You might have missed in early December the news reported by WHO on the raging measles outbreaks across Europe this year, despite the decline of measles globally. In 2011 France alone had 14,000+ cases of measles this year (see p.
Here are two pictures to help you get into the holiday spirit. The World Health Organization has data on global incidence of various diseases that can be prevented by vaccination. These are numbers aggregated from country reports to the organization, which are subject to considerable error. The WHO warns that reported disease incidence data usually represent only a fraction of actual cases of the disease. Nonetheless, the data is useful to monitor trends in prevalence, and a lot of those trend
Today NPR reports on the “stunning progress” made on health in Afghanistan. A USAID-funded survey conducted in 2010 –excluding parts of the high conflict South Zone- finds that mortality and fertility have dropped and coverage of essential services increased dramatically. Male adult mortality has been halved in roughly a decade. Average life expectancy for girls and boys is now 64 years, versus 45 years old in 2001.
It’s the time of year for “top” lists. At the CGD Global Health Policy Blog, we have decided yet again to highlight a combination of CGD’s and our reader’s favorite 20 blog posts from this year.
The United States budget for 2011; red area is global health aid (Source: xkcd)
This is a joint post with Amanda Glassman.
The verdict is out (sort of): the proposed total global health appropriation for FY2012 will be $8.3 billion; $600m less than 2011 appropriations, $38.3m higher than the enacted amount in 2011 and $1.5 billion less than requested funding. More than $5.5 billion of this funding is appropriated to HIV/AIDS; $1.05 billion of which are contributions to the Global Fund. A further $2.6 billion is appropriated for USAID to fulfill a portfolio of responsibilities from nutrition to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. Some highlights:
This week AP reports that former U.S. President George Bush has launched the Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon project in Zambia. The project will expand the availability of cervical cancer prevention, screening and treatment, including the HPV vaccine, by building on the PEPFAR platform for HIV care.
At CGD we have taken a cue from our previous work in Quality of Official Development Assistance (QuODA), and have come up with a methodology for a evaluating the quality of health aid.
Today we are excited to welcome Victoria Fan to CGD as a global health research fellow. Victoria is a health economist with extensive experience in the analysis and evaluation of health insurance, health financing, and other public health policies, mainly in India as well as China and the U.S. (State of Vermont).
There is no doubt that the United States has shown tremendous leadership and brought about remarkable results in the global fight against AIDS over the past decade. U.S. investments through the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) have strengthened overall health systems, built and sustained capacity to address HIV and a host of other diseases, and helped scale up treatment to save millions of lives.
I arrived at CGD in March 2006 to take charge of a new and exciting initiative, the HIV/AIDS Monitor, and tomorrow is my last day after six amazing, enjoyable and productive years. I want to thank all of our global health policy blog readers for indulging me and my posts, with a special thank you to many regular readers who often posted interesting and very useful comments.