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Global Health Rounds

Global health rounds will resume again October 1, 2018

 

 

Many governments count on preschool to provide the nurturing care disadvantaged children need for healthy development. But for too many children, particularly in low-resource countries, preschool is too late.

 

That’s where healthcare workers—often the first and only service providers who regularly interact with children under 3 and their caregivers during those important early years—can fill a critical gap.

 

Elizabeth Oyaro, a grandmother of 5 in Kenya’s Siaya County, understands the importance of nurturing care. Patiently molding clay animals for her grandchildren in front of her family’s home, she explains, “Playing with children helps them develop knowledge. When you play with a child, you educate them.”

 

Three decades of scientific evidence back Elizabeth up. The human brain develops most rapidly early in life, creating more than one million neural connections in just the first few years. Early experiences, especially before the age of 3, can build either a strong or a fragile foundation for later development. During this critical window of opportunity, children must receive “nurturing care”—including good health, adequate nutrition, safety and security, responsive caregiving, and opportunities for early learning—in order to develop to their full potential.

As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled Myanmar and settled in Bangladesh last year, health organisations were immediately concerned about outbreak of disease taking place in the overcrowded and unsanitary camps.

 

There are more than one million Rohingya living in 32 camps in Cox's Bazar district after having fled persecution and a violent militarised crackdown by the Myanmar army.

 

In addition to contagious and non-communicable viruses, the refugees remain at risk of landslides from heavy rains.

 

For Peter Salama, the World Health Organization's (WHO) emergency response chief, the magnitude of the risks posed by these conditions was overwhelming.

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for death and disability, but its overall association with health remains complex given the possible protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption on some conditions. With our comprehensive approach to health accounting within the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we generated improved estimates of alcohol use and alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for both sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 years and 95 years and older.

In the spring of 1994, Abdoul Salam Nizeyimana’s executioners arrived. It was about two weeks after the Hutu majority-controlled government stepped up its decades-long persecution of the Tutsi minority, calling on citizens to slaughter all Tutsis. Nizeyimana’s family was Tutsi, and it didn’t take long for the killers to come knocking. Nizeyimana, who was three years old at the time, hid under the bed with his mother and two siblings. The father stepped out, probably in an attempt to convince the militia that his family wasn’t home. Nizeyimana heard them talking briefly, and then he couldn’t hear his father talking at all. Having hacked the father to death with their machetes, the men moved into the bedroom and found the rest of the family. The men swung at them, including Nizeyimana, who was struck at the top of his head. Everyone died. Everyone except him. 

 

Nizeyimana remembers the following years only in staccato moments, like disconnected dots on a graph. At one point he was at a homeless shelter for survivors, and at another point his grandmother found him there. She took him in and remembers a studious boy but Nizeyimana remembers it differently.

The School of Public Health and the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry invite you to join us for a stimulating exchange on challenges and solutions in the provision of health care services in small remote communities in the Northwest Territories and Nepal. 

 

The panel will include Dr. Kedar Baral, from the Patan Academy of Health Sciences and leaders from the health sector in the Northwest Territories.  

 

Date: Friday, September 7

Time: 3:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Location: ECHA 4-036

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to resume on October 1, 2018

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CUGH 2019 Global Health Conference Translation

and Implementation

for Impact in Global Health

Date:  March 8 - 10, 2019

Where:  Hilton Chicago Hotel