As we enter the second year of the “Stop TB in my lifetime” campaign, it is time to take stock of where we are and look at the key priorities for attaining this worthy goal. Beyond the banners urging the world to stop this curable disease are the faces of those afflicted by tuberculosis or whose lives were cut prematurely short. These faces remain etched in my memory and reinvigorate my drive to stop TB.
After months of coding away during the Sanitation Hack@Home challenge, 10 teams of hackers were selected as finalists. The Hack@Home challenge is part of the Sanitation Hackathon, a yearlong process that included a global event in December where dedicated programmers worked on apps geared at addressing the global sanitation crisis, namely the 2.5 billion people who lack access to adequate sanitation.
In a recent blogpost I asked whether Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is old wine in a new bottle, and if so whether that’s so bad.
I argued that UHC is ultimately about making sure that “everyone – whether rich or poor – gets the care they need without suffering undue financial hardship as a result.” I suggested UHC embraces three important concepts:
• equity: linking care to need, not to ability pay;
• financial protection: making sure that people's use of needed care doesn't leave their family in poverty; and
• quality of care: making sure providers make the right diagnosis, and prescribe a treatment that's appropriate and affordable.
A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to participate in the launching of The Lancet’s fourth series on non-communicable disease (NCDs) and development. This was a well-attended event chaired by the Dean of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Prof. Peter Piot.
March 8 is the First International School Meals Day. New evidence suggests that today around 370 million children will eat a meal at school.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has declared March 8 the First International School Meals Day -- a celebration of a worldwide phenomenon. The World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Bank have shown that school feeding has been undertaken in nearly every country in the world.
Brazil’s success in reducing poverty and income inequality has been widely reported in recent years.
I had been warned—I found it hard to believe—that WHO ministerial meetings can be rather dull affairs of little consequence. Ministers typically take it in turn to read their prepared speeches; their fellow ministers appear to be listening attentively through their headsets but some, it seems, have been known to zap through the simultaneous translation channels in search of lighter entertainment. Speeches aren’t played over the loudspeakers for fear of waking jetlagged ministers from their afternoon naps. WHO is a very considerate organization: it likes to make sure that while on its premises visitors reach “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.”
Well I’m happy to report that last week’s ministerial meeting on Universal Health Coverage (UHC)—held in Geneva on February 18-19, jointly organized by WHO and the World Bank, and attended by delegates from all over the world (see map)—didn’t fit the stereotype.
People, Spaces, Deliberation bloggers present exceptional campaign art from all over the world. These examples are meant to inspire.
It is well-documented that prenatal nutritional supplements can give children the right start in life by supporting development in-utero and improving birth-weight, which reduces infant mortality. But can a case be made that good nutrition early on will give children a measureable earnings boost years later?
On Feb. 18-19, 2013, the World Bank and World Health Organization held a joint meeting in Geneva to explore ways that countries are progressing toward universal health coverage.
Last week, I had the honor of speaking to the UN Security Council about an increasingly dangerous threat facing cities and countries around the world, a threat that, more and more, is influencing everything that they and we do: climate change.
World Bank President Jim Kim was in Russia talking with G20 finance ministers about the same thing – the need to combat climate change. Every day, we’re hearing growing concerns from leaders around the world about climate change and its impact.
If we needed any reminder of the immediacy and the urgency of the situation, Australia Foreign Minister Bob Carr and our good friend President Tong of Kiribati spoke by video of the security implication of climate effects on the Pacific region. Perhaps most moving of all, Minister Tony deBrum from the Marshall Islands recounted how, 35 years ago, he had come to New York as part of a Marshall Islands delegation requesting the Security Council’s support for their independence. Now, when not independence but survival is at stake, he is told that this is not the Security Council’s function. He pointed to their ambassador to the UN and noted that her island, part of the Marshall Islands, no longer exists. The room was silent.
Infecting more than 1 billion people globally, the 7 major Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) cause blindness, disfigurement, anemia and cognitive impairment, and yet can be controlled or even eliminated by taking pills once or twice a year.
It's easy to see how the concept of universal health coverage (UHC) became so elusive.
At the start, the idea must have seemed straightforward enough. Lots of countries "covered" only part of their population, and several were making efforts to expand coverage to "uncovered" populations. China, for example, started out on this process in 2003, trying to expand coverage to the rural population that lost coverage when the old rural cooperative medical scheme collapsed following the de-collectivization of agriculture in 1978.
