The Global Pulse Journal Blog

From Science Speaks, an excellent blog from the staff of the Infectious Diseases Center for Global Health Policy, comes an interview with Dr. Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS ambassador.

Q: Roxana Rogers, USAID’s South Africa health team leader, said recently in South Africa that, “US government funding is going to come down dramatically over the next five years.” True?

A: No, it’s not true. Every year there’s been an overall increase in funding for PEPFAR, and we’ve also not been in a situation where we’ve had a decrease in any country, certainly not in South Africa. Our funding for South Africa is over a half billion dollars a year. Our resources that go into South Africa are having a huge impact, and I’m not understanding that (comment by Rogers).

We also committed to $120 million recently over two years to specifically address an unexpected shortage of funding for antiretroviral drugs in South Africa in nine provinces. The South African government asked us to be silent (about it during that time.) … It made a lot of sense for us to fund it for the simple reason that we not allow services to be interrupted and allow South Africa to respond to the increase in demand.

Roxana’s statement is based on the fact – I think – that she was used to PEPFAR funding that went up in huge increments every year — so much so they scrambled to find meaningful applications to use the funding for programs. Now we are in an economic crisis, with nowhere near the increase in funding like that, so on a relative level it may feel like a drop in funding.

Q: What happened in South Africa’s shortfall of funding for treatment?

A: PEPFAR has not run out of any antiretroviral drugs in any country, including South Africa. .. But for multiple times we’ve been asked to bail out a country for one or two months (because of drug shortages in the national program or funding shortages). South Africa had run out of resources to pay for the medication in nine provinces, starting in November. It was a significant outlay of resources for us and a real example of cooperation. In addition, we were able to work with the government to ensure their Treasury picks up the bill thereafter, so it doesn’t happen again.

Be sure to read the entire interview.

For the past seven years, the United States has supported and expanded its program to fight HIV/AIDS in developing nations, underwriting almost half of the world’s AIDS relief. But some are concerned by recent setbacks in the global campaign to fight disease in the developing world. At a time when the numbers of people infected with HIV is beginning to increase after stabilizing in countries like Uganda and the number of people in need of treatment is rapidly expanding, the US funding has not kept pace. With updated World Health Organization guidelines, the number of HIV-infected people eligible for treatment has expanded to 14 million, a large increase from the only 4 million people current in treatment.

In the face of this expanding pool of people in need, US government funding seems to be staying stable. For example, at the same time that the Obama administration has announced plans to expand HIV treatment to at least 4 million by 2013, they have also signaled no increases in funding budgets through fiscal 2011. Defending the administrations commitment to fight the global pandemic, Eric Goosby, the President’s AIDS czar, stated that “our commitment to universal coverage hasn’t wavered.”

For more on the global fight on AIDS and particularly the fight in Uganda, check out the Wall Street Journal’s January 30th article and slideshow.

A lovely animation explaining why patent pools will help fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Please refer to earlier post on GPJ by Hana Akselrod regarding the approval of patent pools by UNITAID.

This Friday January 29, 2010, PBS will air a documentary focusing on maternal health in Haiti on its newsmagazine show NOW. The episode explores the context of the global maternal health crisis with a focus on the work of the Haitian Health Foundation, winner of the 2008 Global Health Council Best Practices Award. The earthquake has further stressed a resource-challenged system, with many centers for maternal health damaged or destroyed. Filming for this episode overlapped with the earthquake and the show touches on the additional challenges facing expecting and new mothers and their children living within this crisis.

Visit http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html for more information on air times or the documentary will be available online starting Friday night January 29th at http://www.pbs.org/now/.

According to recent data from the WHO and UNAIDS, the number of people infected with the HIV virus has remained relatively stable, around 33 million around the globe, for the last two years. The data suggests that the number of cases probably peaked in 1996 with the disease stablizing in most regions since then.  The WHO/UNAIDs report suggests that their were 17% fewer new infections worldwide in 2008, compared with 2001. A notable exception is the number of HIV infections in many parts of Africa which remains alarming. Although the rate of new infections has decreased worldwide, only two out of five of those newly infected begin treatment. While around 4 million people were receiving antiretroviral medications at the end of 2008 compared to 3 million in 2007, an additional 5 million people in need of antiretrovirals were not receiving treatment.

[This article was originally posted on Open Forum, a blog supported by the community of Health and Human Rights: An International Journal]

On December 22, New Zealand and Belgium became the 25^th and 26^th nations to ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). The convention needs only four more ratifications to achieve the 30-state minimum to enter into force. Once in force, it will enact a ban on the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of most cluster munitions, which include bombs, missiles, or rockets that open midair to scatter tens to thousands of small submunitions over a wide area. The CCM also requires that states destroy their stockpiles in eight years, clear contaminated land within ten years, and provide victim assistance. Read the rest of this entry →

Note:  The GP editorial staff’s thoughts and hearts go out in solidarity to the residents of Port-au-Prince and their families, as well as our colleagues in Haiti.  We will be updating this post as more information becomes available. — Hana

————–

Earthquake Crisis in Haiti

Original post by Wilnise Jasmin [01.14.2010 @ 6:53 AM EST]

As you may have already heard, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck about 10 miles southwest of Port-au- Prince, Haiti at about 5 pm Tuesday night. The quake ravaged the infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government and destroyed some of its most important cultural symbols.

“Parliament has collapsed,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald. “The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” He added: “All of the hospitals are packed with people. It is a catastrophe.”

President Obama promised that Haiti would have the “unwavering support” of the United States.

Haitian authorities and humanitarian aid organizations are struggling to respond amid devastation. Read the rest of this entry →

This is a guest post by Daniel Rhee, AMSA Global’s Health and Human Rights coordinator.  It was originally posted on the Global listserv in honor of Human Trafficking Awareness Day on January 11, 2010.

“To some, human trafficking may seem like a problem limited to other parts of the world. In fact, it occurs in every country, including the United States, and we have a responsibility to fight it just as others do. ” - Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton (full article here)

Good afternoon, Global!

Today is National Global Human Trafficking Awareness day, and for those who are unfamiliar, human trafficking is “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” (UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons)

It is one of several forms of slavery that exist today (click here to learn about modern slavery), and as our Secretary of State stated so clearly, it is not just an international issue, but a domestic one as well.

Here are some quick facts from freetheslaves.net and the US DOJ:

• there are more slaves now than ever before in human history – approximately 27 million around the world
• the cost of a slave has decreased from $40,000 in 1850, to $90 in 2008
• it would cost $40 per family to buy all bonded laborers in the world – Americans spend this much on chocolate each Valentine’s Day
• 17,500 slaves are brought into the United States every year
• sexual exploitation of minors is lawfully considered human trafficking – approximately 325,000 children in the United States are subjected to sexual exploitation every year
• the average age of entry into the commercial sex industry within the United States is 11-12 years old

So for those of you who want to learn/do more, here are a few things for today: Read the rest of this entry →

It has long been established that high adherence to antriretroviral therapy is associated with slowed progression of HIV infection and increased survival, but a recent study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggest that high antiretroviral therapy adherence is also associated with lower health care costs. Their study suggests that improved health outcomes associated with high adherence to HIV therapy results in an overall median monthly health care cost savings of $85 per patient in a cohort of 6,833 HIV-infected adults in South Africa. A large component of this cost savings resulted from a decreased need for hospitalization in patients with high adherence to antiretroviral therapy. These results suggest that effective, practical strategies are needed to encourage and actively monitor antiretroviral therapy adherance in order to improve patient outcomes and, in the process, save much need health care resources.

More details on the study can be found in the January 5, 2010 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

On behalf of Physicians for Human Rights, I am pleased to announce the conference below. For more information, please visit www.PHRStudentConference.org.

Physicians for Human Rights National Conference
Health and Human Rights in 2010
Saturday, February 20^th, 2010
Boston University Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts

Register now at www.PHRStudentConference.org! Read the rest of this entry →