Life.

Vaccine-Preventable Outbreaks

This interactive map visually plots global outbreaks of measles, mumps, whooping cough, polio, rubella, and other diseases that are easily preventable by inexpensive and effective vaccines. The Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations has been tracking news reports on these outbreaks since the fall of 2008. This project aims to promote awareness of a global health problem that is easily preventable.

Photo by Peter Casaer

“Today I saw the worst case of breast cancer I have ever seen”

“Sometimes, the seeming futility of this job overwhelms me. We see so many diseases – both chronic and acute – that we are unable to do anything about. When I considered coming to Afghanistan, I felt I was prepared to see malnutrition, wounded patients, trauma, etc. I did not realize the amount of chronic diseases and other conditions that we would be helpless to treat. At home, this woman would have had a mammogram and ultrasound when she first noticed a lump in her breast. She would have received free health care that would have, in all likelihood, saved her life. We have no chemotherapy, radiation therapy, mammography, or indeed oncologists here in Helmand [Afghanistan].”

What else can you say???… The richest country in the world cannot afford to pay maternal leave…. or a decent retirement for its older citizens… or guarantee universal access to health care (a human right issue) …

Triple Threat: Middle East Respiratory Virus And 2 Bird Flus

Is the world on the verge of a pandemic? There are three reasons to think so. Two flu viruses are active, and a virus that bears a resemblance to SARS has cropped up in the Middle East. Each has devastating potential, but many early warnings of past pandemics have failed to materialize.

The World Health Organization is warning health care workers everywhere to suspect a disease called Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, whenever they see a case of unexplained pneumonia.

Monday’s warning comes at the end of a six-day WHO investigation in Saudi Arabia, where 40 of the 55 cases of the respiratory disease have occurred. Sixty percent of those people with known infections died.

Meanwhile, recent reports in the journal Cell present evidence that two other worrisome viruses — H5N1 and H7N9 flu — may be on the verge of becoming more contagious in humans.

Continue reading.

Sheryl Sandberg to Women College Grads: What Would You Do if You Weren’t Afraid? - Liz Dwyer wrote in Education, Women and Leadership

“They create this dream about going to college and finding a job, finding themselves, but really there are so many things holding women back.” That’s just one observation in the above video by a woman who answered this question: “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”

Indeed, thanks to the negative messages women and girls hear about leadership (girls who lead are too “bossy”), fear is holding many women back from achieving their dreams. Now the “What Would You Do if You Weren’t Afraid” project, a just-launched effort from Lean In, the organization started by Sheryl Sandberg, author of the bestselling book by the same name, wants to help women overcome our society’s gendered notions about leadership.

Link above to the BBC…

10 Questions For Paul Farmer

A champion of great health care for the poorest in the world, Dr. Paul Farmer has a new book out with a collection of his speeches.

Here the co-founder of Partners In Health talks with Time ”about saving lives in Haiti, Rwanda’s thriving health care system and how to improve humanitarian aid.”

He also explains why giving people great health care may be cheaper than “eratically-administered, sporadically-targeted” aid.

“The idea that you can send a rover to Mars but not build a health care system that protects poor people — it’s not possible that couldn’t do that,” he says.

DIY Gyn Exams

In many parts of the world, doctors and nurses are scarce — which means routine exams for women are even rarer. 

What if women could bypass the doctor altogether?

That’s the idea behind two studies published this month in the journal Sexually Transmitted Disease.

In the first study, 344 women in a Nairobi slums used a kit to collect their own samples for human papillomavirus testing.

The self-collected sampes performed similar to the doctor-collected samples when it came to detecting HPV. 

In the second study, women in Rwanda tried out the Delphi Screener - a self-sampling medical device used to detect cervical cancer.

With all these DIY kits around, will the traditional pap smear fade away?