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Connecting To Advance
By Dr. Kwabena Amponsah-Manager
It is estimated that by 2030, 40% of the world GDP and 85% of the world population will be in regions where water resources exceed supply. Scary? Alarming? I think so. But there are actions we can take now to save the planet for ourselves, our children and their children, or we can bury our heads in the sand. Saving the only planet which offers us home, responsible capitalism, politics and religion should not be at odds with one another. Why should they?
British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline is seeking regulatory approval for the world’s first malaria vaccine after trial data showed that it had cut the number of cases in African children.
Experts say that they are optimistic about the possibility of the world’s first vaccine after the trial results.
Malaria, a mosquito-borne parasitic disease, kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide every year.
Scientists say an effective vaccine is key to attempts to eradicate it.
The vaccine known as RTS,S was found to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial and to have reduced by about 25% the number of malaria cases in infants.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is developing RTS,S with the non-profit Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), supported by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Many millions of malaria cases fill the wards of our hospitals,” said Halidou Tinto, a lead investigator on the RTS,S trial from Burkina Faso.
“Progress is being made with bed nets and other measures, but we need more tools to battle this terrible disease.”
The malaria trial was Africa’s largest-ever clinical trial involving almost 15,500 children in seven countries.
The findings were presented at a medical meeting in Durban, South Africa.
“Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA),” GSK said in a statement.
The company has been developing the vaccine for three decades.
The statement said that the hope now is that the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) may recommend the use of the RTS,S vaccine from as early as 2015 if EMA drugs regulators back its licence application.
Testing showed that 18 months after vaccination, children aged five to 17 months had a 46% reduction in the risk of clinical malaria compared to unvaccinated contemporaries.
But in infants aged six to 12 weeks at the time of vaccination, there was only a 27% reduction in risk.
A spokeswoman for GSK told the AFP news agency that the company would file its application to the EMA under a process aimed at facilitating new drugs for poorer countries.
UK politician Lynne Featherstone, International Development Minister, said: “Malaria is not just one of the world’s biggest killers of children, it also burdens health systems, hinders children’s development and puts a brake on economic growth. An effective malaria vaccine would have an enormous impact on the developing world.
“We welcome the scientific progress made by this research and look forward to seeing the full results in due course.”
Perfect Daba, a promising 23-year-old woman from Torgome in the Volta Region, bled to death in three solid hours, during which she failed to reach the hospital.
She had been delivered of a bouncy baby girl in the middle of the night, but complications had set in, a familiar problem faced by most of the 4,000 Ghanaian women who die annually from pregnancy-related complications.
Bleeding is the major cause of maternal deaths in Ghana. What sets the death of Perfect apart, however, is the context and extraordinary circumstances.
There is only one exit out of the village of Torgome, and that is a metal gate at the Kpong Power Plant managed by the Volta River Authority (VRA). At 3 a.m. that fateful day when Sammy, Perfect’s husband, tried to rush his dying wife in a taxi to the Akuse Hospital, about 80 kilometres away, the metal gate was shut.
Unfortunately, the security man was nowhere to be found.
Sammy recollects that it took nearly an hour to find the security guard and persuade him to open the gate. The gate is normally reopened at 6 a.m. The other exit possibility is on the Volta Lake on the other side of the village, but the lake is deep there and unsafe for shallow canoes.
Right lessons
Apart from learning the right lessons in order to reduce the high incidence of maternal deaths across the country, Perfect’s story is significant because she paid a price for all of us with her life.
Torgome occupies a strategic place in Ghana’s developmental history. It is one of the resettlement villages created by the Volta River Hydro-electric project which transformed the physical environment of the area. The Volta Lake is the largest man-made lake in the world.
Delay in reaching health facilities has been cited by the Ghana Health Service as one of the three key issues resulting in the high incidence of deaths across the country. Normally, this is associated with pregnant women failing to recognise or acknowledge the risk signs of pregnancy or labour, lack of transport to hospitals from far-to-reach villages, especially during the night, lack of ambulances and so on but never because a gate is locked.
Perfect eventually arrived at the Akuse Hospital, still conscious but in a critical condition. The staff responded promptly but more than three hours had passed since she went into labour.
Sammy said when Perfect first complained about stomach pains, he took her to the village health post, but it was closed that fateful Saturday.
At the Akuse Hospital, there was no doctor on duty, but the nurses did their best to resuscitate her. Many government hospitals have a perennial shortage of doctors and skilled medical personnel. As the nurses tried to bring Perfect back to life, Sammy and an auntie who had accompanied them were asked to leave the room.
The doctor eventually arrived, but it was too late. He called Sammy back to the ward to tell him the bad news. The nurses said Perfect’s veins had collapsed, making it impossible to inject a drip.
The newly born baby had also made the journey to the hospital. She was well but had to be hospitalised for special care since she was born prematurely.
Sammy went back home that morning without his wife and his baby.
Perfect’s funeral
Perfect’s funeral was one of the most emotionally charged funerals our cameras had recorded. It was proceeded by a wake and a burial attended by family members and people from all the surrounding villages. She was a popular local girl known for her kindness and helpful nature.
Sammy is also the village choice carpenter.
There was sadness, and there was anger, but it was all dignified and the pleas were almost cordial. The gate must be opened at all times, everybody said. The VRA can ensure that its security concerns are met by posting security guards there around the clock. Restricting their movement, especially when it was going to delay reaching the hospital and end in such a tragedy, was a denial of their human rights. They also pleaded for a properly functioning local clinic that can ensure that women delivered safely at all times.
In the TV programme to be broadcast, John Chobbah, the VRA’s Communication Officer, expressed shock at Perfect’s tragic end and extended his sympathy to her family.
He was, however, firm about this. Due to security reasons, the VRA would not open the gate at night.
Perfect’s story was told on Maternal Health Channel on TV3 at 8.30 p.m. on July 26 and will be repeated on GTV at 8 p.m. next Thursday, August 1 and on TV3 at 8.30 p.m. on Friday, August 2.
The Daily Graphic
The World Health Organization’s annual statistics show progress is being made around the world in cutting child mortality – but it will miss its target of a two-thirds reduction by 2015.
The number of under-fives dying fell from 12 million in 1990 to less than seven million in 2011, the data shows.
But that will not be enough to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal.
The WHO says the health gap between countries is narrowing, but there are continuing inequalities in health care.
Many people in low- and middle-income countries have insufficient access to medicines in the public sector, meaning they rely on the private sector, where prices can be up to 16 times higher, says the WHO.
In these countries, an average of only 57% – and in some cases as little as 3% – of selected generic non-branded medicines are available in the public sector, according to data compiled by the global health body.
The World Health Statistics 2013 report compares progress made by countries with the best health status and the worst status over two decades, from 1990.
The statistics are compiled from many sources, including government birth and death registrations, hospital records, household surveys and research projects.
“Our statistics show that overall the gaps are closing between the most-advantaged and least-advantaged countries of the world,” said Dr Ties Boerma, director of the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems at the WHO.
“However, the situation is far from satisfactory as progress is uneven and large gaps persist between and within countries.”
The gap in child mortality fell, from 171 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 107 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2011, according to the latest statistics.
Global statistics on the number of women dying in childbirth have also improved, but the WHO says the global decline in maternal deaths (3%) will have to double to meet the goal of reducing maternal deaths by three-quarters.
Commenting on the report, the charity Save the Children said that as well as improving access to healthcare for the poorest families, the world must redouble efforts to tackle hunger, which contributes to a third of child deaths.
“We have made incredible progress in cutting the numbers of children who die every year by improving treatment of preventable diseases and making vaccines available to the poorest children,” said Brendan Cox, Save the Children’s director of policy.
“But unless we tackle hunger, we risk losing this momentum, and children will continue to die needlessly.”
Key trends in the report
Credit: The BBC News
22 April 2013, Rome – Ministers and senior delegates from five African Nations met today with FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva ahead of a High-Level meeting of African and international leaders in Addis Ababa next June set to create a renewed partnership for intensifying efforts to end hunger in Africa.
“There is an enormous window of opportunity,” for eradicating hunger in the continent, Graziano da Silva told a side-event organized during a week-long Session of FAO’s governing Council here. The key lies in capitalizing on the successes of the many African countries who have already found solutions for food insecurity and malnutrition.
“By building on these experiences we can eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition in Africa. Together we can stop the suffering of the estimated 23 percent of all Africans who remain undernourished, and 40 percent of children under five who are stunted or malnourished,” he said.
One reason for optimism is the unprecedented political commitment of governments and the African people to end hunger. An example is the decision of FAO’s regional Conference for Africa to set up an Africa Food Security Trust Fund. The Republic of the Congo, Angola and Equatorial Guinea have already announced they will contribute. Continue reading ““Enormous opportunity” for ending hunger in Africa”
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NAIROBI, 31 March 2013 (IRIN) – The British government has announced a major new programme aimed at providing essential healthcare to six million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The five-year, US$270.7 million project will focus on rebuilding health facilities, training health workers, and supplying drugs and equipment.
Civil war has destroyed much of the country’s health infrastructure, as well as the road networks and vital services such as electricity, meaning patients often have to travel long distances to health centres that may not be equipped to handle their complications.
IRIN has put together a list of five health issues in DRC that require urgent attention:
Maternal and Child Health – DRC’s maternal mortality ratio is 670 deaths per 100,000 live births, with an estimated 19,000 maternal deaths annually. The country has a severe shortage of health workers – less than one health professional is available per 1,000 people.
With 170 out of every 1,000 children dying before they reach the age of five and 10 percent of infants underweight, DRC has one of the worst child health indicators in the world. It is one of five countries in the world in which about half of under-five deaths occur. Some of the biggest killers of children are diarrhoea, malaria, malnutrition and pneumonia.
Sexual violence – Several studies report high levels of sexual violence perpetrated against women, children and men in DRC, both by armed groups and within the home; one study, conducted in the North and South Kivu and Ituri in 2010, found that 40 percent of women and 24 percent of men had experienced sexual violence. Continue reading “Democratic Republic of Congo Gets Boost for HealthCare”
BLANTYRE, 9 January 2013 (IRIN) – International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde urged Malawians to stick with tough economic reforms during a recent three-day visit to the country, but measures recommended by the Fund and implemented by President Joyce Banda have been deeply unpopular with many citizens who can no longer afford basic goods and services.
Key among these measures was Banda’s decision, made soon after she took office in April 2012, to devalue the Malawian kwacha by 49 percent and untie the currency from the US dollar. The government also lifted subsidies and price controls on fuel.
The moves were designed to address chronic shortages of foreign-exchange reserves and key imports such as fuel, but they also triggered rapid inflation, which remains at 33 percent. Continue reading “MALAWI: “A Long and Hard Road Ahead””
