National HIV/AIDS Summit on September 22 Will Honor Dr. Tony Fauci

WASHINGTON, DC (September 20, 2011) – The nation’s war against HIV/AIDS began 30 years ago with reports that young homosexual men began to die from a new disease that was destroying their immune systems. But rather than simply observe this important milestone, the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research is using the 30^th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic to convene a major policy summit in Washington that will address the “unfinished business” of the HIV/AIDS research community – determining how to match the significant progress in drug discovery with the delivery of state-of-the-art care to every person infected or potentially infected with HIV.

Taking place on September 22, from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM on Capitol Hill (Dirksen Senate Office Building, Room 106), the 2011 National HIV/AIDS Summit will bring together an estimated 150 scientists, clinicians, public health leaders and advocates who will draw the roadmap for accelerating the field of “implementation science” in HIV, an area focused on answering key questions that will improve the prevention, early diagnosis and consistent treatment of people with HIV. At this stage of the global response to HIV/AIDS, the research community is increasingly employing implementation science to understand why interventions are not accessed by those who need them and to develop more efficient and cost-effective ways to deliver HIV drugs and treatment services worldwide.

“This National Summit is intended as a call to action around the need to accelerate progress in closing the treatment gap so that all people with HIV can take advantage of the remarkable achievements over the last 30 years that now make it possible to live a near normal lifespan with this disease,” said Veronica Miller, Ph.D., Director of the Forum. “Our goal is to take up the current challenges presented by the HIV epidemic to move the science of prevention, care and treatment forward.”

Of added significance, the summit will pay tribute to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who has directed the federal government’s biomedical research efforts against HIV/AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic and is now one of the world’s most widely cited scientists for his contributions to HIV disease, including recently moving NIAID funding into HIV/AIDS implementation science. To honor Dr. Fauci, former Surgeon General Dr. C. Everett Koop, now 95 years old, will travel to Washington to present the NIAID Director with the C. Everett Koop HIV/AIDS Public Health Leadership Award, an award established in 2010 to recognize distinguished service, vision and leadership in HIV/AIDS research, education and advocacy. Dr. Fauci will then give a national address to policymakers and the HIV/AIDS community reflecting his lessons learned over 30 years in combating HIV/AIDS.

Assessing the Scientific Progress to Date; Defining Immediate Priorities for Implementation
Unlike the myriad meetings looking back at the 30 years of HIV/AIDS, the 2011 National Summit will not only chart the scientific progress to date in controlling the HIV epidemic but will focus on the current challenge for the scientific community -- matching the advancements in treatment with the delivery of care to every person infected or potentially infected with the virus.

Starting with a keynote address by Martin S. Hirsh, MD, Professor of Infectious Disease and Immunology at Harvard Medical School and a seminal figure in the development of multi-drug therapy for HIV, the summit will feature a prestigious panel of experts that will address the state of the science and identify the research gaps that are impeding further progress. The panelists will feature:
· Roger Pomerantz, Senior Vice President and Head of Infectious Disease at Merck & Co., Inc.
· James Curran, MD, Dean of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University
· Lynda Dee, President of AIDS Action Baltimore
· Cornelius Baker, National Policy Advisor for the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition
· Sharon Hillier, PhD, a leader in HIV/AIDS clinical research from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Because an estimated 56,300 Americans become infected with HIV every year and the disease has reached epidemic levels in developing countries, a second panel will identify the major impediments to effective HIV care in the U.S. and globally, including the growing shortage of HIV medicine specialists in the U.S., the need for sustained funding for the distribution of HIV medicines both in the U.S. and globally, and effective ways to reach, diagnose and treat both persons who are infected and those who are not yet diagnosed. Moderated by John G. Bartlett, MD, Professor of Infectious Disease at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, this panel will comprise:
· Dr. Paul Stoffels, MD, Company Group Chairman, Global Research & Development, Pharmaceuticals at Johnson & Johnson
· Mark R. Dybul, MD, formerly U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator leading the implementation of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and currently Co-Director of the Global Health Law Program at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law
· Gregory Pappas, PhD, Director of Washington, DC’s HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, Sexually Transmitted Disease and Tuberculosis Administration
· Christine Lubinski, Vice President of Global Health for the Infectious Disease Society of America
· Art Reingold, MD, Professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and a leading researcher and authority on HIV/AIDS in the U.S. and developing countries.

Following the National Summit, Dr. Fauci will be honored by Congressional leaders and officials of the Obama Administration at a reception at the U.S. Capitol from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM. The reception will take place in Room HVC-201 of the Capitol Visitors Center.

About the Forum for Collaborative HIV Research
Now part of the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health and based in Washington, DC, the Forum was founded in 1997 as the outgrowth of a White House initiative. Representing government, industry, patient advocates, healthcare providers, foundations and academia, the Forum is a public/private partnership that organizes roundtables and issues reports on a range of global HIV/AIDS issues. Forum recommendations have changed the ways that clinical trials are conducted, accelerated the delivery of new classes of drugs, heightened awareness of TB/HIV co-infection, and helped to spur national momentum toward universal testing for HIV. http:// www.hivforum.org

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

Countries worldwide are saving children’s and mothers’ lives at a faster pace

International efforts to address child and maternal health challenges appear to be working, yet few countries will meet international targets for child mortality or maternal mortality.

SEATTLE – With four years left for countries to achieve international targets for saving the lives of mothers and children, more than half the countries around the world are seeing promising trends in lowering child mortality and maternal mortality, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

In countries throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America, declines in child mortality and maternal mortality have sped up over the past decade. This has reduced the number of deaths in children under the age of 5 from 11.6 million deaths in 1990 to an estimated 7.2 million in 2011and it has lowered the number of deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth from 409,100 in 1990 to 273,500 deaths in 2011.

The trends indicate that efforts to educate more women, to prevent infectious diseases and to implement other targeted health programs in developing countries are having an impact. They also show, though, that few countries are going to achieve international targets for improving child and maternal health. An estimated 31 developing countries will achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG 4), which calls for a two-thirds reduction in the child mortality rate between 1990 and 2015, and 13 developing countries will achieve Millennium Development Goal 5, which calls for a three-fourths reduction in maternal mortality ratio over the same period. Of those countries, nine will achieve both goals: China, Egypt, Iran, Libya, Maldives, Mongolia, Peru, Syria, and Tunisia. The study, “Progress toward Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5 on maternal and child mortality: an updated systematic analysis,” is published in The Lancet.

“If the world is going to achieve these goals, we need to see immediate, concerted action on the part of governments, donors and bilateral agencies to move these trends in the right direction,” said Dr. Rafal Lozano, Professor of Global Health at IHME and the paper’s lead author. “We know that accelerated progress is possible because we are seeing it already.”

A significant number of countries have seen 5% declines per year in child mortality or higher, twice the global rate, over the past decade, including Cambodia, Ecuador, Rwanda, Malaysia , and Vietnam. In maternal mortality, Kenya, Morocco, Zambia, and Zimbabwe all had declines of more than 8% annually over the past decade. Even Afghanistan, which has one of the worst maternal death rates in the world, has had a 4.9% annual decline in maternal mortality since 2000, after increasing 2.2% annually over the previous decade.

Part of the decline in maternal mortality in much of sub-Saharan Africa is due to improved prevention and treatment efforts for HIV/AIDS, the researchers note. In looking for other key drivers for the mortality declines, the researchers point to global health programs, such as the scale-up of insecticide-treated bed nets in countries with a high malaria burden, and to country-level programs, such as the government of India’s ongoing investment in rural health clinics. In 2010, IHME published a paper showing that educational attainment among women of reproductive age accounted for 51% of the decline in child mortality.

“We must not let the focus on MDGs detract from what has been real and impressive progress with child and maternal survival, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Alan Lopez, Head of the University of Queensland School of Population Health and one of the report’s co-authors. “It is critical that this progress be maintained and that lessons learned from this success be rapidly transferred to other countries where progress has been less impressive.”

One area that needs attention is neonatal deaths. Even as mortality rate in children under 5 fell by 2.2% annually, the mortality rate for infants during the first week of life only declined by 1.7% annually.

“The difference between neonatal mortality and overall mortality in children under 5 might seem small to someone outside of global health, but it’s worrisome because it can be a sign of other problems in the health system,” said Dr. Haidong Wang, Assistant Professor of Global Health at IHME and one of the paper’s co-authors. “If countries can’t make sure that children survive during that first week, they may not be effectively providing prenatal care to mothers, good obstetrical care during the birth or important follow-up care.”

For these new estimates of child and maternal mortality, researchers used the most recent data and advancements in statistical tools to provide policymakers with more precise information as the world intensifies efforts to achieve international targets for maternal and child health. The authors acknowledge that the new estimates may lead to some confusion among policymakers, who have seen a series of analyses on maternal and child deaths in recent years, including two previous sets of estimates from IHME. For example, maternal death numbers for 2005 were estimated to be 546,000 by the United Nations in a 2007 study and are now estimated to have been 347,000 in this study, a difference of 35%. Child deaths track more closely, in large part because of the larger amount of data available over a long period of time.

“People have argued that we should not be updating these numbers every year, but we think that as new data are available and as methods are being improved it is crucial to show governments, funders and the public at large how much progress is being made,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of IHME and one of the paper’s co-authors. “Decisions are being made today that could literally mean the difference between thousands of lives being saved or more women and children dying. That is why improvements in data gathering and measurement are important for guiding policymakers as well as holding them accountable.”

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research center at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health. For the report and for more information about IHME, please visit http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

BURUNDI BECOMES 10th AFRICAN COUNTRY TO PROTECT CHILDREN FROM PNEUMONIA THROUGH IMMUNISATION

Pneumococcal vaccines will help provide healthy future for young population

Geneva, 16 September 2011 – The Republic of Burundi will next week accelerate its fight against pneumonia, the world’s biggest killer of children under five, when it becomes the tenth African country to introduce new pneumococcal vaccines.

Every year, an estimated 16,000 children in Burundi die from pneumococcal disease, the main cause of pneumonia.

“Pneumonia is still killing too many of our children, but with this new vaccine we aim to reverse this tragedy and set our children on course for a healthy future,” said Dr Sabine Ntakarutimana, Burundi’s Minister of Health.

Globally, more than half a million children die every year from pneumococcal disease. An estimated 90% of these deaths occur in the developing world and the deaths are especially tragic because pneumococcal disease is preventable through vaccination.

By 2015, the GAVI Alliance (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) plans to have supported the introduction of these vaccines in more than 40 developing countries. Burundi will be the fourteenth developing country to introduce the vaccine with GAVI support.

“The introduction of pneumococcal vaccines into Burundi is a solid long-term investment for the country’s social and economic potential,” said GAVI Alliance CEO, Dr Seth Berkley. Today is a great day for the children of Burundi. GAVI's support for pneumococcal vaccine means that children can get this powerful cost-effective vaccine wherever they live”.

As well as preventing premature death, the use of vaccines also reduces the number of clinic visits, hospitalisations and permanent disability. Parents are able to spend less money on treatment for sick children and have more time for productive work.

In recent months, the Central African Republic, Gambia, Cameroon, Benin and Rwanda have also introduced the new pneumococcal vaccine. This means that since it was first introduced in Nicaragua in December 2010, a total of 14 developing countries will have introduced the pneumococcal vaccine into their routine immunisation programmes with support from the GAVI Alliance.

The roll-out of the pneumococcal vaccines in countries such as Burundi has been made possible through an innovative finance mechanism pioneered by GAVI called the Advance Market Commitment (AMC).

With US$ 1.5 billion from Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Russian Federation, Norway, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a commitment of US$ 1.3 billion from GAVI, the AMC allowed the acceleration of production capacity by the two manufacturers who currently produce the vaccines.

Without the AMC, it might have taken up to 15 years for appropriate pneumococcal vaccines to reach the developing world.

Pneumococcal vaccines, once fully rolled out globally, are expected to save seven million lives by 2030.

# # #

The GAVI Alliance is a public-private global health partnership committed to saving children’s lives and protecting people’s health by increasing access to immunization in poor countries. The Alliance brings together developing country and donor governments, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Bank, the vaccine industry in both industrialised and developing countries, research and technical agencies, civil society organizations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other private philanthropists. Since it was launched at the World Economic Forum in 2000, GAVI has prevented more than five million future deaths and helped protect 288 million children with new and underused vaccines.

For more information, please visit: http://www.gavialliance.org/support/nvs/pneumococcal/

Sign up to receive GAVI’s newsletter: Immunisation insights


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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

President Clinton Announces “Conversations on Courage” Featuring Aung San Suu Kyi, General Secretary of the National League for Democracy and Archbish

More than fifty Heads of State to participate, including Barack Obama, President of the United States; King Abdullah, King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Ollanta Humala, President, Peru; Tarja Halonen, President, Republic of Finland; George Papandreou, Prime Minister, Greece; Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister, Kingdom of Sweden; Jalal, Talabani, President, Iraq; Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister, Republic of Zimbabwe

Newly announced participants include Fred P. Hochberg, President, Export-Import Bank of the United States; Herman A. Van Rompuy, President, European Union; Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, European Union; Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Leader of the Danish Social Democrats, Denmark; Irina Bokova, Director-General, UNESCO; General Wesley Clark, Chairman and CEO, General Wesley K. Clark & Associates, LLC; Rajiv Shah, Administrator, United States Agency for International Development; Andrew N. Liveris, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, the Dow Chemical Company; Peter Sands, Group Chief Executive, Standard Chartered Bank; Paul Farmer, Co-founder, Partners in Health; Lee Fisher, President and CEO, CEOS for Cities; Morgan Freeman, Actor and Co-Founder, Revelations Entertainment; Sarah Jones, Playwright/Performer and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador; Van Jones, Founder, Rebuild the Dream; Musimbi Kanyoro, President and CEO, Global Fund for Women; Gary Knell, President and CEO, Sesame Workshop; Gavin Newsom, Lieutenant Governor, State of California; Rosario Pérez, Chief Executive Officer, Pro Mujer; Judith Rodin, President, the Rockefeller Foundation; Reeta Roy, President and CEO, the MasterCard Foundation; and James Lee Witt, Chief Executive Officer, Witt Associates

New York—Today, President Bill Clinton announced new elements of the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, including a rare, live discussion with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy via satellite and a discussion with Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu.

“Aung San Suu Kyi’s and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s extraordinary leadership in addressing critical global challenges exemplifies the shared dedication of Clinton Global Initiative members, who have improved the lives of more than 300 million people in more than 180 countries since CGI began seven years ago,” said President Clinton.

Drawing upon her own struggles for human rights, democratic governance, and ethnic reconciliation, Suu Kyi will highlight a wide range of strategic actions CGI members can take on these issues. Archbishop Tutu, chairman of the Elders— an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights—will discuss the importance of a new global effort to end the practice of child marriage.

President Barack Obama will attend the CGI Annual Meeting on Wednesday and deliver closing remarks at the Sustainable Consumption Plenary. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton will also participate in the Annual Meeting and hold a one-on-one “conversation” during the Closing Plenary.

More than 1,200 members will attend the seventh Annual Meeting of CGI to brainstorm creative solutions to address the three topics presented at the meeting: Jobs, Jobs Jobs: Generating Employment for the 21^st Century; Sustainable Consumption: Ensuring Long-term Prosperity on a Finite Planet; and Girls and Women: Scaling What Works.

On Tuesday, September 20, CGI will host a series of four keynote lunches, with featured speakers: Valentino Achak Deng, founder and director, the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation; Madeleine K. Albright, chair, Albright Stonebridge Group; Dave Eggers, author and co-founder, the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation and Voice of Witness; Thomas Hicks, deputy assistant secretary of the navy for energy, U.S. Department of the Navy; Leymah Gbowee, executive director, Women Peace and Security Network Africa; Michael Porter, bishop william lawrence university professor, Harvard Business School; Dov Seidman, CEO, LRN; and Jonathan Wolfson, chief executive officer, Solazyme.

President Clinton also announced the event will feature a special session on innovation, titled “Game-Changing Innovation: Technologies for Building Social and Economic Value.” This session will explore how global innovation opportunities can be brought to scale to build the triple bottom line and achieve new levels of prosperity in the years ahead. The participants include John Chambers, chairman and chief executive officer, Cisco; Tarja K. Halonen, president, Republic of Finland; Andrew N. Liveris, chairman and chief executive officer, the Dow Chemical Company; and Bob McDonald, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Procter & Gamble.

Other special sessions include: “Voices for Change in the Middle East and North Africa,” “Sports as a Tool for Social Good,” “From Conflict to Creativity: Reducing Violence through the Arts,” and “From Response to Resilience: Effective Disaster Preparedness.”

The following participants were previously announced: confirmed attendees include Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and first under-secretary-general and executive director, UN Women; Tony Blair, founder, the Tony Blair Sports Foundation, former prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister, Kingdom of Norway; Chelsea Clinton; Hillary Rodham Clinton, secretary of state, U.S. Department of State; Geena Davis, founder, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media; Bob Diamond, chief executive, Barclays; Helene D. Gayle, president and CEO, CARE USA; Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO, the Coca-Cola Company; Luis Alberto Moreno, president, Inter-American Development Bank; Dikembe Mutombo, chairman and president, Dikembe Mutombo Foundation, Inc.; Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO, PepsiCo; Denis O’Brien, chairman, Digicel; Paul Polman, chief executive officer, Unilever; Jim Rogers, chairman, president, and CEO, Duke Energy; Premal Shah, president, Kiva.org; Vikki Spruill, chief executive officer, the Ocean Conservancy; Trudie Styler & Sting; Mark Tercek, president and CEO, the Nature Conservancy; and Muhammad Yunus, Chairman, Yunus Centre.

Newly announced participants include: Gary Barker, international director, Instituto Promundo; Yves Behar, founder and chief designer, fuseproject; Irina Bokova, director-general, UNESCO; General Wesley Clark, chairman and CEO, Wesley K. Clark & Associates, LLC; Paul Farmer, co-founder, Partners in Health; Lee Fisher, president and CEO, CEOS for Cities; Morgan Freeman, actor and co-founder, Revelations Entertainment; Angel Gavidia, student, Cisco Networking Academy; Tarja Halonen, president, Republic of Finland; Sarah Jones, playwright/performer and UNICEF Goodwill ambassador; Van Jones, founder, Rebuild the Dream; Musimbi Kanyoro, president and CEO, Global Fund for Women; Jakaya Kikwete, president, United Republic of Tanzania; Gary Knell, president and CEO, Sesame Workshop; Pat Mitchell, president and CEO, the Paley Center for Media; Toshihiro Nakamura, co-founder and CEO, the Kopernik; Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor, state of California; Rosario Pérez, chief executive officer, Pro Mujer; Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister, Kingdom of Sweden; Judith Rodin, president, the Rockefeller Foundation; Kathleen Rogers, president, Earth Day Network; Reeta Roy, president and CEO, the MasterCard Foundation; Morgan Tsvangirai, prime minister, Republic of Zimbabwe; Peter Sands, group chief executive, Standard Chartered Bank; Rajiv Shah, administrator, United States Agency for International Development; and James Lee Witt, chief executive officer, Witt Associates.

View and share session webcasts from the 2011 CGI Annual Meeting by visiting: http://live.clintonglobalinitiative.org and the event hashtag is #CGI2011.

What:

2011 CGI Annual Meeting (www.clintonglobalinitiative.org)

Where:

Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers

811 7th Avenue at 52nd Street

New York, NY 10019

When:

September 20-22, 2011

Applying for Credentials: To apply for press access to the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, please complete the form at http://bit.ly/pressreg2011.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

Global Leaders to Unveil Latest Family Planning Advancements at Landmark Conference in Dakar

International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) will draw over 1,000 scientists, global health experts, policymakers, and advocates to Dakar, Senegal, on 29 November – 2 December 2011

September 19, 2011 — Leading experts from around the world will gather in Dakar, Senegal, in late November to share the latest research in contraceptive technology, to discuss the impact of family planning programs on the lives of women and children on the ground, and to strategize ways to meet the family planning needs of millions worldwide. Access to voluntary family planning helps to advance the health and wellbeing of women and their families, and has been increasingly heralded as a crucial strategy for global development.

With more than 140 sessions over the 3 conference days, panelists and speakers will present the latest research on methods and best practices that can help women and men plan the number, spacing, and timing of their children. The conference will foster critical discussions and decisive action to increase access for the 215 million women who want to avoid or delay pregnancy, but do not use or have access to modern contraception. Highlights will include:

· High-Level Speakers: The Vice Presidents of Ghana and Malawi will give keynote speeches, and Melinda Gates will open the conference with a video address. In addition, health and finance ministers from across Africa will attend, along with DFID Under Secretary Stephen O'Brien and the First Ladies of Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Mozambique and Senegal.

· Contraceptive TechnologyInnovations: Scientists and public health experts will review the latest advances in contraceptive research, from new methods in the pipeline to innovative approaches to improve existing methods.

· Renewed Focus on Youth: Young people from a wide range of countries will reinforce the reasons why investing in family planning is an investment in the future.

The ICFP, co-sponsored by over 30 international organizations including USAID, DFID, AFD, UNFPA, WHO, European Commission, World Bank and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will galvanize renewed political and financial commitment to family planning from leaders across sectors. Last year, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with AusAID, DFID, and USAID to launch a global initiative to reduce unmet family planning need by 100 million over five years. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and partners also launched the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, providing a roadmap on how to improve women’s health through access to reproductive health, including voluntary family planning and contributing $40 billion to the cause. With the world’s population set to exceed 7 billion next month, access to contraceptives has become an ever more critical health and rights issue forwomen, their families, and nations worldwide.

WHAT: International Conference on Family Planning 2011

WHEN: Tuesday, 29 November – Friday, 2 December 2011

WHERE: Le Méridien Président, Dakar, Senegal

To register for the International Conference on Family Planning or to sign up for regular updates, please visit:

www.fpconference2011.org/registration

For more information on the International Conference on Family Planning, please visit: www.fpconference2011.org

ELECTRONIC UPDATES AND AN ONLINE PRESS ROOM WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR MEDIA UNABLE TO ATTEND.

Follow us at @FPDakar2011

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

Owning insecticide-treated bed nets lowers child mortality by 23%

The most comprehensive analysis to date shows as bed net distribution efforts have rapidly scaled up in sub-Saharan Africa deaths from malaria have declined significantly.

SEATTLE – Children who live in households that own at least one insecticide-treated bed net are less likely to be infected with malaria and less likely to die from the disease, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.

The new study, “Net benefits: a multi-country analysis of observational data examining associations between insecticide-treated mosquito nets and health outcomes,” will be published in PLoS Medicine on Sept. 6. It follows a study published last year in PLoS Medicine that documented the rapid scale-up of bed net distribution. That paper found that in countries with large populations at risk for malaria, bed net ownership had increased from an average of 2.2% of the at-risk population in 1999 to 32.8% in 2008.

The efforts are paying off. By controlling for other factors that might contribute to child mortality, researchers found clear evidence that bed nets reduce the number of child deaths from malaria. Ownership of at least one insecticide-treated bed net was associated with a 23% reduction in mortality in children under the age of 5.

The reduction in mortality starts with a reduction in malaria infections, the authors say. In households that owned at least one bed net, the risk of children under the age of 5 becoming infected with the malaria-causing parasite was reduced by 20%.

Malaria is spread through mosquitoes that primarily bite at night, and sleeping children are particularly vulnerable to death from a malaria infection. Scientists have been engaged in an ongoing debate about the effectiveness of bed nets, mostly based on data from small studies in one country or a limited time period. IHME researchers, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Zambia, examined data from 29 health surveys conducted over the past decade in 22 sub-Saharan African countries to test the benefits of bed nets.

“Most of the studies that have examined the relationship between bed nets and health outcomes have been limited to a handful of countries,” said Dr. Stephen Lim, Associate Professor of Global Health at IHME and the paper’s lead author. “We now can say with confidence that bed nets reduce mortality substantially and that the efforts to distribute these bed nets across the region are working.”

Until the “Net benefits” study, the most compelling evidence for the effectiveness of bed nets came from randomized controlled trials in several countries. The new findings are consistent with the results from those trials, and they show that bed nets can have a strong effect on mortality outside of controlled conditions.

“Bed nets don’t just work well in theory. They work under messy, real world conditions,” said Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou, Associate Professor of Global Health at IHME and the paper’s senior author. “The countries that have the highest malaria burdens are mostly rural, low-income settings where conditions are far from the ideal setting you would find in a clinical trial. This shows us that, regardless of the particulars of the country, bed nets can reduce mortality.”

Dr. Gakidou and her co-authors suggest that expanded ownership of bed nets could lead to even more health gains in sub-Saharan Africa. In some countries, less than 25% percent of homes own a bed net, according to the latest data prepared by IHME and published by the World Health Organization in the World Malaria Report 2010.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research center at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information freely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to best improve population health.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

3ie’s new Working Paper on Oxfam GB’s approach to evaluating its effectiveness

Non Governmental Organisations often struggle with how they can access useful and reliable evidence on whether their interventions are actually making an impact. In the new working paper ‘Can we obtain the required rigour without randomisation?’, authors Karl Hughes and Claire Hutchings describe some of the challenges NGOs face in accessing credible feedback on an intervention’s effectiveness . They show that tracking outcome indicators is not a viable option and present an alternative approach being pursued by Oxfam GB, where closing and sufficiently mature projects are randomly selected and subjected to ‘effectiveness audits’. Read Working Paper.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

Useful Landesa blog post

Peter Veit of the World Resources Institute and my colleague from Landesa, Anna Knox, have co-written a blog post today. The blog introduces and explains a web-based education tool (Focus on Land in Africa) we created to help development practitioners such as yourself better understand the links between land rights and their respective approaches to development in six African countries. .


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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 60th Annual Meeting

Latest on Malaria, Dengue Fever, Radiation Threats, Bedbugs, Cholera in Haiti to Be Presented Paul Farmer, Jeffrey Sachs, Harold Varmus, PAHO Director Mirta Roses Periago to Speak

The 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) -- the largest of its kind in the world -- will bring together in one place global experts who are battling a wide range of bacteria, viruses, parasites and other pathogens that each year kill or sicken hundreds of millions of people. Scientists, clinicians and other experts in tropical medicine and global health will present new insights and research on a wide range of critical issues in preventing and controlling infectious diseases, including combating the unexpected and rapid rise of cholera in Haiti; the global consequences of radiation emergencies; the hunt for new treatments for a less deadly, but still insidious and rising, form of malaria; a new vaccine for dengue fever -- a disease that may be regaining a foothold in the United States; the stubborn burden of infectious disease among poor Americans; and detection and control of resurgent bed bugs. WHAT: The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 60th Annual Meeting SPEAKERS: Paul Farmer, director of Partners In Health Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute & Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate & former director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who now heads the National Cancer Institute Mirta Roses Periago, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) WHEN: December 4-8, 2011 WHERE: Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA RSVP: For more information and to register for press credentials, please contact: Preeti Singh at +1 301 280 5722 or psingh@burnesscommunications.com WEB: http://www.astmh.org/AM/ Tropical diseases mainly affect poor countries -- where the chance of dying is 30 times greater for infants, 40 times for adults and 1000 times for pregnant women. But in today’s globalized world, they are a threat to us all. ASTMH members are pursuing new drugs, diagnostics and vaccines to prevent and eradicate disease and control pandemics that disrupt countless lives, destabilize communities and pose far-reaching geo-political hazards. Selected Highlights of ASTMH Annual Meeting: Surprising Explosion of Cholera on America’s Doorstep: A report from the frontlines by experts from the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Cholera infections and deaths keep rising in Haiti after the disease suddenly reemerged in the earthquake aftermath; meanwhile, aid dwindles and health officials scramble for resources. Chernobyl, Japan and Beyond: Radiation and Health: Fresh perspectives on short-term responses and long-term health effects of radiation emergencies as nuclear safety concerns surge in the wake of the reactor meltdown in Japan. New and Unexpected Findings on Leading Child Killer: Researchers report on one of the largest studies ever of diarrhea in children in the developing world. Diarrheal diseases kill 1.5 million children every year, second only to pneumonia as a leading cause of death in children under five years of age. Infectious Disease among Impoverished Americans: Ten years into the 21st century, scientists provide new research on how infectious diseases still weigh heavily on the poor worldwide, even in wealthy nations like the United States. The “Other” Malaria: The deadliest malaria parasite is Plasmodium falciparum, but its close cousin Plasmodium vivax is alive and thriving in Asia and Latin America. Experts discuss new approaches to treating P. vivax malaria, which can linger in the liver for years and cause multiple relapses. (Related: scientists report new observations on whether resistance to the world’s most effective malaria medicine is moving beyond Southeast Asia.) “A Vaccine for “Breakbone” Fever?: Mosquito-borne dengue fever, often called “breakbone fever” for the incredible pain it causes in the joints, is on the rise and has recently reemerged in Florida. The latest on a potential vaccine breakthrough and the challenges to rolling out immunizations for a disease linked to 100 million infections and 25,000 deaths each year. Smartphones and Satellites Join the Fight: New applications of NASA remote sensing technology, mobile devices and the Internet for tracking major outbreaks of infectious diseases. Bed Bugs Still Biting: Common in the tropics but rare in the US for decades, bedbugs have returned to North America with a particularly high-profile invasion of New York City. Researchers present the latest on detection and control measures.

### The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, founded in 1903, is a worldwide organization of scientists, clinicians and program professionals whose mission is to promote global health through the prevention and control of infectious and other diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

The World at Seven Billion

The fact that the world’s population continues to grow apace and will reach seven billion later this year presents numerous economic, developmental, environmental and social challenges. Many of these pressures can be effectively addressed by doing more to empower women and couples around the world to decide for themselves when to become pregnant and how many children to have, according to a new Guttmacher analysis.

“Especially in the developing world, millions of women and couples are still unable to control the timing, spacing and total number of the children they have because of the barriers they face to obtaining and using contraceptives,” says Susan Cohen, author of the analysis. “Recognizing this fact provides a road map for action that simultaneously addresses the needs of people and our planet.”

Previous Guttmacher research found that 215 million women in developing countries have an unmet need for contraception, meaning they want to stop or postpone childbearing, but are not using a modern contraceptive. These women account for more than 80% of all unintended pregnancies in the developing world each year.

Helping women and couples achieve their stated desire to have a smaller family would result in the world’s population peaking within the next few decades and then actually starting to decline. But, according to Cohen, getting there requires significantly increased political and financial commitment at the global level—with the ultimate goal of achieving universal access to reproductive health care for all women.

“The challenge goes beyond simply providing services to everyone who needs them. It is equally a matter of ensuring that the services are high quality,” says Cohen. “That means making available counseling and patient education, as well as better matching women with highly effective methods appropriate to their life circumstances—either methods available today or more advanced ones yet to be developed.”

Guttmacher research published earlier this year details the reasons why women living in three world regions—South Central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia—who want to avoid pregnancy were not using a modern method of contraception. The authors found that women’s reasons for nonuse were often multiple and interrelated, and they identified several steps for overcoming the existing barriers—the most important being the development of new contraceptive technology that better meets women’s life circumstances.

Click here to read “The World at Seven Billion: Global Milestone a Reflection of Individual Needs,” by Susan A. Cohen

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

Drug Search for Leishmaniasis

We are pleased to inform you that World Community Grid has launched a new project called Drug Search for Leishmaniasis!

Leishmaniasis is one of the most neglected tropical diseases in the world. Each year this disease infects more than two million people in 97 countries. To date, there are no available vaccines to prevent the disease.

The researchers at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, are running the Drug Search for Leishmaniasis project on World Community Grid to identify drug compounds that could possibly be developed into treatments for Leishmaniasis.

Please join us and donate your unused computer time to help search for a cure to one of the most neglected tropical diseases in the world.

For more information about this exciting project, please go to the Research overview on our website.


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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.

The End of Polio

The End of Polio campaign (www.theendofpolio.com) is focused on building public support for polio eradication, and for every signature our petition gets, we’ll be donating $1 (enough for one additional vaccination) to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.

Polio is a disease which has disabled millions and pulled people further into poverty. It has been reduced by 99% over the past 30 years, thanks to global efforts that have immunised more than 2 billion children against polio, and saved more than 5 million children from life-long paralysis or death. But right now polio eradication work is limited by a US$590 million funding gap.

That’s why we’re calling on World Leaders to commit to fully fund the work of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. This campaign is an initiative of the Global Poverty Project - an education and campaigning organisation whose vision is a world without extreme poverty - in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organisation, Rotary International and UNICEF.

We launched this clip today; one in a series we’ll be using to mobilise the public in support of our global campaign for polio eradication. It would be fantastic if you could share it with your readers, to encourage them to join this monumental campaign.

For further information please feel free to email or visit www.theendofpolio.com.

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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.