FUND HIV RESEARCH FIRST!

FUND HIV RESEARCH FIRST!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Smug! Arrogant! Sadistic! One may quip at the title which makes HIV funding as mandatory.

Let’s all face it, fellow global citizens: HIV is tearing down populations, and the reversal towards an HIV-free environment just isn’t around the corner yet. The contingency of the moment HIV-wise is to make HIV research as tops in terms of funding.

“Cease not the lab researches till the vaccine for the ailment be found, disseminated and effectively curb the ailment!” would be Ceasar-like directive aimed at shoring up resources for the dreaded disease. Maybe we need such directives sometimes in order to get things moving fast and get over with the pandemic.

Below is a reportage from the scidev.net regarding the subject.

[Philippines, 22 October 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/hiv-aids/news/vaccine-research-is-top-hiv-aids-funding-priority-.html

Vaccine research 'is top HIV/AIDS funding priority'

Source: Nature

6 October 2011

Vaccine research and development should be the top funding priority for HIV/AIDS, if global organisations are able to raise US$10 billion over the next five years, according to a panel that included Nobel laureate economists.

A US$100 million per year boost to vaccine research funding — relatively modest, the panel said, and about ten per cent above current levels — could speed up vaccine development, a meeting heard in Washington DC, United States, last week (28 September).

"Even though the vaccine is elusive and we do not have it yet, it's clear that this research has led to an understanding that has enormously improved our ability to fight this disease," said Nobel economist Vernon Smith, of Chapman University, California, United States.

The panel was convened by the RethinkHIV project — funded by the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) — which aims to help policymakers and donors find the most cost-effective ways to tackle the disease in Sub-Saharan Africa.

It commissioned researchers looking at the economics, epidemiology and demography of AIDS to identify a series of cost-effective interventions and then asked the panel of economists, which included three Nobel laureates, to review the researchers' findings and rank them in order of priority.

At last week's meeting, the panel presented its findings to advocacy groups including the Global HIV/AIDS Program of the World Bank, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the US Department of State and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and an international economic advisor, who was not involved with the project, is skeptical of the validity of the Copenhagen Consensus process.

"This … process of evaluation has been misguided and inaccurate from the start on just about every issue. This kind of question, US$2 billion over a year over 5 years, posed in an artificial way to a group of people who may be Nobel laureates but who have no expertise on these issues, has just come up with one misleading issue after the other," said Sachs.

But Bjorn Lomborg, director of the CCC, said some of the world's top economists had showed that there were a lot of "amazing opportunities" to help people have better lives. "HIV/AIDS is not a done crisis," he said.

Link to full article in Nature News Blog

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TRADITIONAL MEDICINE’S ASCENT IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES

TRADITIONAL MEDICINE’S ASCENT IN AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A humungous lot of peoples in developing countries or DCs are dependent on traditional & alternative medicine. Related updates show that as much as 80% of DC peoples rely on traditional medicine for preventive and curative purposes.

African universities, it seems, have been pretty slow on recognizing traditional medicine as part of medical paradigms and solutions. This is understandable, given the long history of Africa’s colonization to Western powers. Africa’s medical specialists and experts were trained by the West, and so there seems to be no turning back on the biomedical paradigm bias such experts have acquired from their Western mentors.

Gladly enough, the situation today is changing. Traditional medicine has observably been gaining grounds in African universities, and hopefully there would be a co-existence of diverse medical paradigms to fit diverse end-users across the continent.

Below is a report from SciDev.net about the brightening development in the medical fields in the continent.

[Philippines, 04 October 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/traditional-medicine/news/traditional-medicine-gains-ground-in-african-universities.html

Traditional medicine gains ground in African universities

Emeka Johnkingsley

15 September 2011

The number of African countries with national policies on traditional medicine increased almost fivefold between 2001 and 2010, according to a report on a decade of traditional medicine on the continent.

The report, launched at a meeting of the WHO Regional Committee for Africa two weeks ago (29 August–2 September), also found that the number of countries with strategic plans for traditional medicine increased from zero to 18 in the same period, and those with national regulatory frameworks rose from one to 28.

In 2010, 22 countries conducted research on traditional medicines for malaria, HIV/AIDS, sickle-cell anaemia, diabetes and hypertension using WHO guidelines.

According to the WHO, roughly 80 per cent of people in developing countries depend on traditional medicine for their primary healthcare.

Some African universities had incorporated traditional medicine into the curricula for medical and pharmacy students, the report found. Health ministers and the WHO African regional office agreed at the meeting to promote this integration as a way of increasing research in the field.

Karniyus Gamaniel, director-general of Nigeria's National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development (NIPRD), said: "This is a very good development … The issue of curricula in medical and pharmacy schools is fundamental as this would provide the right orientation and sensitisation of younger people to begin to develop career lines in this direction."

The WHO regional director for Africa, Luis Gomes Sambo, who presented the report, stressed that having national policies on traditional medicine placed the conservation and sustainable use of medicinal plants in the arena of public health.

He called on African institutes to compile inventories of medicinal plants and to conduct research on the safety, efficacy and quality of medicinal plants.

Tamunoibuomi Okujagu, director-general of the Nigeria Natural Medicine Development Agency, told SciDev.Net that the decision to introduce traditional medicine into medical schools would reduce the cynicism expressed towards the practice in Africa, counteract 'quackery' and ensure professionalism.

"A number of our health challenges require traditional medicines," he said. "Traditional medicine policies are good for Africa."

Joseph Okogun, a consultant phytochemist at the NIPRD, said the integration of traditional medicines into medical schools was overdue.

"Many people in technologically advanced countries use alternative medicine, which includes traditional medicines. The reason for the increased attention is that traditional medicines have weaker side effects compared with synthetic drugs," he said, adding that they are also cheaper and often work as combination therapies.

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DISEASES THREATEN DEVELOPMENT: OBESITY, HEART ATTACKS, DIABETES & OTHERS

DISEASES THREATEN DEVELOPMENT: OBESITY, HEART ATTACKS, DIABETES & OTHERS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

A special report came out of the news rooms of the World Bank very recently that carries the alarming news of diseases threatening development. Necessarily, poor and middle income countries are most hardly hit, or those classified as ‘developing countries’ and ‘emerging markets’.

Obesity, diabetes and heart attacks emblazoned the title of the news report, with other ailments also on the list. The ailments situation complicates matters in the Horn of Africa where drought and famine led to hunger problems of 11 millions of poor Africans.

Below is the very alarming news coming from the World Bank.

[Philippines, 25 September 2011]

Source: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23001154~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

Obesity, Diabetes, Heart Attacks, and Other Chronic Diseases Threaten Health and Economies in Poor and Middle-Income Countries – World Bank Report

Press Release No:2012/071/HDN

Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia face alarming chronic disease levels, way above high-income countries

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2011 – The World Bank warned today that heart disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions, and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) increasingly threaten the health and economic security of many lower- and middle-income countries, and that most countries lack the money and health services to be able to ‘treat their way out’ of the NCD crisis. On the eve of a special United Nations summit on NCDs in New York, the Bank said the rise of chronic diseases, especially among young working adults in these countries, was a danger that warranted immediate global attention.

According to the new report−The Growing Danger of Non-Communicable Diseases: Acting Now to Reverse Course−Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia face alarming chronic disease levels, in excess of those in high-income countries where NCDs have long been the leading cause of death and illness.

Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia face alarming chronic disease levels, way above high-income countries

WASHINGTON, September 15, 2011 – The World Bank warned today that heart disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory conditions, and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) increasingly threaten the health and economic security of many lower- and middle-income countries, and that most countries lack the money and health services to be able to ‘treat their way out’ of the NCD crisis. On the eve of a special United Nations summit on NCDs in New York, the Bank said the rise of chronic diseases, especially among young working adults in these countries, was a danger that warranted immediate global attention.

According to the new report−The Growing Danger of Non-Communicable Diseases: Acting Now to Reverse Course−Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia face alarming chronic disease levels, in excess of those in high-income countries where NCDs have long been the leading cause of death and illness.

For example, in South Asia, where cardiovascular disease is already a major cause of death and disability, people have their first heart attacks at an average age of 53 compared with 59 in the rest of the world. In the Middle East and North Africa, NCDs are growing among women and adolescents, driven by factors unrelated to age, such as growing rates of obesity and smoking. And ominously, one in four people in Ukraine between the ages of 18 and 65 has a chronic disease with growing numbers of young people being affected, prompting the conclusion that the country could ‘lose the next generation to chronic disease.’

If current trends persist, the new report says that Sub-Saharan Africa will be the region hardest-hit by the NCDs crisis. If left unchecked, chronic diseases will account for 46 percent of all deaths by 2030, up from 28 percent in 2008. South Asia could see the share of deaths from NCDs increase from 51 to 72 percent during the same period. More than 30 percent of these deaths will be premature and preventable. At the same time, these countries will continue to grapple with the widespread prevalence of communicable diseases such as HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and mother and child conditions, thus facing a “double burden” of disease not experienced by wealthier nations.

“What makes the development impact of chronic diseases so daunting for lower and middle income countries is that they don’t have the money and the health systems to treat their way out of this crisis, and they’re facing it at far earlier stages of economic progress than their better-off OECD neighbors had to,” says Tamar Manuelyan Atinc, the Bank’s Vice President for Human Development.

Prevention is vital to stop and reverse NCDs

The Bank reports says that much of the rise in chronic diseases in developing countries can be traced to individual risk factors such as physical inactivity, malnutrition in the first thousand days of life, unhealthy diet (including excessive salt, fat, and sugar intake), tobacco use, alcohol abuse, and exposure to environmental pollution.

Country evidence suggests that more than half of the NCD burden could be avoided through effective health promotion and disease prevention programs that tackle such risk factors. Particularly effective at very low costs are measures to curb tobacco, such as taxes, as indicated in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and to reduce salt in processed and semi-processed foods.

In India this has meant, among other things, subsidizing and promoting kitchen stoves that use clean fuels and do not cause respiratory disease. In Bogotá, Colombia, the city government has built cycle paths across the city and has started a community exercise program that takes place every Sunday and now draws the active participation of more than a million pedestrians and cyclists each week.

The report notes that a compelling OECD example comes from New York City, where the mayor brought the health sector and hospitality industries together to reduce smoking and ban the use of trans-fats. The proportion of restaurants using trans-fats fell from 50 percent to less than 2 percent in two years, while the percentage of adult New Yorker smokers fell from 21.5 percent to 15.8 percent during the same period.

“The good news is that with prevention first, the reduction of risk factors such as smoking through the use of tobacco taxes, and the right political and community leadership in place, countries can stem the rise of chronic diseases and cushion their financial and social effects,” says Dr. Cristian Baeza, the Bank’s Director of Health, Nutrition, and Population, whose team produced the new report.

Baeza says it will be vital to prepare health systems in developing countries to deliver cost-effective and fiscally sustainable health NCDs care for poor people, and that comprehensive prevention programs can target a number of risk factors at the same time. For example, a prevention program in Finland’s North Karelia province, which targeted diet, exercise, and smoking, showed that between 1972 and 2006, the province’s yearly deaths from chronic heart disease fell by some 85 percent. An anti-smoking effort in Uruguay, championed by the country’s president, banned smoking in public places and workplaces and reduced air nicotine concentrations in the capital city by 91 percent over five years.

Anti-NCD measures can work quickly

On the eve of the special UN summit on NCDs in New York, the new Bank report says that the best examples of anti-NCD measures show that these can improve health faster than commonly thought—within a few years of eliminating people’s exposure to risk factors. As the report notes in conclusion, “Leaders at the national and local level have the power to save many lives, avoid widespread suffering, and forestall major human and economic cost, all within a short space of time. Now is the time to act.”

In fiscal year 2011, the Bank mobilized $2.96 billion in financing for health, nutrition, and population. The portfolio is at a historic high of $ 10.8 billion, more than half of which goes to the world’s poorest countries.

Washington Press Contacts:

Phil Hay Work (202) 473-1796; Cell (202) 409-2909; phay@worldbank.org

Melanie Mayhew Work (202) 458-7891; Cell (202) 406-0504; mmayhew1@worldbank.org

To read the new report, and see more of the World Bank’s work in non-communicable diseases, and its wider engagement in health, nutrition, and population, please visit: www.worldbank.org/health.

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/FBHYW092V0

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INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE RESURGES MALARIA, GO BIOTECH!

INSECTICIDE RESISTANCE RESURGES MALARIA, GO BIOTECH!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

The use of good old chemistry to annihilate malarial and related mosquitoes seems to be running its course down by the day. Reason: after decades of insecticide-based health campaigns, malaria keeps on re-surging back with a vengeance.

Let me add the case of dengue, where the aedes aegpyti mosquito kept on resurging back year after year amid the fogging by insecticide. Akin to the use of insecticide-immersed bednets in Africa, bednets are now being widely disseminated purportedly to stem the attacks of the aedes mosquito. But to no avail! Dengue is back, and it had killed hundreds of patients as of this writing, with tens of thousands of patients recorded.

I am of the opinion that biotech holds the greater salvation value for eradicating malaria, dengue and related mosquitoes that serve as vessels to disease-inducing parasites. Malaysia has already shown the way to breeding genetically modified mosquitoes that can catalyze the sterilization and death of breeder mosquitoes in the field, so it’s really just a matter of emulating the biotech way of Malaysia across nations.

Below is an update report about the insecticide resistance in Africa.

[Philippines, 23 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/health/malaria/news/insecticide-resistance-linked-to-malaria-resurgence.html

Insecticide resistance linked to malaria resurgence

Emeka Johnkingsley

24 August 2011

[ABUJA] Scientists have linked growing insecticide resistance with a resurgence of malaria in Senegal.

Researchers working in the village of Dielmo warned that new approaches may be needed to fight the malaria scourge on the continent.

They found that in the two years (August 2008–2010) following the distribution of bednets treated with deltamethrin, a long-lasting insecticide recommended by the WHO, malaria cases significantly decreased.

But, in the following four months, cases increased to higher levels than those before the bednets were introduced. This increase in morbidity was therefore likely to be due to increased resistance by malaria-carrying mosquitoes to pyrethroid insecticides, said the authors, whose findings were published online in The Lancet Infectious Diseases last week (18 August).

Thirty-seven per cent of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes were resistant to deltamethrin in 2010, and the proportion of mosquitoes with the kdr mutation that confers resistance to pyrethroids insecticides in general increased from 8 per cent in 2007 to 48 per cent in 2010.

The authors said that the scale-up of bednet distribution programmes and indoor spraying campaigns has "led to a very rapid spread of pyrethroid resistance in the major malaria vectors".

The study found that malaria resurged, in particular, in older children and adults, who are increasingly susceptible to the disease.

This susceptibility cannot be explained by increasing pyrethroid resistance, the authors said. They suggest that "either a recent increase in exposure to malaria vectors in older age groups or a decrease in protective immunity" could be responsible.

Pierre Druilhe, an author of the research and a researcher at the Malaria Vaccine Development Laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in France, said that the resurgence in malaria morbidity had been foreseen for a long time and goes beyond the problem of insecticide resistance.

He said that in areas that have a high incidence of the disease, exposure to malaria-carrying mosquitoes induces a strong immune response that protects individuals. While insecticide bednets do cut the number of bites from vectors, this in turn reduces acquired immunity — leading to a new equilibrium where the chance of an infectious bite causing malaria increases.

In an accompanying commentary, Joseph Keating and Thomas Eisele warned of the danger of generalising the research to the rest of the continent, particularly because of the short period of the study.

But Druilhe said: "This type of situation [pyrethroid resistance] can happen in all high transmission areas, which corresponds to the vast majority of malaria endemic areas in Africa".

Link to full paper in The Lancet Infectious Diseases

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NO FIXED PATH TO HIV PREVENTION

NO FIXED PATH TO HIV PREVENTION

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Could there be a single, most acceptable path to HIV prevention? This is the guide question posed upon those biomedical specialists and experts who are into HIV research & development as well as to the practitioners.

Long before the biomedical disciplines found the pharmacologic panacea to HIV, alternative health practitioners in Asia already found the cure to ailment which they tried on many patients in the 70s and 80s. Whether the biomedical fields will come to accept these non-conventional solution remains to be seen.

One thing is clear though at this juncture: that biomedical experts are now of the consensus that there is not a single megalithic path to HIV prevention. This is a welcome departure from the extremely positivist premise of biomedical paradigm which sought to reduce disease treatment to a single active ingredient from drug-based medication.

Below is an update report on relevant developments from the International AIDS Society or IAS.

[Philippines, 09 September 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/opinions/biomed-analysis-no-single-path-to-hiv-prevention-1.html

Biomed Analysis: No single path to HIV prevention

Priya Shetty

22 July 2011

Excitement about new drug treatment for HIV prevention does not mean we should lose sight of other methods, cautions Priya Shetty.

Scientists trying to prevent people from becoming infected with HIV are on a roll. After a huge leap forward last year in AIDS vaccine research, when powerful sequencing uncovered potent anti-HIV antibodies, new research shows convincingly that treatment with antiretroviral drugs can also be used to prevent infection.

The latest results on the effectiveness of drugs for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), presented at the International AIDS Society conference (IAS 2011) in Rome this week, were released just a couple of weeks before. The finding that PrEP could reduce new HIV infections by up to 73 per cent was so compelling that the trial was halted early.

With such excitement over a preventive approach that we have available right here, right now, suddenly a vaccine might not seem like the holy grail of HIV prevention after all.

But the early days of HIV vaccine research are a cautionary tale. The assumption that a vaccine was just around the corner seemed to lead, initially, to complacency that might explain why it is only relatively recently that other approaches to prevention have been high on the agenda.

And at IAS 2011, there was a broad consensus that pursuing one approach does not render the others redundant — and indeed that it would be impossible to tackle a disease such as HIV/AIDS without several approaches.

Vaccine research gets a boost…

For years, HIV prevention has relied on non-biomedical, behavioural interventions such as condom use and safe-sex counselling. Since behaviour is difficult to change, such tactics are notoriously difficult to implement. Yet, for several years, they were the only weapons in the fight to prevent the spread of HIV.

Once scientists knew that HIV was the cause of AIDS, they were confident that a vaccine would soon be developed for the virus. But they had not bargained for its complexity — and AIDS vaccine research has been problematic from the beginning.

Most disease-causing viruses come in a few different strains; HIV has hundreds of them. Not only that, the virus is capable of changing its surface proteins to evade antibodies. Devising a vaccine against HIV is a huge challenge.

Speaking at IAS 2011, Gary Nabel, head of the US National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center, which was set up in 1999 to find an HIV vaccine, described most of the time spent hunting for it as "the dark ages".

But last year, everything changed, said Nabel. The discovery of antibodies that worked against 90 per cent of HIV strains (compared with 40 per cent for previously found antibodies) has made the prospect of an HIV vaccine real again.

…but existing tools show promise

Even before the resurgence in vaccine research, male circumcision and microbiocide (disinfecting) gels had shown great promise in preventing infection. The WHO now says "there is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60 per cent".

Early clinical trials had hinted at the promise of treatment for prevention. And in the past few months, studies have shown that combination antiretroviral treatment (tenofovir/emtricitabine) reduced the risk of HIV-negative people becoming infected by 44 per cent in men who have sex with men, and by up to 73 per cent in heterosexual couples.

A key randomised clinical trial that was also presented at IAS 2011, called HPTN 052, showed conclusively for the first time that putting infected people on antiretroviral therapy early can reduce their chance of passing on the infection by 96 per cent.

Many paths to prevention

As thrilled as HIV researchers have been with the results of preventive drug trials, the implementation of treatment programmes will be far from simple. Developing countries have too few healthcare workers, and rolling out antiretroviral treatment can be logistically difficult — so adding treatment for prevention will add to already heavy burdens.

Deciding which groups are eligible for drug treatment, which means putting otherwise healthy people on powerful drugs, also raises ethical questions that are not easily solved.

Given these complexities, it would be short sighted not to pursue aggressively a vaccine that would confer lifetime immunity in one shot. Nor should the public health community abandon non-biomedical strategies such as condom use and reducing risky behaviour.

Safe sex is not just about HIV, after all — prevalence rates of other sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in many developing countries, and rates of unwanted pregnancy remain high.

The take-home message from IAS 2011 is crystal clear. After years of struggle, we can now contemplate moving towards ending the epidemic. But we should not threaten the chances of success by playing off one approach against another.

Journalist Priya Shetty specialises in developing world issues including health, climate change and human rights. She writes a blog, Science Safari, on these issues. She has worked as an editor at New Scientist, The Lancet and SciDev.Net.

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MALARIA D’APES & MONKEYS

MALARIA D’APES & MONKEYS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

We have a new alarming development concerning malaria spread. Gorillas and monkeys might just happen to be the dreaded carriers of the disease, a news that could cause chagrin on the legendary Tarzan.

This analyst has no fondness for Tarzan philosophy, but is more focused on highlighting risks to communities caused by a diversity of factors such as diseases. Being a development worker for long, I contracted malaria while doing field work and almost died of the falciparum disease in 1982.

We have no evidence yet of malaria being transmitted to humans by monkeys even though we do have species of monkeys among our diverse fauna. But Africa has shown less resiliency to that possibility, as shown in the report below.

[Philippines, 18 July 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/primate-malaria-in-africa-may-be-jumping-species.html

Primate malaria in Africa may be jumping species

Rachel Mundy

7 July 2011

A malaria parasite from gorillas has been found in an African monkey, suggesting it has jumped species and may be able to transfer to humans.

The finding has led some malaria experts to suggest that if transfer between monkeys and apes has occurred then monkey-to-human malaria transmission may already be happening. They have called for more research to quantify the risks.

"The evidence is sufficient to warrant further investigation into the possibility that these parasites may also jump to humans," said Beatrice Hahn, a professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, United States. "We need to screen humans who live in flying range of mosquitoes that also bite primates, to establish whether they are susceptible to the primate parasites."

Wild forest-living gorilla populations are known to harbour a parasite strain that is closely related to the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. And macaque monkeys in South-East Asia carry another malaria parasite, Plasmodium knowlesi — a potential threat to humans.

But this is the first time that a P. falciparum strain similar to the one that causes human malaria has been found in an African monkey — the spot-nosed guenon from Gabon (Cercopithecus nictitans).

The fact that "the genetic differences from the human strain are so slight" raises the possibility that monkey and ape malaria may be transmitted to humans, said François Renaud, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, in Montpelier, and co-author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (5 July).

As humans come into closer contact with apes and monkeys as a result of deforestation, commercial hunting and population growth, the opportunity for the parasites to be transmitted to humans will increase.

"One single successful cross-species transmission event has the potential to result in a major human pandemic," Hahn, who was not involved in the study, told SciDev.Net. 


But David Conway, professor of biology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, said the reservoir of malaria in African monkeys must be very small, given the low prevalence found in this study.

"Hopefully, monkey malaria will start to be recognised as an important area of research, but when examining the public health significance for humans, it is important to put the risk into context. Normal human malaria has a much higher prevalence, except in parts of South-East Asia where this has been reduced and the importance of malaria from monkeys has become more noticeable," Conway said.

Looking for human infections with monkey malaria is "like looking for a needle in a haystack", he said, adding that "there is every chance that human infections are occurring occasionally in the forest".

"In this particular case, the vector of malaria is the key determinant in determining any public-health risk," Conway said. "Identifying which species of mosquitoes transmits each parasite strain is a neglected area of research that needs additional funding."

Link to abstract in PNAS

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VACCINE FEARS

VACCINE FEARS

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

How far do vaccines work? Is vaccination an opportunity or a threat to communities suffering from epidemic and pandemic outbursts?

Vaccination has generated its own level of fear responses, as cases of vaccination failures have led to fatalities on the parts of poor patients. Let it be stressed that pandemics, such as those that struck Africa, often than not strike down the poor classes, thus generating toxic fears that the vaccines coming from the West are meant as genocide bacteriological warfare weaponry.

Devising ways & means to track vaccine fears is a challenge to healthcare stakeholders across the globe. Below is one reportorial discussion on the subject.

[Philippines, 17 July 2011]

Source: http://www.scidev.net/en/news/system-tracks-vaccine-fears-around-the-globe.html

System tracks vaccine fears around the globe

Smriti Mallapaty

4 July 2011

[LONDON] Fears of a growing mistrust of vaccinations in developing countries have led academics to set up a 'listening station' that monitors local responses to new immunisation campaigns.

Researchers at the UK-based London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) are hoping their system will alert them when concerns have passed thresholds beyond which there may be a risk to the smooth implementation of a programme.

"I have been seeing an increasing number of episodes of communities, governments and individuals questioning vaccines and refusing them, even in some of the poorest countries," said Heidi Larson, senior lecturer at LSHTM and principal investigator for the project.

"After several years of fire-fighting, I started to see patterns where early intervention could have prevented boycotts," she said.

The project started in November 2009. Data are collected from local media, official and local observer reports and categorised by country, source, type of disease, vaccine and issue raised.

Risk is allocated to three categories, ranging from a potential problem requiring more data-gathering, to immediate action being needed to prevent vaccine refusal.

In Kenya, the researchers are piloting a 'listening system' model that documents local opinion as it emerges following the launch of the pneumococcal vaccine last February.

Today, mobile phones, the Internet and social media are providing new methods of self-organisation for those on all sides of vaccine debates.

Larson and colleagues recently published a case study in The Lancet examining the suggested link between the tetanus vaccine and sterility that disrupted immunisation campaigns across the world and led to a 45 per cent drop in coverage in the Philippines between 1994 and 1995.

They found that the Internet had been crucial in allowing the pro-life Catholic group Human Life International to communicate these fears to its members in over 60 countries, including Mexico, Nicaragua and the Philippines.

The eruption of fear usually results from underlying social and political issues, said the researchers. When fears arose in Uttar Pradesh in India that the polio vaccine might induce sterility, analysts found that mistrust revolved around the person administering the vaccine — often non-local men.

"When you have a group that is marginalised and is very conscious of its marginalisation, it is not a surprise that they would be more suspicious of government-driven initiatives," said Larson.

Thomas Abraham, director of the public health communication programme at the University of Hong Kong, said: "I think that any tool that tells you that there is a problem is useful".

"The question then becomes, what are you going to do about these rumours?"

He said that communication needed to be the starting point for any public health programme. "Health communication, especially around vaccines, is still very much in the dark ages."

Link to case study in The Lancet (free registration required)

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HIV LEGISLATION IN LATIN AMERICA: BAMBOOZLING HIV CARRIERS WON’T WORK!

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day from the Pearl of the Orient!

Officials from 18 Latin American countries recently convened in Brazil to tackle HIV legislation. The Latin countries seem to have arrived at a consensus regarding HIV and how it should be managed.

Such a move is surely a most welcome one. Given the divergent perceptions about HIV, regional-to-continental consensus could somehow help country stakeholders in reshaping their frameworks, understanding HIV, and addressing the problems more equitably and judiciously.

Latin America is surely a continent that is worth watching in regard to concrete intervention measures on HIV with the proper legislative frameworks and public policies in place. There is yet a gestation period to wait till the consensus will take off as concrete interventions, though so far the consensus-building exercise is already a very productive one worth other regions’ emulation.

Below is a UNDP report on the HIV convention in Brazil.

[Philippines, 10 July 2011]

Source: http://www.beta.undp.org/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2011/06/29/officials-experts-call-for-better-hiv-law-action-in-latin-america.html

Officials, experts call for better HIV law, action in Latin America

29 June 2011

Sao Paolo, Brazil — Eighty-nine officials and experts from 18 Latin American countries concluded two days of talks here Monday calling for an end to violence and discrimination against people living with HIV and better access to potentially life-saving HIV treatments.

“It is no coincidence that the Global Commission on HIV & the Law is convening its regional dialogue in Brazil,” Heraldo Munoz, Director of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Latin America & the Caribbean, told a Global Commission on HIV & the Law Regional Dialogue here June 26-27.

“Brazil’s commitment to respecting human rights and addressing the underlying inequalities that fuel the epidemic has set their HIV prevention and treatment efforts apart from those of many other countries and, most importantly, have led to tangible reductions in infection rates.”

Representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela all took part in the fourth of seven regional dialogues convened by UNDP on behalf of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

The discussions, moderated by former CNN Español journalist Jorge Gestoso, will inform deliberations by the Global Commission on HIV & the Law. A town hall-style format aims to foster genuine dialogue in which all participants may share experiences, views, and concerns and identify innovative ways in which law and policy can effectively contribute to achieving better HIV, health, and development outcomes.

“If we don’t confront the uncomfortable inequalities, injustices, and stigmatizing norms of our societies and institutions which have been long denied, our fragile HIV and development gains will be lost and the cost—human and financial—will exact a terrible toll, which could have been prevented,” Commissioner Ana Elena Chacon Ecchevaria of Costa Rica said.

Participants concluded that:

• Countries must invest in implementing laws to protect people who are stigmatized, discriminated against, and criminalized

• Criminalization of people living with HIV—including women, youths, male, female, and transgender sex workers, and gay and transgender people—remains a barrier to effective HIV responses and is linked to increased violence experienced by these groups

• Violence against people living with HIV—including women, youths, male, female, and transgender sex workers, and gay and transgender people—remains a major barrier to effective HIV responses and must be stopped, with zero tolerance for police violence

• Where laws are causing harm and legal contradictions result in increased vulnerability and human rights violations, these laws must be changed

• Religious and cultural influences on laws and law enforcement that result in greater HIV vulnerability and risk must stop

• Intellectual property law and policy must not impede universal access to life-saving anti-retroviral treatment

Although UNAIDS says that HIV is a relatively stable epidemic in Latin America, the number of people living with HIV increased from 1.1 million to 1.4 million, from 2001 to 2009. Key populations such as men who have sex with men, trans people, sex workers, and drug users continue to experience much higher rates of HIV than the general population. One-third of all HIV-positive people in the region live in Brazil, and an estimated 550,000 women are living with HIV in Latin America.

“If laws are not able to express a modern thought, that is humane, a thought that takes into account human rights and eliminates repressive policies and practices, we will not see progress in HIV and development,” former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, chair of the Global Commission on HIV & the Law, noted in his remarks.

Contact Information

Sarah Jackson-Han
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)-Washington
+1 202 331 9130 tel.
+1 202 674 7442 mobile
+1 202 907 4613 mobile #2
sarah.jackson-han@undp.org
http://www.us.undp.org/

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Come Visit E. Argonza’s blogs & website anytime!

Social Blogs:

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