Feedback/Comments from Our Readers
|
Comments, questions and feedback is always welcome.
|
|
Social Justice Rounds - March 12, 2018
|
For the light lunch please
We're always looking for new speakers and ideas for topics for Global Health Rounds for the new coming up academic year in the Fall 2018. If you have speakers or topics, please contact Cheryl Knowles at GHFoMD@ualberta.ca. |
|
No One's Quite Sure Why Lassa Fever Is On The Rise
|
Nigeria is tough on diseases.
With help from a few partners, it stopped Ebola's spread. It wrestled guinea-worm disease into a headlock, with no new cases since 2013. And it's nearly eradicated the transmission of polio.
But now a disease that usually just lurks in the background has roared into headlines. Since the beginning of the year, there's been a particularly large outbreak of Lassa fever in Nigeria's southern provinces.
As of February 18, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) reports913 cases of Lassa fever and 73 deaths. That's compared with 733 cases and 71 deaths in all of 2017. "Everyone is scared," says Oyewale Tomori, a retired professor of virology who chairs the Lassa Fever Eradication Committee of Nigeria.
|
|
Stop the toasts: the Global Fund's disturbing new partnership
|
In the preface to Heather Wipfli's history of WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), she recounts how when she joined WHO to work on the FCTC, a recent fellow graduate from her masters programme invited her to lunch. He had been hired as a consultant for the alcohol industry which, in his words, was “petrified by the progress of the FCTC and believed that they would be the next target.”1 His role was to collect “intelligence on the process to help the industry prepare a defence”.1 Close to 20 years later, it is safe to say that the alcohol industry was largely successful.
To read more about this article go to http://www.thelancet.com
|
|
Syria: Doctors and nurses collapsing as medical response in East Ghouta reaches its limits
|
Casualty numbers in Syria’s besieged East Ghouta enclave are soaring beyond imagination as the capacity to provide healthcare is in its final throes, said the international medical humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today.
Hospitals and clinics supported by MSF had seen more than 2,500 wounded and more than 520 dead after just five days of intense bombing and shelling – from evening of Sunday 18 to evening of Friday 23 February, certainly an under-estimate the number of facilities who managed to report is decreasing and as many facilities in the area that MSF does not support have also received wounded and dead. Many of these are women and children. Yesterday, Friday 23 February, women and children represented 58 percent of the wounded and 48 percent of the deceased recorded by the 9 MSF-supported supported facilities that managed to report.
Over the same period 13 medical facilities, fully or partially supported by MSF, have been hit by bombs or shells. Medics in East Ghouta who were already pushed to the brink have been working now for six days straight, without a break, with no realistic hope of being able to adequately treat their patients in such extreme circumstances. MSF calls for an immediate ceasefire to enable the basic human act of helping the sick and wounded.
|
|
How Cuba’s medical model could transform South Africa's
|
In July, 1,000 more South African medical students who have spent five years studying medicine in Cuba will return to complete their sixth year, graduate and start practising as doctors.
If I had my way, I would send them all to the Eastern Cape, train them for their final year and employ them in the province once they graduate.
These are precisely the kinds of doctors needed throughout the province and country, because Cuba’s excellent medical schools pursue a comprehensive approach that focuses equally on the four pillars of medicine — disease prevention, health promotion, treatment and rehabilitative medicine.
The Cuban system produces well-rounded specialist family physicians who are appropriately trained for South Africans’ medical and health needs. They are trained to practise in diverse communities, from the cities to the deep rural areas.
To read more about this article go to https://www.businesslive.co.za
|
|
Vodafone's mobile data to be deployed to fight epidemics in Ghana
|
Mobile data will be used in Ghana to track and control epidemics, helping prevent a repeat of the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, in a pioneering program announced by Vodafone Foundation on Monday.
The initiative will use aggregated anonymized mobile data to track real-time trends in population movement, the charitable arm of the British mobile operator said at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
The level of activity at each mobile phone mast will provide a heat map of where people are and how far they are moving during an outbreak, while the data gathered will be used for decision-making in a number of areas - including health, agriculture and transportation, it said.
Vodafone Group External Affairs Director Joakim Reiter said the company would use its mobile technology and data to measure human mobility and model how infections spread.
“This has the potential to save thousands of lives,” Reiter said. The program, which will launch later this year, will be funded by the Vodafone Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Vodafone Foundation said.
|
|
|
|
Save the Dates of Local Events!
|
Social Justice Rounds Guest Speaker:
Dr. Ayelet Kuper From the University of Toronto March 12, 2018 12:00 - 1:00 Room: 1-190 ECHA
For the light lunch please
============================
Social Justice Workshop Facilitated by: Dr. Ayelet Kuper, University of Toronto
March 13, 2018 Time: 15:00 - 18:00 Location: 4-036 ECHA
===========================
Annual Rich Man Poor Man Dinner Event 2018
April 7, 2018
Time: 6:00 pm to 9:30 pm
Please note if you have any resaleable items for the SIHA silent auction, please email me at GHFoMD@ualberta.ca. Thanks for those who donate. |
|
Conferences, Symposiums & Lectures
|
Save this link to your favorites as I update it daily will all events, symposiums, etc., just click here.
==========================
2018 CUGH Conference March 16 - 18, 2018 New York Hilton Midtown,
=========================
Global Health & Innovation Conference April 14-15, 2018
Yale University
New Haven, CT
|
|
Call for Abstracts/Submissions
|
Global Health & Innovation Conference at Yale on
April 14-15, 2018
is calling for abstracts.
|
|
Newsletter & Special Journal Editions
|
|
|