The Global Health Alliance is seeking to spear the fight against chronic diseases world-wide. For full story, read here. What do you think are some differences between ‘implementation science’ as mentioned in the article and ‘translational science’? Is it only a matter of whether evidence-based medicine and/or bench research is applied to an individual patient or a larger patient population?
The following article was first published on the PLoS Medicine Blog, “Speaking of Medicine“, and is cross-posted here.
The role of medical students in limiting the spread of antimicrobial resistance
Adam Castaño‡, Sujal Parikh‡ and Eunice Yu, medical students at the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA (‡ These authors contributed equally to this post). Contact Adam Castano on acastano@umich.edu.
Nowhere in the world is free from the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, parasites and viruses. The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Alliance for Patient Safety has recognized the dual problems posed by the increasing incidence of drug-resistant bacteria and the decline in antibiotic innovation. For the past two years, a working group of policy makers, scientists, epidemiologists, and economists have assembled at several international meetings to outline an international strategy to address antimicrobial resistance (1). Policy recommendations, to be launched in 2010, will establish new roles for governments, public health departments, industry, and physicians as primary stakeholders in AMR prevention and alleviation. Physicians prescribe antimicrobials, contribute to the spread of pathogens (particularly hospital-acquired infections), educate patients about appropriate use of antimicrobials, perform research, and set research agendas. Medical students are being trained in an era where the toll of antimicrobial resistant infections is evident on a daily basis. As future physicians, they have the potential to help to address this problem. Here, we describe new leadership roles for medical students within their medical schools, hospitals, communities, states, and countries to alleviate the problem of AMR.
The role of medical students in medical schools Read the rest of this entry →
From Al Jazeera (English version):
The United Nations has welcomed the decision by Sri Lanka’s government to announce the release of the remaining 130,000 Tamils kept in detention camps for the last six months.
About 250,000 people fled the final bloody phase of the civil war between the government and separatist Tamil Tigers.
They were ultimately housed in government-run camps in the district of Vavuniya.
Hundreds of thousands of Tamils’ have been displaced in the fighting and are now living in hastily put together refugee camps that have been largely shut off from the outside world.
Much of the focus on HIV in medicine has been on finding better treatments and a cure for those who have it and developing a vaccine to prevent its further spread. The journal Science recently published a French study where the lead investigators mixed gene therapy and cell therapy to treat a deadly brain disease. The scientists used HIV as a vector to correct a sample of stem cells from two patients who had adrenoleukodystrophy; the study had positive outcomes.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has released its latest global health survey, Views on the U.S. Role in Global Health Update. This report explores opinions of the American public on US efforts and policies aimed at improving the health of people in developing nations. The poll found that the majority of Americans support continuing current US spending to improve the health of resource-limited nations, with 32% of the public supporting maintaining spending and 34% supporting increasing spending. A quarter of respondents were leery of the economic conditions of the times and felt that the country was spending too much on health abroad. 58% of respondents felt that efforts should focus on building health infrastructure compared to 36% who felt that it is important to emphasize efforts towards eliminating specific diseases like malaria and HIV. Reflecting our globalized world, 55% felt that money spent to improve the health of developing nations also impacts the health of Americans in the US. When asked whether US global health funding should be administered directly by the US or via coordinated international efforts, 45% believe that it is best for the US to directly provide aid on its own while 43% felt that international efforts through organizations like the Global Fund are more effective. Additional findings and data as well as information on US Global Health Policy is available from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Centers for cholera treatment in northern Mozambique have been vandalized recently due to a belief that they are actually causing cholera, rather than treating it. The misunderstanding is partly blamed on the similarity between the Portuguese words for Cholera and Chlorine, since Chlorine is used to treat water and prevent cholera. (Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until the mid-1970’s).
See the full story here: http://allafrica.com/stories/200911120948.html
Learn more about biologics at www.affordablemedsnow.org
what is the biogenerics bill all about?
On October 30, 2009 President Obama announced the end of a 22-year ban on travel to the United States by people infected with the HIV virus. The President made good on an earlier promise, acting to eliminate a restriction he said was “rooted in fear rather than fact.” The new rule will take effect after a routine 60-day waiting period, ending the US’s position as one of only about a dozen countries that bar people who are infected with HIV. Read the rest of this entry →