Clinics Rising blog

Visualizing Our World

clinicsrising admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:04:32 +0000

This is one of my favorite TED talks, Hans Rosling takes us through population and economic data while making it all very entertaining. He explores and follows human development trends and challenges old myths.

You can use his tools here : Gapminder.org

XDR-TB - Deadly & Resistant

clinicsrising admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:57:53 +0000

Photo Credit: James Nachtwey

"Many people think of tuberculosis as being a disease from the past. The truth is far from it: Tuberculosis is mutating into dangerous new strains for which there is no known cure".

Award winning photographer James Nachtwey describes XDR-TB as "a merciless, man-eating predator lurking in the shadows." His arresting photographs of TB and AIDS patients are not some thing we see often. These photographs raise emotions in viewers often repressed in our modern world. These are real people dying from real diseases that there is no cure for yet.

Visit the XDRTB.ogr site to learn more.

Health Care In The Andes

clinicsrising admin — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:26:43 +0000

Photo Credit: Future Generations

"Although primary health facilities exist in these remote highlands, the indigenous communities do not utilize them due to distance and poverty combined with language and cultural barriers. As a result, the Cusco Region has among the highest rates of maternal-child mortality and chronic child malnutrition in Peru".

Read more about the NEXOS Project in Peru which provides primary and maternal health care and ongoing education on nutrition and illness.

They have some very interesting community driven programs such as:

Community emergerncy evacuation protocals to transport obstetrical and newborn emergencies to the nearest health facility
Community work plans with goals such as reducing chronic child malnutrition and obtaining government funding for community projects
Leaders of women´s groups met to exchange experiences in maternal and child health and nutrition, and to discuss their rights and responsibilities as women and mothers in the home.

We Said Never Again, Continued

clinicsrising admin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:14:45 +0000

Photo Credit: Time Child Soldiers- link

"The international community failed to stop Rwanda’s genocide and promised not to let it happen again. Has the world forgotten so quickly"?

NY Times Opinion

LA Times

How will aid come to those who need it? Food water, shelter and medicine. We are sure to hear of the deaths of aid workers and other peacekeepers. When is the time to intervene?

We Said Never Again

clinicsrising admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:07:00 +0000

Photo Credit: Unknown, please contact us if you know the appropriate credit

Helen O'Neill is an Operational Advisor with emergency medical aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). She recently returned after having worked with the MSF teams in the Kivu region of northeastern Congo where, today, thousands of people are desperately fleeing violence as the 15 year conflict escalates into outright war. Here Helen describes the situation on the ground.

Listen to Helen O'Neill talk about the situation:

You can read her account here: Médecins Sans Frontières

A Deadly Choice

clinicsrising admin — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:11:46 +0000

Photo: Flicker starpause kid

With health insurance a pawn in the current US presidential campaign I felt we should explore some stories of the uninsured. When you don't have health insurance you face the difficult and often harmful choice of jeopardizing your healthcare needs. Rent or doctors visit. Car payment or prescription. Dinner or dentist.

The American Medical Association has put together an advocacy site for the uninsured with some really great stories. These stories cover a really wide range of circumstances that are not often told.

Check it out: http://www.voicefortheuninsured.org/ (Link)

Here are some of more stories from The Children's Defense Fund (link):

- Deamonte Driver, a seventh grader in Prince George’s County, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C., died because he couldn’t find a dentist who would accept Medicaid and his mother couldn’t afford an $80 tooth extraction. The inexcusable loss of this 12-year-old’s life started when he complained of a toothache. His mother, Alyce, who works at low-paying jobs, had been focused on finding a dentist to see Deamonte’s brother, who had six rotting teeth, when Deamonte began complaining of pain.

- Devante was a 13-year-old boy with advanced cancer of the kidneys who went without any health coverage for four months while his mother attempted to renew his Medicaid coverage. Although his mother, Tamika, submitted at least three renewal applications beginning in February 2006—one through the financial counselor at Texas Children's Hospital—and called the CHIP/Medicaid hotline dozens of times, there was no record of Devante's case in the system when advocates contacted the call center on his behalf in August 2006. Because of a state staffing shortage, officials say his application went unprocessed. Meanwhile, Devante went without any health insurance and had to depend on clinical trials for care as his tumors continued to grow.

- Mekeal, a recently divorced mother, said her two children were dropped from SCHIP in January because her salary exceeds the income eligibility level by $2,000. She applied for private coverage through Blue Cross Blue Shield and was approved for her 3-year-old but not for her 10-year-old. She suspects it’s because her daughter suffered from irritable bowel syndrome more than three years ago. When she asked why BCBS refused coverage for her older daughter, they told her it was because of “strict underwriting.” The family has been trying to get by with no health insurance, but Mekeal says the $200 doctor visits when her daughter gets sick are too much for her budget and she will make another attempt to get private insurance.

The First Race For The Cure

clinicsrising admin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:22:23 +0000

Photo: Flicker otisarchives1

Something my generation has never had to think much about, let alone worry about is Poliomyelitis. Polio one of the most dreaded childhood disease in the early part of the 20th century was identified in 1840 and was found to quickly spread from Europe to the US in the 1880s. By 1910 it had become a global epidemic with increased cases occurring in highly populated areas in the summer months.

When FDR contracted the disease in 1921 he created the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis in 1938 which later became the March Of Dimes.

Two vaccines funded in part by the March of Dimes were developed by Jonas Salk in 1952 the other announced by Albert Sabin in 1956. Polio was eliminated in the US in 1979 and the western hemisphere in 1991.

"When I finally left hospital I had a caliper on each leg, a steel body brace and walked with the aid of crutches, a true man of steel." - This is an excerpt from one of many stories I found here (link)

Please share any stories of how Polio has affected your life below in the comments section.

Polio Stats (University of Cincinnati):

1350 Earliest depictions from Egypt
1789 first clinical description by British physician
1908 Karl Landsteiner determines viral cause vs. bacterial
1921 FDR contracts the disease
1952 US 21,000 cases of paralysis
1979 Last case of wild-virus acquired polio in US
1991 Vanquished from western hemisphere
1997 Western Pacific polio free
2002 European region polio free
Only 7 countries remain endemic

Case breakdown by country (Global Polio Eradication Initiative - Link)

Country	Year-to-date 2008	Year-to-date 2007	Total in 2007	Date of onset of most recent case
Pakistan	67	13	32	16 September 2008
India	449	255	874	12 September 2008
Afghanistan	20	10	17	10 September 2008
Nigeria	692	201	285	29 August 2008
Chad	21	5	22	21 August 2008
Sudan	5	0	1	15 August 2008
CAR	2	0	0	8 August 2008
DRC	4	29	41	5 August 2008
Nepal	5	0	5	27 July 2008
Angola	25	9	8	14 July 2008
Niger	13	4	11	7 July 2008
Benin	2	0	0	30 June 2008
Burkina Faso	1	0	0	6 June 2008
Ethiopia	2	0	0	27 April 2008
Myanmar	0	11	11	28 May 2007
Somalia	0	8	8	25 March 2007

Malaria, Why Is It Still Here?

clinicsrising admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:05:01 +0000

Photo: Flicker otisarchives1

The World Bank’s Group President painted a grim picture of the vicious circle created by malaria when he said the disease “preys on the poor and keeps them poor".

World Health Organization (WHO) statistics show that out of 1.2 million cases of malaria, 1 million of those are reported from sub-Sahara Africa. Nigeria alone accounts for 1/3 of these cases.

A disease spread by misquotes is hard to curb, mosquito nets, dispensing of stagnant water and dispensing medicine are all ways to start curbing the spread of this disease, but the core of the problem may lie in the corruption that plagues Africa much more so than any insect.

This Day Editorial (link)

Why Africa?

clinicsrising admin — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:51:00 +0000

Photo: Flicker jonrawlinson

"Although Africa has 25% of the world's disease burden, it has only 3% of the world's health care workers"

- Reuters

We are often asked why so much attention on Africa and not elsewhere. Our first story has focused on Rwanda yet we are developing other stories that will bring you a visceral view from around the globe. Simply Africa is a big place with a lot of problems. People who visit are often compelled to help when they return home.

I don't think this is an African issue alone. When people who are accustomed to one way of living and see others suffering from a lack of resources that they are accustomed to they tend to want to help. The root of these lacking resources may lie in the relaxed western immigration regulations which has allowed workers to migrate abroad for work and not returning with knowledge or care.

"It would be impossible to solve or stop migration of health workers, these countries are on the brink of collapse due to the lack of skilled personnel"

- Ezekiel Nukuro, World Health Organization

Source: Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report

Mental Health is Overlooked

clinicsrising admin — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:08:48 +0000

Photo: Flicker M R Hasan

Mental health is rarely discussed when talking about global health initiatives, yet it is one of the most important areas to look at when trying to treat a population who has experienced a traumatic event such as genocide, terrorism, or natural disasters.

"Anyone who tries to project what may happen to the neglected African child who is a victim or survivor of post traumatic stress disorder, as a result of seeing parents, teachers or siblings mutilated in war … would be guessing," he said.

"One begins to project and understand that in the course of time children who witness genocide in Rwanda are likely to become adults with unresolved grief, PTS disorder, substance abuse issues, depression. In fact, just thinking about the likely consequences of the traumatic events the African child is going through, we anticipate in 30 years time, we are going to have [a] large African population of deeply traumatized and unstable [people]," he continued.

- From Voice of America article (link)

Why do you think this is the case? Are disease such as TB, malaria, and HIV easier for people to understand and tackle from a scientific perspective? Is mental health too obtuse of a problem for those dealing with cultural differences often barley understood? Please comment below.

Mental illness has long been a contentious issue in Ghana: still surrounded by an unshakable stigma, the few psychiatric hospitals Ghana does have are overcrowded. Receiving a meager 60 pesewa ($0.57) per patient a day from the government, the Accra Psychiatric Hospital can barely afford to treat the population it has.

- The Ubyssey - UBC Canadian student paper (link)