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Noncommunicable diseases are often a neglected component of global health. This category ranges from chronic diseases like mental illness, diabetes and heart disease to cancer and injuries. The posts in this section are aggregated from numerous sources on the web. Please contact us with any additional sources you think should be included.
By GHHub
A recent paper by Alkire et al in PLoS One explores the cost-effectiveness of surgical intervention for obstructed labor and c-section. Using the World Health Organization’s cost-effectiveness standards, the study concludes thatinvesting in Caesarean delivery can be considered “highly cost-effective.” The benefit-cost ratio implied that investment in Caesarean delivery is a viable economic proposition as [...]
May 17th, 2012 | Posted in Noncommunicable Disease,Surgery & Anesthesia | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
In a guest post in the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ “Global Food for Thought” blog, Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), examines global efforts to promote food security, noting, “WFP is deploying game-changing initiatives to build capacity, reduce hunger, and eliminate malnutrition through our groundbreaking partnerships with national governments, U.N. agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector.” She writes, “Thanks to tireless studies and technological advancements, our toolbox to solve hunger is large, life-changing, and cost-effective.” She concludes, “The world’s nearly one billion people who woke up hungry this morning have not seen the proposed agenda for the upcoming G8 summit. They are counting on people like you and me to drive food and nutrition security to the top of the global agenda” (5/14).
May 16th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By WHO News
New data highlight increases in hypertension, diabetes incidenceNews release16 May 2012 | Geneva – The World health statistics 2012 report, released today, puts the spotlight on the growing problem of the noncommunicable diseases burden.One in three adults worldwide, according to the report, has raised blood pressure – a condition that causes around half of all deaths from stroke and heart disease. One in 10 adults has diabetes.“This report is further evidence of the dramatic increase in the conditions that trigger heart disease and other chronic illnesses, particularly in low- and middle-income countries,” says Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of WHO. “In some African countries, as much as half the adult population has high blood pressure.”For the first time, the World Health Organization’s annual statistics report includes information from 194 countries on the percentage of men and women with raised blood pressure and blood glucose levels.In high-income countries, widespread diagnosis and treatment with low-cost medication have significantly reduced mean blood pressure across populations – and this has contributed to a reduction in deaths from heart disease. In Africa, however, more than 40% (and up to 50%) of adults in many countries are estimated to have high blood pressure. Most of these people remain undiagnosed, although many of these cases could be treated with low-cost medications, which would significantly reduce the risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke.Also included for the first time in the World health statistics 2012 are data on people with raised blood glucose levels
May 16th, 2012 | Posted in Noncommunicable Disease,Uncategorized | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“Above all else, analyzing the state of the world’s health — be it by looking at obesity rates, cancer cases, malaria deaths, or HIV-free births — requires decent statistics,” Reuters reports in an article examining the use of statistics in public health ahead of the WHO’s World Health Statistics report. “The year’s report, due on May 16, will give data on everything from rates of measles deaths around the world, to the percentage of women who have no access to contraception, to the number or psychiatrists one country has compared to another,” the news service writes. “But some recent high-profile disputes about some sets of data have focused a spotlight on the way the WHO collects its data and compiles its estimates,” it notes.
May 15th, 2012 | Posted in Cancer,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malaria | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
“Africa needs to boost agricultural productivity and address the debilitating hunger that affects 27 percent of its population if it is to sustain its economic boom, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said [in a report] on Tuesday,” Reuters reports (Migiro, 5/15). In its first-ever “Africa Human Development Report 2012: Towards a Food Secure Future,” UNDP “notes that with more than one in four of its 856 million people undernourished, sub-Saharan Africa remains the world’s most food insecure region,” the Guardian writes. According to the newspaper, the report says, “Hunger and extended periods of malnutrition not only devastate families and communities in the short term, but leave a legacy with future generations which impairs livelihoods and undermines human development.”
May 15th, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By PSIHealthyLives
The Huffington Post is running a series of posts where various experts and activists bring an issue to attention in the lead up to this weekend’s G8 summit at Camp David. John R Seffrin, the CEO of the American Cancer Society, uses his column to raise awareness about the global problem of noncommunicable diseases. An excerpt: This month, as government leaders gather for the G8 meeting in Camp David, we urge them to consider the looming health and economic costs of chronic disease. NCDs strike young and old alike and claim far too many of our most productive citizens. The World Economic Forum estimates NCDs will cause a staggering $47 trillion drain on the global economy in the next two decades, and yet NCDs receive less than 3 percent of developmental funding for health each year, according to the Center for Global Development
May 15th, 2012 | Posted in Cancer,Hub Selects,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
By WhyDev.org
An article this week in the Times of Swaziland – “Corporal punishment to be phased out soon” – first filled me with encouragement regarding the progress Swaziland has made in its development issues in comparison to other countries. Then it whisked me down memory lane, making a pit stop at one of the mini crises I had dealt with in Ghana as Project Coordinator for an international volunteer organisation. It was the classic nightmare case: a 19-year-old boy from higher income country (HIC)-X imposed his beliefs and culture on another’s after two weeks on his project.Even with several hours of rigorous discussion courses specifically implemented to prevent circumstances such as this, he managed to do exactly what we instructed him to refrain from doing.Our organization placed him in a teaching assistant role with a primary school. This school, along with nearly every other primary school in Ghana, uses corporal punishment as its principal form of discipline.
May 13th, 2012 | Posted in Aid,HIV/AIDS,Hub Selects,Human Rights,MDGs,Mental Health,Microfinance,Politics,Technology,Uncategorized | Read More »
By PSIHealthyLives
By Pamela Faura, Country Representative, PSI/Mexico I had the good fortune to attend the “Pan American Forum for Action on NCDs” May 7-9 in Brasilia, Brazil with over 250 representatives from the public, private, civil society and academia sectors of the 35 PAHO member countries of the Caribbean, Central America, Southern Cone and Andean region. The goal of the forum was to offer a platform for a “whole of government and whole of society effort” to confront the NCD epidemic in the Americas and was a follow up to the Declaration of the United Nations High Level Meeting on NCDs held in September 2011. Key speakers from PAHO highlighted that NCDs are now on the development agenda and not just on the health agenda — and that this was the second time in history that the United Nations addressed health as an issue, the first time being HIV. Speakers highlighted the alarming statistics in the region—250 million people were living with some chronic condition with a 70% mortality rate, that there were 145 million smokers and 139 million people overweight. The good news, we heard, was that most of these conditions were preventable but would take all sectors working together to reduce the burden of disease and economic costs. Multi-sector partnering was repeated many times during the event.
May 12th, 2012 | Posted in Hub Selects,Noncommunicable Disease | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
Speaking at an economic forum in Madrid, Spain, “[t]he head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO], Jose Graziano da Silva, warned Thursday of a major funding gap for activities in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa,” Agence France-Presse reports. “He added that boosting food security entailed combining emergency action with support for family farming and smallholder production, as well as promoting long term development and reducing vulnerability to extreme events, like drought,” the news agency writes (5/10). According to the U.N. News Centre, Graziano da Silva also called for the involvement of “civil society, private enterprise, international agencies, and the governments of developing and developed countries” to help fight chronic hunger and malnutrition — which affects one of every seven people in the world — because it “is a challenge too great for FAO or any government to overcome alone” (5/10).
May 11th, 2012 | Posted in Kaiser's Global Health Update,Malnutrition | Read More »
By WhyDev.org
Women Deliver recently came out with their annual “Women Deliver 50” list of inspiring ideas and solutions put forward by women and girls. The women and groups celebrated in the list cover a broad range of topics and programs, from midwives in Ethiopia to advocating for women’s voices in Libya.One that sparked my interest was “Africans feeding Africa” by Backpack Farm, which is a social enterprise that hosts trainings for small-scale farmers in East Africa and sells them green agriculture technologies and supplies– all in a backpack.I caught the founder, Rachel Zedeck, in the middle of the busy planting season in Kenya, but she managed to spare some time to tell me about their program and some of the challenges in pursuing the social enterprise model.Tanya Cothran: Where does your funding come from? What drew you to the commercial model as opposed to the donor-funded aid model?Rachel Zedek: I used my life savings to build the company, which is a registered LTD (limited company) in Kenya. In retrospect I think I was naïve.
May 11th, 2012 | Posted in Aid,Human Rights,MDGs,Mental Health,Microfinance,Politics,Technology,Uncategorized | Read More »
By PSIHealthyLives
A new study says one in six cancers worldwide are caused by infections. The majority of the two million are in the developing world and are treatable. The BBC reports: The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible. These four – human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses – account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers. Most cases are in the developing world
May 11th, 2012 | Posted in Cancer | Read More »
By PIH
Mental health and social support services connect orphaned Rwandan teenager with food, school, and hope
May 10th, 2012 | Posted in Mental Health,Uncategorized | Read More »
By CDC Injury Center
Here is the original post: Preventing Suicides – Why I Do What I Do at the Injury Center
May 9th, 2012 | Posted in Injury | Read More »
By Kaiser GH Update
The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) — a new plan to help speed drug development by making abandoned experimental drugs available to researchers who can look for alternative uses — “is an indication that the Obama administration and the medical research enterprise are thinking out of the box,” Michael Manganiello, a partner at HCM Strategists, writes in a Huffington Post “Politics Blog” opinion piece. Manganiello — who says the drug AZT, which originally was developed to treat cancer, helped him live long enough to reap the benefits of new drugs developed in the mid-1990s to treat HIV infection — joined HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and NIH Director Francis Collins this week in launching the initiative, which he says “is a step in the right direction and it is critical that industry collaborate with patient groups and their constituents.”
May 9th, 2012 | Posted in Cancer,Kaiser's Global Health Update,Politics | Read More »
