March 8 marks International Womens Day. Hundreds of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate their achievements. The United Nations says the theme of this years celebration is Equal rights, equal opportunities: Progress for all.
Four years ago on International Womens Day, the Afghan government unveiled a plan for accelerating the improvement of womens status in the country.
Today, almost one-fourth of the Afghan parliament is female. President Hamid Karzai also has selected three women as members of his new Cabinet.
And while the Afghan government expects more than 3.2 million girls to enroll in school this year, the countrys acting Public Health Minister Suraya Dalil says improvements are needed to ensure their future wellbeing.
On average, an Afghan woman will get pregnant six times during her reproductive years. Dalil says officials are working to educate people on contraception, but only 15 percent of couples use one sort of family planning. Dalil says this contributes to a harsh statistic.
Every 30 minutes one woman in Afghanistan dies from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. So that is [a] really alarming figure, she noted.
Many women around the country lack access to hospitals like the ones in the capital, Kabul. So it is up to the government to bring the medical care to them.
One of the strategies to address maternal mortality is to increase skilled birth attendants, she added. That means midwives, nurses and physicians to assist deliveries.
Skilled birthing attendants are present at 25 to 30 percent of births in Afghanistan. Dalil says the government hopes to expand its midwife training programs and install these professionals in local communities.
Also this year, the Afghan government, along with its international partners, is launching a new mortality study. Dalil participated in the last study in 2002, which she says uncovered some shocking results.
It found that in Badakhshan the maternal mortality issue was 6,500 [deaths] per 100,000 live births and that is the highest ever documented in human history, she explained.
Dalil says she hopes the new study will highlight improvements that can lead to lasting achievements for womens health. But she stresses that the Afghan government needs a combination of international and public support for health advancements before the overall well-being of women in the country can show real progress.
The World Health Organization calls tobacco the leading cause of preventable death in the world. In December, the WHO launched a campaign against cigarette smoking in Africa, saying a rapidly growing population is creating “larger and more accessible markets” on the continent for tobacco companies.
While the risks of cancer and heart disease are generally well-known, smoking has many other effects on the body.
The act of lighting a cigarette and taking a puff is simple enough, but it triggers complex physical changes within the body. And Dr. Ana Navas-Acien says those changes begin within seconds of inhaling
“The respiratory airway is very effective in absorbing tobacco and all the tobacco components. Tobacco has thousands of components, including many toxicants and many carcinogens. And so these components go immediately to the blood stream, to the respiratory tract,” she says.
Carcinogens are substances that can lead to the development of cancer, a well-known risk of smoking. But Navas-Acien, professor of preventive medicine at Johns Hopkins University, says cancer can be a long-term consequence of tobacco smoking. There are much quicker unhealthy effects, such as nicotine addiction.
“The most addictive component in tobacco is nicotine. And so nicotine reaches the brain in less than a second. So it’s like a peak of nicotine and that immediate response to nicotine is where the addictive power of tobacco is,” she says.
The brain actually has receptors for nicotine – structures that receive and bind to specific substances.
“So, it’s going to target these receptors that are in the brain cells. And actually the number of receptors is very small in people who do not smoke. But in people who start smoking, the number of receptors for tobacco increases. And the younger people start smoking the higher the number of receptors. That means the more addictive you are going to be,” the doctor says.
Heart, veins, arteries
While the body craves nicotine once addiction sets in, damage is being done to the cardiovascular system.
“The cardiovascular disease effects can be quite short term. There can be changes in the platelets that are very important particles in the blood that form clots. For example if we have a wound then we need these platelets to aggregate so that there is a clot and we don’t bleed. However, if we don’t have a wound and if we smoke then the platelets aggregate – that’s going to potentially contribute to the forming of (a) thrombosis and heart attacks, says Navas-Acien.
A blood clot in the wrong place can stop the flow of blood to the heart, triggering a heart attack.
Cigarette smoke also reduces lung function, even if inhaled as second-hand smoke.
“We have some very good evidence from workers in bars in Scotland. And their lung function was measured when smoking was allowed in the restaurants. And then Scotland passed a smoke-free legislation, so it was not possible to smoke in restaurants any longer and in bars any longer. When their lung function was measured a year later their lung function had improved quite substantially,” she says.
The Johns Hopkins doctor conducted a similar study in Accra, Ghana, measuring the effect of smoking in public places. People who worked in those environments, whether smokers or not, had higher levels of cigarette chemicals in their bodies. Another study was done in Nigeria, but those results are pending.
Looking older
The physical changes taking place inside the body can’t readily be seen without the aid of medical equipment. But there are telltale signs on the outside.
She says, “The skin is going to age more rapidly. For instance, if we take some twins, one who smokes and the other one doesn’t, and they do everything exactly the same, the skin of the person who smokes is going to have more wrinkles and is going to look much older. Maybe like even 10 years older.”
Then there are the yellow teeth and fingernails and discolored gums. Navas-Acien says smoking is also very bad for dental health.
She admits quitting is not easy, whether it’s done by sheer willpower or with the help of medication. It may take numerous attempts to break the nicotine addiction, but the Johns Hopkins professor says it’s worth it.
About 30 years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a new strategy is being launched to better respond to the needs of women and children.
The research agenda -- called Asking the Right Questions – includes 20 specific recommendations to expand and improve care and treatment. The announcement coincides with Monday’s International Women’s Day and is a joint effort by the International AIDS Society (IAS), U.N. agencies, researchers and civil society.
IAS Executive Director Robin Gorna says, “We’re nearly three decades into the epidemic and we have the depressing news that AIDS is now the leading cause of death of women of reproductive age across the globe,” she says.
It wasn’t always that way
“Three decades ago, very few women were infected with HIV. It was a minority issue. But sadly, as HIV has taken its increasing toll on women, the pace of research and the response really hasn’t kept up,” she says.
While “excellent treatments” are available, she says, which can prolong life, many have “not been properly researched on women’s bodies.”
As a result, the full effects of those treatments on women are not known.
“Now that more and more women are accessing treatment, what we still don’t know is how we can best get women into care and how we can make sure that care is integrated,” she says.
That includes, she says, ensuring HIV positive pregnant women get the best health care, while at the same time providing the necessary drugs to prevent HIV transmission to their babies.
What happened along the way
“There are very good reasons for not including women in early research. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies are always very worried about how drugs might affect the growing fetus. And of course we have the terrible history of Thalidomide, where women unintentionally took drugs, which led to side effects in their babies,” she says.
This side effects included severe deformities, including missing limbs. The drug was sold between 1957 and 1961, before being pulled from the market.
“No one ever wants that to happen again. What that means is as an extreme caution,” she says. “Women of reproductive age are not included in clinical trials.”
In the event women of child bearing age are included, they must drop out of clinical trials if they become pregnant.
“For example, one of the drugs that is now used as first-line therapy throughout the world – one of the best drugs we have in combination (therapy) to combat AIDS – is recommended not to be used in women of reproductive age. And yet they are in many countries the majority of people with HIV,” she says.
Kids need special care
“One of the other things we’re looking at is the effect on children. Now in the rich world…we’ve basically eradicated transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their babies. And that’s brilliant news. Sadly, in many of the poorer countries of the world, the opposite is true. And hundreds of thousands of babies are born with HIV every year,” Gorna says.
The head of the International AIDS Society calls it “tragic” that drugs are not available in the “correct formulation” in the developing world.
“We have the drugs, but they need to be mini pills or syrups or a range of other innovative delivery mechanisms. And quite simply, there isn’t any economic rationale for many companies to make those products in that style,” she says.
The IAS, U.N. and other groups are calling on the pharmaceutical industry to increase its research and development of pediatric AIDS drugs “to make sure that these children, who are being born with HIV, can stay alive,” she says.
The IAS, UNICEF and others have set a goal of no more children being born HIV positive by 2015. Gorna says it’s possible, but it will take money and political will.
Universal access
Gorna is in London for a Tuesday meeting on universal access to HIV care, treatment and prevention. In 2005, at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, leaders set a goal to provide such access by 2010.
“In 2005, the U.K. led the charge for the G8 and then the whole world at the U.N. to commit to this ambitious goal…. It’s sad, but truly the fact, that we’re about a third of the way there,” she says.
The London meeting, Gorna says, “Is to try very hard to reignite the energy and the passion to achieve that goal of universal access to HIV treatment, prevention and care. We estimate there are about 10 million people who need HIV treatment today and are simply not able to access it.”
Gorna says Canada is hosting both the G8 and G20 summits this year, but so far has not included HIV/AIDS on the summits’ agendas.
African leaders and HIV positive Africans are expected to address Tuesday’s gathering in London about the problems they face.
“My suspicion is that what they’re going to say we need more money. We need to make sure that this remarkable momentum over the last five years does not slow down, that the funding is not flatlined. And that we don’t get into an unhealthy competition with other diseases or with climate change,’ she says.
She says the need for universal access is no less great today than it was in 2005.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria reports nearly 5 million lives have been saved since 2002 through programs it has supported for the treatment of these three killer diseases. A new report shows the funds multi-billion dollar investment is paying big dividends in improving the health of millions of people in developing countries.
Since its creation in 2002, the Global Fund has contributed more than $19 billion to combat AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis. The money has supported more than 600 programs in 144 countries. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa have been the major recipients.
The results are impressive. The fund reports 2.5 million people infected with HIV currently are being treated with antiretroviral therapy and this has resulted in a significant decline in AIDS deaths in many countries, including Ethiopia and Malawi.
It says around 6 million people with active tuberculosis are being treated for the disease. And, this too, is resulting in fewer deaths globally.
Through its malaria prevention program, the fund has distributed more than 100 million insecticide-treated nets. The report says 10 of the countries in Africa with the highest incidents of the illness have reported declines in new malaria cases and a decline in child mortality of 50 to 80 percent.
The funds Director of Strategy, Performance and Evaluation, Rifat Atun, says these programs saved at least 3,600 lives every day in 2009, and even more can be saved through continued funding of these programs.
We can, for example, given the rate of investment and the scale at the moment we have, eliminate malaria as a public health problem, decline the mortality of under five in children, mothers and beyond, noted Atun. We can prevent millions of more HIV infections and also in tuberculosis. But, most importantly, we can look to a world that is free of HIV infection in children. We can virtually eliminate transmission of HIV from mother to child.
But Atun, cautions continued progress will require the partnership to continue to work in the effective way in which it has done. He says support must be maintained for the countries that have been able to achieve these results.
The Global Fund is a combination public-private partnership among governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities. Most of its money comes from the G7 industrialized countries. But, private organizations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also contribute significant amounts.
The Global Fund says it will be able to reach several health-related Millennium Development Goals by 2015, if it receives the money it needs to continue scaling up its activities in the coming years.
The fund is setting its sights on reducing both child and maternal mortality rates by three quarters, to halt the spread of HIV and to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
Childhood obesity continues to spread in the U.S. and elsewhere. A new study finds excessive snacking is the main culprit.
One in three children in the United States is overweight or obese. A new study shows that some obese children as young as three have early warning signs for heart disease. Other studies show that obese children are more likely to stay obese as adults
The study also says American children eat an average of three snacks a day on top of three regular meals, and the snacks account for almost one third of their daily calories.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill studied the eating habits of American children over a 30-year period. They looked at data on 31,000 children between the ages of two and 18. They found that desserts and sweetened drinks remain the major source of calories from snacks. Not far behind are salty snacks and candy
In a recent hearing on childhood obesity, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin told lawmakers that the Obama administration is working on making healthy meals more accessible and affordable. There is a growing consensus that we as a nation need to recreate our communities and environments where healthy choices are easy choices and affordable choices, she said.
Data shows the rate of childhood obesity has tripled over the last 30 years. To reverse the trend, experts agree that vending machines in schools should offer healthy alternatives
We need to do a much better job of making sure that whats in those vending machines is very consistent. We think that the time has come for standards, said US Agricuture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The first lady has launched a program to motivate school children to eat healthy and to exercise.
The administration has also announced $400 million in federal assistance to help bring more grocery stores - with fresh produce - to underserved communities.
Many state education boards have cut recess and physical education. The federal government is encouraging schools to make more time so children can participate in physical activity.
Its recommended that children get 150 minutes of exercise a week at elementary school and 225 minutes in secondary schools and yet they are not. For many schools PE (physical education) is an afterthought, Benjamin said.
The Centers for Disease Control is calling for taxes on sugary drinks and junk food, zoning restrictions on fast-food restaurants around schools and a ban on advertisements for junk food aimed at children
The presidents task force on childhood obesity plans to meet with Mr. Obama to deliver its recommendations on the issue.
A person suffering from Alzheimers gradually loses touch with reality. It is one of the most dreaded diseases of aging.
When you think about the functions that limit living independently and autonomously, loss of cognition is one of the major ones, says neurologist Aron Buchman.
Buchman says finding ways to treat and prevent the disease is critical because the risk of developing Alzheimers increases as people grow older and the worlds population is aging.
Focus on the positive
Having a purpose in life has been associated with other positive health outcomes so Buchman wondered if feeling life has meaning might also have an impact on developing Alzheimers
People with high purpose in life have a lower risk of dying, he says. We know that they also have a lower risk of developing disability, and their rate of motor decline is slower as well.
So Buchman and his colleagues at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago assessed purpose in life in 900 seniors who had an average age of 80.
Sense of purpose
Their purpose in life score was based on their level of agreement with statements like, I feel good when I think about what I have done in the past and what I hope to do in the future. Participants were also examined clinically each year for signs of Alzheimers or mild dementia
We found that people with high purpose in life at the beginning of the study had about a two-and-half times lower risk of developing dementia as compared to somebody with low purpose in life, Buchman reports. Having high purpose in life seems to be associated with a lower risk of developing cognitive difficulties as people age.
Buchman says the studys finding indicates that strategies to prevent the onset of Alzheimers and dementia need to focus on increasing seniors feelings of purpose in life. Encouraging them to volunteer, to stay active and involved may not only enhance their health and well-being today, but well into the future.
HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, apparently can hide in bone marrow. It’s the latest evidence to show HIV can lie dormant in many parts of the body.
However, the finding could eventually lead to better treatment of HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Kathleen Collins, associate professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, and her colleagues, conducted the research. She says a different approach is needed to target the dormant virus.
“The drugs that are currently available for the treatment of HIV disease are highly effective at reducing the virus levels in the blood. And they dramatically decrease mortality and reduce it by about 90 percent, which is a really big deal. It’s really important,” she says.
But….
“The drugs do not cure the disease. And so people have to remain on drugs for at least the foreseeable future, possibly for their entire lives. And the reason why the drugs fail is because (the) virus is able to lie dormant in a form that is resistant to the drugs. And when the drugs are stopped the virus is then able to rebound,” says Collins.
The next step is to find out how HIV survives in this dormant state, “so that ultimately we can develop a treatment that will be curative,” she says.
Hiding places
It’s long been known that HIV can hide in many parts of the body, such as the brain. But hiding in bone marrow is different.
“The virus that is in some of these other reservoirs, like (the) brain, are probably in a form that is more short-lived. It’s probably a low-level active infection. The drugs aren’t getting into the brain in high enough levels. What’s different about the bone marrow is that the virus is in a latent form that isn’t toxic to the cells and the cells are long lived themselves,” she says.
HIV can live for many years within those bone marrow cells.
“(It) will require specific reservoir targeting strategies to eradicate,” she says.
Anti-retrovirals are not to blame for the virus going into hiding.
“No, the drugs don’t increase dormancy. The drugs, if anything, decrease dormancy. But they don’t eradicate it (HIV),” she says.
It takes time
While the findings will boost drug development research, it’s not a quick process.
“It can take some time. People have known about reservoirs in resting T-cells (immune cells) and have been working on drug strategies to try to eradicate those reservoirs. And that’s been on-going for about 10 years with limited success,” she says.
She says the T-cell research may provide some clues into targeting the HIV in bone marrow.
“It’s a fairly long term process to develop drugs and to test them in the clinic. Make sure they are safe and then get them on the market for therapy. This is a fairly long term goal and probably won’t change things for people in the near future,” says Collins.
Gone once and for all?
Asked whether it will ever be possible to eradicate HIV from the body, she says, “I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to do that ultimately. I am.”
She says great strides have been made in recent years.
“We’ve gone from having HIV be essentially a death sentence…. And now, we’re in a different world. If people are infected with the virus, there’s a lot of hope. They can lead a near normal life. So that’s a huge difference just in the past 10 or 15 years.
The World Health Organization is releasing new guidelines for the treatment of malaria. It is now possible to rapidly diagnose malaria in even the poorest settings, making treatment of the disease more effective.
Health officials say great progress has been made in the fight against malaria. But, it still remains a huge problem. The World Health Organization reports nearly 250 million cases of malaria occur each year, causing 850,000 deaths, most among children in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Director of the WHO Global Malaria Program, Robert Newman, says fight against malaria is far from over. But, the world now has the means to rapidly diagnose malaria and treat it effectively.
In recent years, the development of rapid, diagnostic tests for malaria, also known as RDTs, which can be performed by healthcare workers after a brief training has made the extension of diagnostic testing to rural health facilities possible, said Robert Newman.
In 2008, WHO reports just 22 percent of suspected malaria cases were tested in 18 of 35 African countries.
Dr. Newman says the diagnostic test can be performed at all levels of the health system, including community settings. He says WHO recommends this test be performed on everyone that is suspected of having malaria.
This will ensure, not only, that those who receive artemisinin-combination medicines really have malaria, but will also allow health care workers to exclude malaria and look for other causes of fever in those who do not have malaria… Newman adds, It will take some time to achieve the goal of universal diagnostic testing for malaria…But, in the end, it will be worth it. Not only will we do a better job of treating patients, but, we will be helping to prevent the potential spread of resistance to artemisinins, our most important class of medicines for treating malaria.
The World Health Organization also is issuing its first ever guidelines on Good procurement practices for artemisinin-based anti-malarial medicines.
WHO notes this is important because there are around 800 different brands of anti-malarial medicines around the world. It says pharmaceutical markets in malaria endemic countries often are unregulated.
As a consequence, many of these products are ineffective, sub-standard, and in some cases dangerous. The WHO guidelines will help national authorities assess the quality of malaria medicines before they buy them.
C-reactive protein is an indication of inflammation in the body, and, at high levels, is considered an early sign of future heart disease.
Its a risk factor in a similar way that elevated cholesterol is a risk factor for heart disease, says Asheley Skinner, a scientist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine
Obese adults can have high levels of C-reactive protein. Now, after analyzing data from a large national health and nutrition survey, Skinner reports finding similarly elevated levels in obese children as well, some as young as 3 years old.
Fat unhealthy at any age
Although most adults understand that being obese is not good for them, Skinner says many dont realize that it is also unhealthy for children to be overweight. Even in these young kids, she points out, when theyre overweight, theres something different about their bodies. Their bodies are already producing things that could, long term, be damaging to them, even when theyre really young.
A childs weight and levels of C-reactive protein are strongly related, and Skinner says this correlation increases as a child grows older. The strength of this relationship between obesity and inflammation is concerning, that somethings happening that could be cumulative.
Often parents dont realize theres a problem because their child does not look fat. But in a small, short person, Skinner says, just 3 kilograms can make the difference between a healthy weight and obesity. She adds that, since a lifetime of obesity may put a child at greater risk for heart disease and other health problems, parents need to be concerned about their childs weight from the very start
Skinners study appears in the journal Pediatrics.
The British government hosted a meeting in London Tuesday to discuss the progress made towards achieving universal access to HIV prevention. Before the meeting, Selah Hennessy spoke to ministers, aid workers, and campaigners about the importance of keeping HIV/AIDS on the global agenda
Before the meeting at Londons House of Commons, ministers and aid workers came together to talk about the road forward for HIV/AIDS prevention
Scottish musician Annie Lennox, formerly of Eurythmics, was there and told VOA the commitment to fight HIV/AIDS cannot be broken
We really need to step up to the plate with the Global Millennium Development Goals, Lennox said. We need to put more funding in - it isnt a question of pulling back now for these things to be dealt with properly.
At the G8 Summit in 2005 world leaders pledged to achieve universal access to HIV/AIDS by 2010
But as this years G8 and G20 June summit approaches, HIV/AIDS campaigners say still only one-third of people in need of HIV treatment worldwide receive it
And they say they fear HIV/AIDS prevention wont be at the top of the agenda at this years summit in Canada.
Diarmaid McDonald from the Stop AIDS Campaign says political and economic commitment to universal access is faltering - just as more is needed.
This is 2010 - this is the year that the people who are living with AIDS right the way around the world were promised they would all have access to HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care and support and even though theres been a considerable improvement in the number of people on treatment, we are still over 10 million shy of our targets, McDonald said
He says the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a crucial tool in the fight against HIV/AIDS
The fund recently reported that nearly 5 million lives had been saved through its programs since 2002, with 2.5 million people infected with HIV now being treated with anti-retroviral therapy
But McDonald says the fund can not save lives if donors dont provide the money needed
He says a cash shortage already means that doctors working in Africa are having to scale back their HIV/AIDS treatment.
Were seeing evidence across the developing world that doctors are having to start rationing supplies of anti-retroviral drugs, were seeing evidence theyre not being able to recruit new people and start them on their treatment services, McDonald said
Gareth Thomas, Britains minister for international development, added that political will is needed to keep HIV/AIDS on the global agenda.
Its very important that political leaders start talking again about the impact of HIV/AIDS on developing countries. And thats political leaders in the developing countries themselves, but also in developed countries as well, Thomas said
According to the World Health Organization 33.4 million people live with HIV/AIDS worldwide.
Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible loss of vision worldwide and now doctors believe the devastating disease begins in the brain and not in the eye as has long been thought. Dr. David Calkins, director of research at the Vanderbilt Eye Institute in Tennessee, quotes estimates that by the year 2020, there will be 80 million cases of glaucoma worldwide. Glaucoma is called the silent thief of sight, since most people with the disease dont notice a change in their vision. It happens gradually, as increased fluid pressure inside the eye, known as ocular pressure, damages the optic nerve, which sends visual images to the brain. Damaged nerve cells cannot be replaced or repaired. There is currently just one treatment for glaucoma, which is to reduce ocular pressure. Doctors test for glaucoma by measuring pressure inside the eye and checking peripheral vision. But Calkins and his colleagues have discovered that the earliest signs of glaucoma are not in the eye, but in the brain. A new understanding of the disease progression We dont really understand why it is that there is a loss of communication at the brain first, Calkins says, adding that it is now clear the degeneration of vision starts in the brain and works its way back to the retina, rather than the other way around. The finding suggests that glaucoma may be reversible in the early stages, since the nerve structures between the brain and the optic nerve do not degenerate right away. The structure that allows the communication remains in place for a very, very long time, Calkins says. And that, he says, opens up new ways to treat glaucoma and puts it in an entirely new perspective. Instead of treating it just as a disease of the eye, we now understand that it is really a neurological disease that involves loss of communication between the optic nerve and the brain. And, by studying glaucoma as a neurological disease, Calkins says researchers may be able to learn more about other age-related neuro-degenerative disorders like Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. The study appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Senegalese children were among the 85 million African children vaccinated against polio this week, as part of an international campaign to halt an ongoing wave of the disease in West and Central Africa
Health workers went door-to-door this week in Joal, Senegal, about 100 kilometers outside the capital, Dakar. They used droppers to give free oral polio vaccine to all children under five years old
The campaign in Joal was part of a countrywide campaign to vaccinate the more than two million children under five in Senegal. It is a campaign aimed at raising immunity as well as awareness.
Ibrahima Sakho and his wife had never heard of polio before their two-year-old son, Mamadou, was stricken with the life-threatening disease in early January. Their son was the second case of polio reported in Senegal this year
Sakho says he was in the Gambia working when his wife told him his son was scratching his back and was bedridden with a fever. He says Mamadou was taken to a health center in Joal then transferred to a hospital in Dakar. He says the first time he saw his son, Mamadous arms and legs were paralyzed. He says he was very worried because he did not know a disease could do that
Two-months later, Mamadou can now slightly move his right leg and left arm. His father says he has since learned how polio is spread and is urging other parents to vaccinate their children
Senegal is one of nine West and Central African countries that have had polio outbreaks within the past six months
This most recent polio threat can be traced to a 2008 outbreak in northern Nigeria that is moving westward. Many of the affected countries, which had been polio free, became re-infected.
In a mass immunization campaign launched this week, the United Nations and international aid agencies aimed to vaccinate more than 85-million children under five against the polio virus in 19 countries across West and Central Africa.
UNICEFs Regional Communication Officer, Gaëlle Bausson, said this synchronized, multi-national campaign is just the first step eradicating polio.
The second level of action is strengthening the health system so that every child gets systematically immunized when he has access to health care, said Gaëlle Bausson. It is a much more complicated issue because you need to improve access to health care. You need to improve health-care education so that people know that they should get their kid to vaccination as a preventative measure not as a curative or an emergency measure to stop an outbreak.
Bausson said that education is key because, in the absence of an outbreak, people tend to forget about the disease and not immunize their children
For example, there has not been a case in Senegal for more than 20 years, so the level of information was quite low said Bausson. The population did not realize that it was still an issue and that it could hit anywhere at any point.
The Global Polio Eradication Campaign is spearheaded by national governments, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, Rotary International, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The aid agencies plan a follow-up campaign in the same 19 countries on April 24.
There was a different kind of health care debate Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The topic was how the United States can best build on the success of its global efforts to combat AIDS and malaria. Members of Congress received advice from two leaders in global health - a former U.S. president and a technology tycoon.
Bill Clinton and Bill Gates sat side-by-side at a witness table before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Their goal: to convince Congress to spend more to fight disease and provide basic medical services in some of the poorest countries around the world.
Former President Clinton called it a moral imperative, and a foreign policy priority. This is not complicated, he said. When people think you care whether their kids live or die, they like you pretty well!
And to those concerned about the cost of foreign aid, Mr. Clinton said it costs far less to save lives than to lose them in battle. We have to build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries, he said.
The former president cited Haiti as an example of a country where the link between health and security is strong. If we can build a healthy Haiti and one where the economy works well, then there is much less incentive for it to be a drug transshipment point, he said.
Together, the William J. Clinton, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations have saved countless lives in the worlds poorest countries.
The Gates Foundation has invested billions of dollars in AIDS prevention and treatment, and other health challenges. And the Clinton Foundation has worked with drug manufacturers to get medicines to those most in need.
Bill Gates - the founder of the Microsoft computer software firm - told the Senate committee that improving health is an important first step in bringing countries out of poverty, and making them stable and prosperous. The countries we are talking about have terrible health problems. We have to solve those problems to get them on the path to self-sufficiency, he said.
Gates said these efforts represent America at its best. I do think this work has a substantial impact on how the country is viewed - a willingness to take our science, our innovation and have it benefit the poorest people in the world, he said.
Congress is working on legislation to fund an expanded U.S. government role in global health. Unlike the debate over domestic health care reform, there has been a remarkable degree of bipartisanship in promoting health internationally.
Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold has worked on Senate legislation to fund the global battle against malaria and AIDS. This has been an area at a time when people despair of bipartisanship - bipartisanship has been superb on both of these issues for years and, I think, Americans should know,
The programs that form the basis for President Barack Obamas global health initiative were launched by his predecessor, George W. Bush. Top Democratic and Republican lawmakers are involved in drafting legislation to expand Americas global health role.
President Barack Obama traveled to St. Louis, Missouri on Wednesday, continuing his outreach to Americans to support approval by the U.S. Congress of legislation to reform the U.S. health care system. The president is intensifying his efforts to ensure support from Democratic lawmakers for legislation he hopes at least one chamber of Congress will approve before he departs on an overseas trip next week:
The president has used appearances in St. Louis, and earlier this week in Philadelphia, to appeal for public support in advance of a hoped for vote in the House of Representatives, a crucial step in the final stage of his push for a health care bill.
The strategy includes an effort to draw attention to recent rate increases imposed on Americans by major health insurance companies, and the impact this has had on people the president has heard from directly in letters he reads each day.
At St. Charles High School in St. Louis, delivering his 52nd speech on health care since taking office early last year, the president again took aim at Republican calls to scrap the current legislative effort, and those he said favor giving the insurance industry even more power than it has now.
There are those who believe that the answer is to simply unleash the insurance industry and provide less oversight and fewer rules and that somehow that is going to drive down prices for everybody. This is called putting the foxes in charge of the hen house approach to health care reform, he said.
White House officials are sticking to a prediction they say is based on conversations with congressional Democratic leaders, that a vote in the House of Representatives can be achieved before the presidents scheduled departure March 18 on a trip to Guam, Indonesia and Australia. Their information suggests that that vote can happen before we leave, said Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs.
But recent statements by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have led some political observers to suggest that the White House and congressional Democrats may not be operating on the same timeline.
Gibbs said the White House is confident that at minimum a vote in the House can happen before the president leaves on his trip.
President Obama faces united Republican opposition to his health care reform plan, which would expand coverage to some 30 million more Americans, and take steps such as ending insurance company practices of denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions.
He told his audience in St. Louis that accepting the status quo is unacceptable. Now is the time, now is the moment, now is the time for us to lead for the next generation and generations to come, a stronger and more prosperous country, we are not backing down, we not quitting, and we are going to get this done, he said.
As the president continued his cross-country appeals on health care reform, partisan disagreements continued to echo on Capitol Hill.
Kentucky Democrat John Yarmuth derided Republican calls to start over on health care. No, we cant start over because if we start over life will be over for too many Americans, he said.
Texas Republican Lamar Smith repeated the assertion that President Obamas plan would place the government in charge of making health decisions for Americans. The health care scheme, under reconciliation, means decisions made by the government, behind closed doors, against the wishes of the American people, he said.
The term reconciliation refers to a process President Obama and Democrats are likely to use to win upcoming votes in the Senate with a simple 51 vote majority, rather than a 60 vote margin, to avoid Republican roadblocks.