This is a joint post with Rachel Silverman.
Through our Value for Money working group, we’ve spent much of the past year immersed in the world of global health funding agencies. With so many new agencies, particularly in the last quarter century (Figure 1), understanding the intricacies of the global health family can be daunting, even for the most devoted observers.
At the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) recent annual meeting in Panama, the two richest men in the world –Carlos Slim and Bill Gates- discussed their contributions to a little known public-private partnership that aims to improve the health status of the poorest Central Americans and Mexicans – Salud Mesoamerica 2015 or SM2015.
There was bad news in research published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine about the effectiveness of what had seemed to be the best prospect for a malaria vaccine, known by the unsexy name of 'RTS,S'.
The study of the phase III trials finds that in babies (aged 6-12 weeks) the vaccine only reduces malaria by less than a third. This is disappointing because this is less than half the effectiveness that had been suggested by the phase II clinical trials.
Before he became the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell was scathing about the habit of having big international conferences to ‘put large sums of money on the table’.
Chris Elias, President & CEO at PATH, will step down from his current position and join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as President for global DEVELOPMENT in February 2012. Yes, that’s global development, not global health. First reactions from many in global health lamented the "loss" of one of the field’s most accomplished and visible experts. But as we digested the details of the announcement and discussed its implications, we realized that the Foundation’s decision could be a bonanza for global health. Here are two reasons why:
A few weeks ago, I wrote with excitement about what the G8 and G20 might mean for global health.
The much-anticipated Women Deliver 2010 conference opened with a rousing call for global action for women’s health. A star-studded line-up of health and development leaders committed themselves and urged others to do more to reduce child and maternal deaths. The rhetoric and passion sounds a lot like the calls we heard fifteen years ago that went unheeded. Today there is a second chance for the world to deliver for women. Will this time be different?
The Gates Foundation and the Government of China recently announced a partnership to fight TB in China that is so multi-dimensional (a scaled-up diagonal health prog
It's hard to know what to make of the news about bad malaria drugs in Africa reported in the new study from the team at Africa Fighting Malaria. The team went around to private pharmacies in six African countries and bought samples of all the different malaria drugs on the shelves except chloroquine.
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.