Tagged: Global Fund

  • To detect, treat and prevent tuberculosis, we need to replicate this flexible strategy

    Tuberculosis (TB) is once again the world’s most deadly infectious disease, silently retaking the top spot from COVID-19 sometime in mid-2022. TB sickens more than 10 million people each year and kills about 1.6 million, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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  • In the beautiful and remote Cambodian province of Pailin, FHI 360 is working with rural communities to reduce malaria transmission and save lives.

    With support from the Global Fund through the Village Malaria Workers program, FHI 360 has trained people in 28 villages across this region to provide malaria education, diagnosis and treatment. Village workers have provided malaria testing to 13,351 fever patients in these remote areas, and have treated over 3,000 patients for malaria.

    This World Malaria Day, visit Pailin by video. Your guide is an FHI 360 malaria program coordinator who shares how the program works.

    Visit this page for more information about our recent work in Pailin, Cambodia.

  • Non-communicable Diseases

    Next week, global leaders will meet at the United Nations to take on some of the world’s greatest killers: cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, heart disease, and stroke. The UN High-Level Meeting on the Prevention and Control of Non-Communicable Diseases on September 19–20, has the potential to finally address these leading causes of death and disability, which until now have been largely ignored.

    Yet when we wake up on Sept. 21, how much will have changed? Will there be a new Global Fund to fight noncommunicable diseases (NCDs)? Will key stakeholders, such as those involved in urban planning, agriculture, trade and current global health priorities be as engaged as they need to be to realize ambitious goals of measurably reducing disease? Will the public even know what an NCD is — even though more than 60 percent of deaths worldwide are from noncommunicable diseases, the majority from cardiovascular disease?

    ncd_blog_full_article_text_graphic_2011-09-13-02The answer to all of these questions is: not yet. September 21 will be the start of the real work. The problems of NCDs are complex, but we have many opportunities to alter the course of what has become a global crisis.

    There are a number of concrete steps that countries and health systems can take immediately to strengthen their commitment to reducing noncommunicable diseases. They can ratify and implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world’s first public health treaty. Many countries already have the makings of NCD plans in existing cancer plans, tobacco control programs and strategies for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They may also have specific programs to address respiratory disease, mental health and other issues. Health systems can make essential drugs, such as aspirin and statins, available immediately and at a low cost because many are off patent.

    As leading researchers and public health officials said in an April 2011 Lancet article, “An effective response to NCDs requires government leadership and coordination of all relevant sectors and stakeholders, reinforced through international cooperation.”

    In the end, we will need to make compromises and learn to share resources with people and institutions with whom we are not accustomed to collaborating. We will need to delay gratification and risk unpopularity in some of our choices. And we will likely not see the payoff in our lifetimes. But with time, effort and investment, we will see results.