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Global Health Program - Global Health Weekly
Global Health Website
Issue Volume 7 Issue #1 - January 10, 2018
In this issue:
Happy New Year to Everyone!
Global Health Rounds - January 15, 2018
Gaza's Health System Close to Collapse as Electricity Crisis Threatens Total Blackout
Big Tobacco Woos African Farmers with Bogus Promises of Prosperity
Rohingya Children Facing 'Massive Mental Health Crisis'
Diphtheria's Resurgence Is a Lesson in Public Health Failure
Save the Dates of Local Events!
Call for Abstracts/Submissions
Local Initiatives
Students & Residents
Newsletter & Special Journal Editions
Reports & Podcasts
Happy New Year to Everyone!
The FoMD Global Health Fair will be held from 11 AM to 6 PM in ECHA 2-420 on 29 January 2018.
 
There will be three sessions on
i) infectious disease (e. virology, bacteriology, and parasitology),
ii) the individual (eg. oncology, physiology, obstetrics, nutrition).
iii) the community (eg. epidemiology, public health, nursing).

The keynote speaker will be Professor Michael Houghton.
 
 
Registration is important as it allows us to coordinate technical aspects of the event. So even if you only plan to attend the keynote talk (and the free lunch), please sign up! 
 
We look forward to seeing you on the 29th.
 
Global Health Rounds - January 15, 2018
  
All Are Welcome
Staff, Students, Faculty & Public
 
 
Presented by:  
Cathy Flood, MD, FRCPC
Professor, Dept. of Obstetrics & Gynecology 
University of Alberta
 
 
 
 
 
 

To add to your calendar click here
 
 
 
 
We're always looking for new speakers and ideas for topics for Global Health Rounds for this coming up academic year.  If you have speakers or topics, please contact Cheryl Knowles at GHFoMD@ualberta.ca
 
Feedback/Comments from Our Readers
Comments, questions and feedback is always welcome.
Gaza's Health System Close to Collapse as Electricity Crisis Threatens Total Blackout
Hospitals in Gaza will face an almost total power blackout by the end of February unless funding is secured to keep emergency generators running, the World Health Organization has warned.
 
An ongoing electricity crisis in Gaza has left hospitals reliant on emergency generators for up to 20 hours a day, while medical staff have been forced to cut back on basic services such as equipment sterilisation and diagnostics. About 500,000 litres of fuel are required each month to sustain critical care in Gaza, but funding will only cover hospitals’ needs until the end of February. 

Dr Mahmoud Daher, head of the WHO’s Gaza sub-office, said the health system is on “the edge of collapse”. Without urgent fundraising, hospitals will face a disastrous situation, he said. “There are at least 200 babies and people in intensive care units. It would be a really fatal situation for them. There are dozens of people who are going to surgical operations that would be affected.” 

Fears over the humanitarian situation intensified following a series of tweets by Donald Trump on Tuesday, in which he threatened to cut funding for the Palestinian Authority unless it recommences peace talks. The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, earlier said the US would cut funds to UNRWA, the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees, unless the authority went back to the negotiating table. 

To read more about this article go to www.theguardian.com
Big Tobacco Woos African Farmers with Bogus Promises of Prosperity
“We have more than 20,000 … small-scale farmers growing tobacco … the industry is critical in reducing poverty levels.”
 
Or so says an official with the Zambian Development Agency who we interviewed for our study on the political economy of trade, tobacco control and tobacco farming.
 
 
He was not alone in this opinion, a common refrain we heard in all three of our study countries (Kenya, Zambia and Malawi). It is one that dominates the trade, development and finance ministries of many low-income, tobacco-growing countries.
 
With tobacco use down in most high-income countries, Africa is one of the new battle sites of Big Tobacco’s efforts to grow its consumer base, partly by fighting every government attempt to comply with the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
 
While still making spurious claims that such control measures violate trade agreements, one of the tobacco industry’s other key lobbying arguments is that tobacco growing is essential to the livelihoods of millions of small-scale rural farmers.
 
We set out to answer that question in our three sub-Saharan African countries, chosen for their varying reliance on tobacco as an agricultural crop and source of export revenues (Kenya the least, Malawi the most, Zambia in the middle).
 
To read more about this article go to https://theconversation.com/
Rohingya Children Facing 'Massive Mental Health Crisis'
BALUKHALI, Bangladesh — Jehora Begum was a fast runner, racing through rice paddies and splashing through canals.
 
But how can a 12-year-old girl outrun a bullet?
 
When Myanmar’s military and Buddhist vigilantes descended on Rohingya Muslim villages in late August, burning homes and spraying gunfire, 14 members of Jehora’s family — including her mother, her father and four of her siblings — couldn’t run quickly enough.
 
They all died, according to witnesses and human rights groups investigating the massacre in Maungdaw Township.
 
Jehora was shot as she waded through a canal, the bullet lodging near her pelvis. Still, she and her younger brother, Khairul Amin, made it to safety in southeastern Bangladesh, where refugee camps now house far more Rohingya than remain in their homeland in Rakhine State in Myanmar.
 
“I have nightmares that the military is chasing me,” Jehora said. “I wake up, and I think of my parents, and then I stay awake for a long time.”
 
To read more about this article to https://www.nytimes.com
Diphtheria's Resurgence Is a Lesson in Public Health Failure
What do a failed South American state, a war-torn Middle Eastern country and a South Asian country with a large refugee population have in common? Not much at first sight, but all three have recently been experiencing large diphtheria outbreaks, killing dozens and affecting thousands.
 
 
 
As of December 2017, Venezuela had reported more than 500 cases (mainly in 5-19 year-olds) and an unspecified number of deaths, with conflicting information about shortages of vaccines and essential medicines and unsanitary living conditions.
 
In Yemen, entangled in a protracted conflict, more than 300 people – mainly under 20 years of age – are affected, with at least 35 deaths since September 2017. And in Bangladesh, trying to cope with 650,000 Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Myanmar, diphtheria has infected more than 2,000 and killed at least 20, with children under 15 disproportionately affected.
 
Rapid resurgence
 
In each outbreak, crises with different causes (state failure, conflict, displacement) have disrupted or disabled already dysfunctional public health infrastructure and caused rapid resurgence of the disease. But this is not the first time diphtheria has been the harbinger of public health collapse. In the former Soviet Union, the number of diphtheria cases increased from 800 in 1989 (before the Soviet Union collapsed) to more than 50,000 by 1994. More than 4,000 children and adults died of the disease between 1990 and 1997.
 
To read more about this article go to https://www.chathamhouse.org
Global Health Website
Save the Dates of Local Events!
Click here to add International week to your calendar!
 
International Week 2018 
Jan. 29 - Feb. 2, 2018
 
===========================
Annual BGHRN Symposium & Global Health Fair 2018
January 29, 2018
11:00 to 18:00
Room:  2-420 ECHA
 
 
Register now it's FREE.
 
 ===========================
Conversation Cafe
Guest Speaker: 
Evelyn Hamdon (PhD Cand.)
January 25, 2018
2-490 ECHA
 
To view the informative poster please click here.  
 ===========================
Annual Rich Man Poor Man Dinner Event 2018
April 7, 2018
Time:  6:00 pm to 9:30 pm
 

Conferences, Symposiums & Lectures
Save this link to your favorites as I update it daily will all events, symposiums, etc., just click here.
  
==========================
"Making the World Safe from the Threats of Emerging Infectious Diseases"

Conference  
Jan. 29 to Feb 3, 2018
Bangkok, Thailand 
 
=========================
2018 CUGH Conference
March 16 - 18,
2018
New York Hilton Midtown, 

New York, NY
Register here.

 
=========================
Global Health & Innovation Conference 
April 14-15, 2018
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Call for Abstracts/Submissions
Annual BGHRN Symposium & Global Health Fair 2018
January 29, 2018
 
==========================
 
Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale on April 14-15, 2018 is calling for abstracts.
 
 
Local Initiatives
Education a 'social vaccine' against malaria, UofA study finds
 
UAlberta Study Demonstrates the Deep Impact of Maternal Education on Childhood Malaria
Students & Residents
Setting Up an International Elective
 
International Elective Brochure along With Additional Funding
Newsletter & Special Journal Editions
Latest Issue of the MNCH Newsletter
 
Latest Issue of the CUGH Newsletter
 
Development of Diagnostics for Chaga Disease. 
Reports & Podcasts
 
 
 
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