April 2016

[12]Photo credit: Warren Zelman

Today, April 7, we celebrate World Health Day, started by the World Health Organization (WHO) to mark its founding in 1948.

Amid Ebola, Zika, maternal and child mortality, and other global health challenges, WHO chose [13] diabetes, for the first time, as its World Health Day [14] theme (“Stay super. Beat diabetes”). To urge global action on the rising diabetes burden, WHO released a new global report yesterday, April 6, highlighting key global diabetes findings [15], country profiles, and recommendations to reach the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 3.4, which calls on countries to reduce premature death from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, by 30 percent by 2030.

MSH Celebrates 10 Years of Improving the Health of Women and Children in Nigeria [17]

Matthew Martin [18]

[17]Dr. Zipporah Kpamor, Country Director, MSH Nigeria, is interviewed at the 10th anniversary event.Photo credit: Ghaffar Rabiu

Management Sciences for Health (MSH) celebrated 10 Years of Improving the Health of Women and Children in Nigeria [19] with 250 stakeholders and supporters at a special event in Abuja on March 31, 2016. Distinguished guests included the chairman of the Nigerian House of Representatives, director of the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria, high-level representatives from state governments and partner organizations, and more.

After a rousing rendition of “Arise, Oh Compatriots,” the Nigerian national anthem, Country Director, Dr. Zipporah Kpamor, welcomed participants and underscored the intention for the day’s two round-table panel discussions:

In Nigeria, 150 women and 2,300 children die every day from preventable causes. One in five children won’t live to see their fifth birthday. This event can help continue conversations on what we can do to end preventable deaths among women, children, and young people.

Currently, MSH’s partnerships for health system strengthening in Nigeria [19] reach nearly 560,000 people through four projects.

Learning from Diabetes: Why Smart Government Spending Matters for SDG Medicines Target [21]

Niranjan Konduri [22]

[21]Vials of insulin. Diabetes medicines and health technologies, including lifesaving insulin, are available in only one in three of the world’s poorest countries.Photo credit: Alan Levine via Flickr / CC BY

Cross-posted with permission from Devex.com [23].

The World Health Organization’s first global report on diabetes [15] released this month highlights the disease’s “alarming surge” with rates that have quadrupled in fewer than three decades. The report reminds us that essential diabetes medicines and health technologies, including lifesaving insulin, are available in only one in three of the world’s poorest countries.

Availability of medicines is certainly an important piece of the complex challenge of ensuring that health systems seamlessly integrate prevention, screening, referral, treatment, and adherence. However, choosing the best way to spend limited public health budgets amid competing priorities is equally important.

Advocacy and Storytelling: A Bridge and Guide toward Women's Health and Rights [25]

[25]Youth in Mali, with support from Family Care International, performed plays to tell the stories of persons living with HIV/AIDS.Photo by Catherine Lalonde/MSH

“In 509 days, my country will go to the ballot box, and I will be running for office in Kenya,” announced Stephanie Musho, a law student and staffer at a global health non-profit. Musho made this bold statement while speaking on a panel of young African women leaders during the 60^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women [26] (CSW) in March.

“But first, I have to tell you a story about what it means to be a woman candidate,” she sighed. “I’ve worked hard for my campaign. I’ve met with constituents and partners to get their support and raise money. I approached two potential contributors, who were men, and they said ‘With a body like that, you shouldn’t have any problem raising money.’ I knew what they were insinuating, and I can’t believe this is still happening. But I’m not going to let that stop me.”

Musho was one of fifteen advocates from the Moremi Initiative [27], a women’s leadership institute in Ghana, sharing personal stories of working to effect change in their communities and for the women in their countries. Their stories provided poignant context for the challenges they faced and the triumphs they experienced.

World Malaria Day 2016: Scaling-up Cost-Effective, Proven Systems Solutions to End Malaria for Good [29]

Gladys Tetteh [30]

[29]Amina is one of 3 million children in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa who received seasonal malaria chemoprevention malaria in 2015.Photo credit: MSH staff

Four-year-old Amina is why I work on malaria. I met her in Basse District, The Gambia, last year when I was visiting the team distributing lifesaving malaria treatment to children under five. Words can’t describe the feeling of seeing this young Gambian girl, who had been severely ill with malaria, now beaming with joy, literally running to me for her fourth treatment.

Her mother walked up and described to me how sick Amina had been before MSH and partners began ensuring access to the quality-assured malaria treatments for children under five in the district. Since she first got malaria as an infant, every year during the rainy season (from September through December), Amina would become severely ill with malaria. She couldn’t play with the other kids outside, or go to school. One year, she fell into a coma and was hospitalized. But, in 2015, Amina experienced the opportunity for a healthy life: since September, she had received monthly treatment for malaria, known as seasonal malaria chemoprevention (or SMC). At four years old, Amina knew that this was what stopped her from feeling so ill, and enabled her to feel well.

She ran towards me for her medication, smiling ear to ear.

Ending Preventable Child Deaths with Integrated Community Case Management: Stronger Pharmaceutical Systems for Healthier Communities [32]

Catherine Jane Briggs [33]

[32]Photo credit: Brooke Huskey/MSH

Many child deaths in developing countries are preventable: Children die from treatable conditions, such as pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria, because families in rural, hard-to-reach, or conflict-ridden areas can’t access or afford the treatments. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), launched in September 2015, set ambitious targets of ending preventable child deaths by 2030 and reducing mortality among children under age five [34] to at least 25 per 1,000 live births.

Integrated community case management (iCCM) has been recognized as a key strategy [35] for increasing access to essential treatments and meeting the objectives for children under five laid out in the SDGs. Integrated community case management entails training volunteer community health workers to serve as the first point of contact for medical treatment in remote areas, enabling them to recognize and treat common childhood illnesses. To be effective, community health workers must operate within a broader pharmaceutical system in which the needs for quality medicines and other health commodities are assured.

Beyond the Facility Walls: Community Health Workers Need Support [37]

[37]A health worker in Togo counsels a woman on reproductive health.Photo credit: Katy Doyle/MSH

Many years ago I began my public health career in Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, then a squatter settlement of 1.8 million people, bordering Mexico City in the State of Mexico. Lack of land and unaffordable rents forced poor migrants, streaming in from the country side in search of employment and a better life in the city, to settle in the surrounding peri-urban areas. This large municipality, with few paved streets, was difficult to navigate in the rainy season. During the dry season, the wind would kick up dust storms that made it hard to see a block ahead. Nezahualcoyotl means hungry coyote in the Nahuatl language and too many families in Neza, as people sometimes called it, were poor and hungry.

Global Health Impact: Communities: Key to Strong Health Systems [39]

Management Sciences for Health [40]