University, students saw the need for a more cost effective option. By taking an ordinary salad spinner (and a few accessories), the students were able to create their own centrifuge. Their salad spinner can spin up to 950 rpm. Even though the “Sally Spinner” performs a bit slower than the leading centrifuge sold today, its pace is not a setback when one considers the benefits of not needing electricity and the salad spinner’s ability to be easily carried around. Not to mention, who can beat the cost (an estimated 30 dollars) to buy the all the parts.

Indeed, it appears that innovative creations, like the ones Rice University students came up with, could reduce the cost of medical supplies. Once medical supplies are manufactured at a greater pace, then medical equipment will be more widely available to poor countries.

-Rachel Ulrich

SOURCE: Take Part

Progress of first ever malaria vaccine

Last June we blogged about the British drug giant Glaxo Smith Kline's trial phase of the world's first vaccine against malaria. Here's an update...

The vaccine invented and made by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and formulated with GSK Biologicals, appears to show promise in children, producing a 100-fold increase in antibodies to fight the virus.

The efforts being put forth by GSK and the Walter Reed Army Institute are in line with Millennium Development Goal #6 - to reduce HIV / AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases by the year 2015.

- Sofia Nazalya

SOURCE: Reuters

Efforts in Medicine Proving to be Fruitful

Major drug companies have received pressure from groups like the World Health Organization to relax their patent-protection policies. Breakthrough advancements in the field of medicine that were once kept secret by drug giants like Britain's GSK and America's Pfizer are gradually being shared with ordinary, yet capable scientists and institutions. This collaboration leads to drastic cost reductions in Research & Development and ultimately faster drug development - thus, more lives saved. Pfizer and GSK, once global competitors, have teamed in a joint research effort called ViiV, which combines patents for progress in HIV.

-Nick Mohazzabfar

Source: The Economist

Zinc Relief

Zinc pills bring a reprieve to an illness that has long gone untreated in developing nations. Many people in the developed world do not realize that diarrhea is a disease that kills 1.6 million children under 5 each year. While the disease kills more children than AIDS or Malaria, research funding is very low. In 2007, only four percent of U.S. funds allotted for researching epidemics in developing countries went toward finding prevention and cures for diarrhea.

In the past, oral-rehydration therapy (ORT) was the prescribed cure for diarrhea. However, while ORT replaces fluids and nutrients, it does not bring speedy relief to diarrhea itself. The zinc tablets bring almost immediate reprieve, with children responding to the medication within a day.

The direct effects of the zinc tablets are unknown, but a diarrhea specialist for the WHO, Olivier Fontaine, believes that zinc strengthens the body’s immune system. In this way, the disease is manageable and does not become fatal.

With the help from Save the Children organization, zinc tablets were distributed in villages in Mali. Currently, other African governments, such as in Ethiopia and Tanzania, are looking into zinc treatment programs.
--Jessica Milstead

Source: Time.com

Vaccine For Every Child

Last week, the World Health Organization recommended that a vaccine against the rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that takes the lives of half a million children per year, be administered to every child around the world. The recommendation came after a studies done in South Africa and Malawi showed that the vaccine is effective even in areas of poor sanitation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paid for most of the research. Unfortunately, this would not be an easy task- the vaccine costs about $20 even in poor countries, and it must be refrigerated. This poses some difficulties with issuing the vaccine to every child in the world.
Source: NY Times

Progress on Malaria Vaccine

Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline recently started the trial phase of its latest project, the world's first vaccine against malaria. In the largest drug trial ever, 16,000 children in Africa will be observed over 2 years. Half of them will receive the vaccine, and half will get the placebo. They will all be carefully monitored for signs of malaria. Research for this vaccine began in the late 1980s, and a recent donation by the Gates Foundation financed smaller trials of it. If this large-scale trial goes well, the vaccine could reach the markets by 2013.
Source: Wall Street Journal

TB Hope

For a long time now, it has been believed that a TB vaccine loses its effectiveness and eventually becomes useless. However, a recent study has shown that the vaccine acquires traits that make it ineffective towards the bacteria causing the disease, and these traits can actually be removed, producing stronger immune responses.
Source: UPI.com

Cheaper Malaria Treatment

A recent initiative launched by the UN will provide easier access to the new malaria drugs, artemisinin combination therapies. Older drugs that have been used in the past are no longer effective, as strains of malaria have developed resistance against them. However, they are still on the market, and people buy them because they are cheap. The UN wants to drive these ineffective drugs off the market, and instead make the newer ones more affordable.
Source: UN News Source

New Tuberculosis Drug

XDR TB, an extremely drug resistant strain of TB, has a death rate as high at 100% because it is able to fight off the most commonly used medicines. However, a few weeks ago, scientists have finally discovered a cure for this deadly strain. Two FDA-approved drugs, Clavulanate and Meropenem, work together to overpower the enzyme that usually protects the TB bacteria from antibiotics and then kills the bacteria itself. In 13 different tests, the XDR TB bacteria was killed by the drugs in less than two weeks. Scientists are planning to take their testing beyond the lab, and run some trials on humans. Normally, it takes two years to treat someone with drug resistant TB, so if this process proves successful, it will save the lives of countless people around the world.
Source: Times of India

Saving Children's Lives in South Africa

South Africa is set to become the first country in Africa to provide its children with a life-saving vaccine that experts say could prevent the deaths of an estimated 5.4 million children globally in the next two decades. The pneumococcal vaccine, which should be available in April, will prevent diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia which often leave the few survivors with mental impairment, hearing loss, or a legacy of seizures. South Africa would also be the first country in the developing world to self-finance introduction of the vaccine, despite its hefty price tag.

Source: IRINNews

Improvement in Zimbabwe's Cholera Crisis

According to recent reports, the epidemic that started just a few months ago and affected 90% of the country's population, taking 4,000 lives, is finally getting under control. Awareness of the disease has improved and tablets for cleaning contaminated water have become more easily accessible. The hospitals and clinics are no longer overflowing with patients suffering from cholera. Those that are in hospitals are quickly getting effective treatment, and very few are in need of intensive care. Medical staff throughout the country is finally feeling more confident that they will be able to handle this situation successfully.
Source: Financial Times