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A diverse look at global health issues.

June 28, 2012 16:10

Can't we all just work together?: Q&A with Ecoagriculture Partners

Sara Scherr, president and CEO of Ecoagriculture Partners, explains “the whole landscape approach,” which she says is a way to improve biodiversity, ecosystems, and livelihoods simultaneously.
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An employee at Saudi Star rice farm working in Gambella, Ethiopia. (Jenny Vaughan/AFP/Getty Images)
Sara Scherr is president and CEO of Ecoagriculture Partners, an organization that promotes “the whole landscape approach” as a way to improve biodiversity, ecosystems, and livelihoods simultaneously. A report released earlier this month in advance of the Rio+20 conference analyzes the effectiveness and sustainability of this approach.
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June 27, 2012 17:57

National HIV Testing Day: A delicate balance

The US has jumped on the routinized testing bandwagon. But a balance must be struck between making testing more widely available, and making sure patients have enough time and resources for counseling if they test positive.
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A man reads education literature as he waits for an HIV test at a free mobile testing center in Los Angeles. (Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images)
The goal of National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) is to encourage routine testing and early detection of HIV, according to the National Association of People with AIDS, the organization that founded NHTD 18 years ago. And throughout the country, organizations and governments are working toward this goal. Indeed, the US has jumped on the routinized testing bandwagon. But here's the catch–there’s a delicate balance that must be struck when it comes to making HIV tests routine, said Larry Day, Manager of HIV Health Promotion at the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts.
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June 26, 2012 10:04

A Daughter's Journey, Part IV: Ladies build support in Langa

Tracy Jarrett takes an extraordinary journey — from Chicago to Cape Town, South Africa — to learn about the disease that took her mother's life and forever changed her own. She has finally arrived in Cape Town.
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(Emily Judem/GlobalPost)
CAPE TOWN—The ladies, as they have come to be known, arrive to work by 9:00 every morning. Their office is an old mini bus (taxi) station in the center of Langa township. The dilapidated white building is dark inside; a table lined with blue plastic chairs is set up by the window, and two men sit in a small office behind security glass. Resembling a YMCA-meets-doctor’s office, this station has housed the Langa Action Community AIDS Program (L.A.C.A.P.) for seven years.
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June 25, 2012 15:37

US on target with AIDS goals, top official says

One month before the International AIDS Conference, Ambassador Eric Goosby addressed an audience at the Brookings Institute. He said the Obama administration was on target for meeting its HIV/AIDS goals.
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US Global AIDS Coordinator Ambassador Eric P. Goosby (Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON, DC—One month before the International AIDS Conference, the top US official overseeing the global AIDS fight today said that the Obama administration was on target for meeting goals for putting people on treatment, reducing the number of babies infected with HIV, and expanding male circumcisions – but he acknowledged the circumcision effort was tough going.
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June 25, 2012 14:35

Immunizations for all: Q&A with GAVI Alliance's Dagfinn Høybråten

Dagfinn Høybråten is the Board chair of GAVI alliance, an organization that aims to save lives by increasing immunization in developing countries. While at the Child Survival Call to Action Conference in Washington, DC this month, he spoke with GlobalPost about why he believes vaccines are essential to Secretary Clinton’s goal of ending preventable child deaths.
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A girl receives polio vaccination drops from a medical volunteer during an immunisation drive in Amritsar, India. (Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images)
Dagfinn Høybråten is the Board chair of GAVI alliance, an organization that aims to save lives by increasing immunization in developing countries. He also serves as a vice president of Norwegian Parliament and is Norway’s former health minister. While at the Child Survival Call to Action Conference in Washington, DC earlier this month, he spoke with GlobalPost about why he believes vaccines are essential to Secretary Clinton’s goal of ending preventable child deaths.
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June 22, 2012 13:46

New numbers show mixed picture in DC's AIDS fight

Washington, DC has released more information about its HIV/AIDS epidemic – and the results are mixed.
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A large red ribbon hangs on the North Portico of the White House in Washington on November 30, 2010. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
The nation’s capital has released more information about its epidemic – and it’s a mixed picture. The District reported Wednesday that the number of residents infected with HIV in 2010 has increased by nearly 3,000 people since 2006, but DC's overall prevalence rate has dropped from 3.2 percent in 2009 to 2.7 percent. So is DC making progress in its AIDS fight?
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June 21, 2012 10:14

A Daughter's Journey, Part III: Mother-to-child transmission in Johannesburg

Tracy Jarrett takes an extraordinary journey — from Chicago to Cape Town, South Africa — to learn about the disease that took her mother's life and forever changed her own. This is what she is finding in Johannesburg, her first stop in South Africa.
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(Emily Judem/GlobalPost)
JOHANNESBURG—From the outside, the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, on the outskirts of Soweto township, looks like a prison. A metal fence with security checkpoints surrounds the hospital’s large yellow brick buildings. Despite appearances, though, this research hospital has served more than three million people. It is the largest research hospital in southern Africa and among the largest in the world. When I arrived in Johannesburg, USAID representatives Shelagh O’Rourke and Themba Mathebula met me at the airport. They had arranged for me to visit Baragwanath Hospital, which is home to a USAID-funded HIV clinic that focuses on the prevention of mother-to-child transmission.
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June 20, 2012 14:31

Thanking Goodness: Community care workers and HIV/AIDS patients help each other in South Africa

PEPFAR is moving to support local leadership and implementation capacity for AIDS care and treatment. And given the South African health system’s weaknesses in the face of the magnitude of AIDS and TB, that means an investment in people like Goodness Henama –– lay listeners with just a few weeks of training.
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In Wallacedene township near Cape Town, Margaret Hans, here with her son Carlos, receives a weekly visit from community care worker Goodness Henama. (Alex Duval Smith/GlobalPost)
CAPE TOWN –– Margaret Hans, 25, shuffles to the door of her simple but immaculate two-room township home. Thin and with drawn facial features, she is still weak from tuberculosis - the all-too-familiar opportunistic scourge that piggy-backs on the South African HIV epidemic. It’s Tuesday, which means that community care worker Goodness Henama, 26, is making her weekly visit. Today, Hans has someone to talk to. In any country, quality of life is all in the detail. But in South Africa, the bigger picture is dominant: as of 2009, 5.6 million people were living with HIV, and the country has been rushing to catch up on the roll out of anti-retroviral drugs and coping with the sheer social impact of 1.9 million orphans due to AIDS. How, then, is there time to listen to Margaret?
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June 19, 2012 18:14

A Daughter's Journey, Part II: Notes from New York

Tracy Jarrett takes an extraordinary journey — from Chicago to Cape Town, South Africa — to learn about the disease that took her mother's life and forever changed her own. New York City is her second stop along the way.
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(Emily Judem/GlobalPost)

NEW YORK — Cape Town is worlds away from Chicago, and before I head to South Africa I want to speak with the movers and shakers of HIV prevention and treatment in American cities — where HIV infection rates rival those in southern Africa — about what they think are the “needs improvement” areas for treating the virus in the US.

Dr. Victoria Sharp, who works in HIV clinical care and management at St. Luke’s hospital in Manhattan and who currently serves as president of the board of HealthRight International, told me that despite our success in treating and preventing HIV in the US, there is still much to learn.

“We have multiple tools in our toolkit,” she said, but she does not believe that we are using them to the best of our ability.

“We don’t always do a good job of linking people to treatment,” she explained. She gave an example of a woman who tested HIV positive and then was asked to wait five weeks for the next open appointment before beginning treatment.

“That is called a non-appointment,” she said. “It is so far in the future that people move on and forget to take action."

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June 19, 2012 11:56

A Forgotten Anniversary: PEPFAR's real birthday

Ten years ago today President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden to announce a $500 million program to stop the transmission of HIV passed from mothers to children during birth. That announcement is what led the way to PEPFAR.
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A woman walks with her son near the Ethiopia-Somalia border. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
For anyone who cares about the global AIDS fight, today should be a day to celebrate the saving of millions of lives in the developing world. Ten years ago today – June 19, 2002 – President Bush stepped into the Rose Garden to announce what at the time was an unusual new initiative: a $500 million program to stop the transmission of HIV passed from mothers to children during birth. At the time, it was a ground-breaking idea, especially from a conservative Republican president who earlier had cast doubt on the effectiveness of foreign aid. His plan doubled what the Clinton administration was spending on global AIDS. In announcing his initiative, Bush said, “the global devastation of HIV/AIDS staggers the imagination and shocks the conscience. The disease has already killed over 20 million people and it's poised to kill at least 40 million more.”
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