In his LA Times article on December 16, Charles Piller addresses the very real possibility that the extraordinary amount of funding now flowing to poor countries to combat individual diseases might undermine other health sector capabilities.
Readers of this recent LA Times article were treated to a series of heart rending stories -- which taken together suggest serious program design flaws in, mainly Gates-funded, health programs in poor countries. The article is long, and raises many issues. I think it's worth examining some of them a bit more deeply.
In a recent Q&A over at IHT's Managing Globalization blog, CGD President Nancy Birdsall repeatedly emphasized the need for an International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3IE) to better ascertain what works in global health and development. Now, Ruth Levine and Bill Savedoff expand on the plans for establishing 3IE in a new Alliance Magazine article.
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of attending one of the many World AIDS Day celebrations at the World Bank. The vice president for Africa, Obiageli Ezekwesili launched the new AIDS Agenda for Action, 2007-2011.
Just in time for the Thanksgiving feast, a chance to share your views on international nutrition:
Today a new Grand Challenges initiative is being announced in Nature on priorities for dealing with chronic noncommunicable diseases in the developing world.
Yesterday in anticipation of World AIDS Day on December 1, UNAIDS released a dramatic update of the numbers they provide every year: the estimated number of people who are HIV infected in each country and in the world at large. As the Washington Post announced this morning, the surprise this time is that the numbers went down from last year, not up.
Readers of The Economist were treated to a tantalizing prospect this past week: the possibility of eradicating malaria in the developing world (also featured in The Lancet). The piece presents this hope based on the prospect of developing a malaria vaccine, and the recent proposal of the biggest health program funder in the world - Bill Gates.
Of all the Millennium Development Goals, progress on the maternal health goal may be the most disappointing. The target is to reduce by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015 the maternal mortality ratio - the number of deaths per 100,000 live births. A study published last week in The Lancet estimates 535,900 maternal deaths in 2005, only a slight decline since the launch twenty years ago of a Global Safe Motherhood Initiative.
* This post was co-authored by Jessica Pickett