News Review
Prodigy ebulletin November 2011
The following PRODIGY topics have been updated to include new evidence and recommendations published by the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health (FSRH), the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) and the World Alzheimer Report 2011.
- Contraception – Emergency has been revised to reflect the updated emergency contraception guidance issued by the FSRH.
- Dementia has been updated to into include a summary of key recommendations from the World Alzheimer Report 2011 which emphasizes the benefits of early diagnosis and intervention.
- Gonorrhoea has been updated to reflect the revised UK National Guideline for the Management of Gonorrhoea in Adults 2011, published by BASHH. The main changes include:
- First-line treatment for gonorrhoea is now ceftriaxone 500 mg by intramuscular injection plus azithromycin 1 g orally.
- A test of cure is now recommended for all people after treatment for gonorrhoea.
- Pelvic inflammatory disease and scrotal swellings have been updated to reflect the current UK treatment guidelines for uncomplicated gonorrhoea from BASHH. The dose of intramuscular ceftriaxone has been increased from 250 mg to 500 mg to reflect the reduced sensitivity of Neisseria gonorrhoeae to cephalosporins.
- Warts and verrucae has been updated include the results of a recent Health Technology Assessment that found no evidence to suggest that cryotherapy was more effective than self-treatment with 50% salicylic acid for the treatment of verrucae.
A literature search was conducted in October 2011 to identify evidence-based guidelines, UK policy, systematic reviews, and key RCTs published since the last revision of the following topics:
Common cold - no changes to clinical recommendations have been made.
Insect bites and stings - no changes to clinical recommendations have been made.
Kind Regards
PRODIGY Team
Some interesting problems may arise from generic prescribing
Mesalazine prescribing in the management of IBD is one of those "exception to the rules" cases, where generic prescribing is not recommended. In February 2011, Professor Forbes co-authored an article in the Pharmaceutical Journal* outlining some interesting problems that may arise from generic prescribing.
Professor Forbes has kindly recorded a short webcast in order to share his expert opinion and best practice in the management of IBD.
for more detail www.onmedica.com
Optum Middle East LLC to Provide Technology-Enabled Health Services to Help
Region’s Hospitals and Care Providers Enhance Care, Streamline Performance
New joint venture between Optum and Lifeline Hospital Group will offer performance improvement and revenue cycle management solutions to help care providers enhance patient care, reduce costs and improve financial performance
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 26, 2011 – Optum today announced it is launching Optum Middle East LLC, a joint venture with Abu Dhabi-based Lifeline Hospital Group, to help leading care providers in the region improve financial performance and increase operating efficiency, enabling them to focus on enhancing patient care.
Optum Middle East will redesign, staff and manage all elements of Lifeline Hospitals’ revenue cycle management functions using an integrated suite of services and technology. Revenue cycle management encompasses a broad set of administrative services related to creating, submitting, analyzing and ultimately handling collections for patient medical bills.
Optum’s revenue cycle management capabilities include its Electronic Financial Record™ (eFR™) application. The eFR platform integrates disparate financial and reimbursement data into a single database to create real-time, patient-centered financial records – flagging items that may require information and alerting personnel when to take steps to keep claims and reimbursement processes moving forward.
Bringing enhanced technology to the revenue cycle management process will help enable hospitals to improve productivity, increase revenue and reduce costs. They will benefit from reduced write-offs, improved accounts receivable, improved collections and cash flow – enabling hospitals to focus resources on patient care rather than administrative tasks. As joint venture partner, Lifeline Hospitals will be the first to benefit from Optum’s capabilities.
Total hospital bed capacity in the United Arab Emirates is expected to double by 2019 to keep up with population growth and rising demand, providing significant revenue cycle management and operational performance improvement opportunities for the joint venture.
Lifeline Hospital Group provides inpatient and outpatient care through its network of private hospitals, pharmacies and health care support services in the United Arab Emirates and other locations in the region. Optum, a leading information and technology-enabled health services business, will provide comprehensive revenue cycle management and other performance-improvement services to health care providers in the market.
Serving as CEO and general manager of Optum Middle East LLC is Warren Guillett, a senior executive from OptumInsight with extensive experience in revenue cycle management, health care provider operations and performance improvement. Guillett will be based in Optum Middle East’s offices in Abu Dhabi and will manage the strategic direction and day-to-day operations of the joint venture. Dr. Shamsheer Vayalil Parambath, managing director of Lifeline Group, will be the chairman of Optum Middle East LLC.
“Hospitals and health systems across the Middle East can benefit from performance improvement assistance. Through this joint venture, we anticipate generating significant gains in productivity and increased collected revenue, enabling health care providers to better meet the growing health care needs of the communities we serve,” said Dr. Shamsheer.
“We see significant opportunities to help health systems across the Middle East increase their operational efficiency and improve the level of health care and services provided to the region’s residents through the use of health intelligence, data management and analysis, and technology,” said Guillett.
About Lifeline Hospital Group
Lifeline Hospital Group was born out of a desire to provide world-class, specialized and superior healthcare complemented by a warm and personalized human touch to the growing population of the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The group has now grown into four operating hospitals and nine pharmacies in the UAE and Oman, with four new hospitals under implementation (including a 200 bed tertiary care Super Specialty Hospital in Abu Dhabi). Major expansion is under way in the pharmacy retail business together with pharmaceutical and medical equipment distribution.
About Optum
Optum is an information and technology enabled health services company serving the broad health care marketplace, including care providers, commercial health plans, life sciences companies and consumers. Its business units — OptumInsight, OptumHealth and OptumRx — employ more than 30,000 people worldwide. It is a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), a diversified health and well-being company serving more than 75 million people worldwide.
www.finsbury.com
Finsbury Abu Dhabi
1st floor, Office 27, Blue Building, Twofour54, P.O. Box 77842, Abu Dhabi
Finsbury Dubai
T: +971 4 448 4282; 43rd Floor, Tower-B, Business Central Towers, Sheikh Zayed Rd, Dubai Media City, P.O. Box 74021
International AIDS Society and partners recognize outstanding researchers from around the world at the 6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2011) in Rome
Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Prize – supported by UNAIDS and ILF –; IAS TB/HIV Research Prize; and IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Awards to be presented to pioneering researchers from Uganda, Kenya, The Netherlands, China, United Kingdom and United States
Monday, 11 July, 2011 (Geneva, Switzerland)
The International AIDS Society (IAS) announced today the six winners of three prestigious scientific awards, to be presented at plenary sessions during the 6th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2011) to be held in Rome July 17-20, 2011.
Presented by the IAS and partners, these awards recognize scientists involved in innovative HIV and AIDS research throughout the world.
“The quality of work represented by the 2011 awardees is remarkable,” said IAS President Elly Katabira. “The IAS hopes to draw the world’s attention to these individuals and to their significant scientific accomplishments, as well as to the continued need for innovation in all of the major areas of HIV and AIDS research, represented by the conference programme tracks.”
Award winners will be available for interview before and during the conference.
About the Awards
Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Prize
Supported by UNAIDS, ILF, ICRW and ICW
Date: Monday, 18 July, Session Room 1, 08:55 (before Plenary)
Presented by Elly Katabira, IAS President and Catherine Hankins, Chief Scientific Adviser, UNAIDS
The Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Prize is offered jointly by the IAS-Industry Liaison Forum and UNAIDS, and supported by the International Center for Research on Women and the International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS. The US$2,000 prize is awarded to an investigator from a low-income or middle-income country whose abstract demonstrates excellence in research and/or practice that addresses women, girls and gender issues related to HIV. This prize serves to highlight the challenges faced by women and girls in this epidemic and to encourage investigators from low- and middle-income countries to pursue research in this field of scientific endeavour.
The winner of the Women, Girls and HIV Investigator Prize is: Milly Kaggwa Nanyombi (Uganda)
Abstract Title: Preventing HIV Infection among adolescents by addressing Cross Generational Sex (CGS) in Secondary Schools in Uganda
IAS TB/HIV Research Prize
Monday, 18 July, Session Room 1, 14:25
Presented by Elly Katabira, IAS President and Papa Salif Sow, IAS Governing Council member.
The aim of the US$2,000 IAS prize on TB/HIV research is to generate interest and stimulate research on basic, clinical and operations research in TB/HIV prevention, care and treatment. The IAS TB/HIV Research Prize is an incentive for researchers to investigate pertinent research questions that affect TB/HIV co-infection and operational effectiveness of core TB/HIV collaborative services.
The winner of the IAS TB/HIV Research Prize is: Sabine Margot Hermans, The Netherlands
Abstract Title: Integration of HIV and TB services results in earlier and more prioritised ART initiation in Uganda
IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award
Tuesday, 19 July, Session Room 1, 08:55 (before Plenary)
Presented by Elly Katabira, IAS President and Jean-François Delfraissy, Director, French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS).
The US$2,000 IAS/ANRS Young Investigator Award is jointly funded by the IAS and the French National Agency for Research on AIDS and Viral Hepatitis (ANRS) to support young researchers who demonstrate innovation, originality and quality in the field of HIV and AIDS research. To be eligible, the presenting author of an abstract accepted for presentation must be under 35 years of age. One prize is awarded in each of the four conference tracks.
The recipients by track are:
Track A: Basic Sciences
Winner: Xu Yu, China
Abstract Title: Unique mechanisms of CD4 T cell homeostasis in HIV-1 elite controllers
Track B: Clinical Sciences
Winner: Musa Ngayo, Kenya
Abstract Title: Association of abnormal vaginal flora with male-to-female HIV-1 transmission among HIV-1 discordant couples in sub-Saharan Africa
Track C: Prevention Science
Winner: Anandi Sheth, USA
Abstract Title: Genital secretions of HIV-1 infected women on effective antiretroviral therapy contain high drug concentrations and low amounts of cell-free virus
Track D: Operations and Implementation Research
Winner. Lilanganee Telisinghe, UK
Abstract title: Antiretroviral therapy roll-out in an African prison: It can be done
End
International AIDS Society urges Russian government to radically reassess counterproductive drug policies which are fueling the country’s HIV epidemic
28 June 2011. Geneva, Switzerland.
As Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian state Duma, calls for a “total war on drugs” to tackle Russia’s growing drug problem, the International AIDS Society (IAS) urges the Russian government to radically reassess its approach to drug policy, and to accept that the war on drugs has failed dramatically from both a law enforcement and a public health perspective.
Under new laws being drawn up by the Russian parliament, injecting drug users would be forced into treatment or jailed, while drug dealers would be sent to forced labour camps. These new measures contradict the recommendations of the recent report by the Global Commission on Drugs Policy, which clearly states that there must be a shift away from criminalizing drugs and incarcerating those who use them, and which calls on policy makers to “end the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others.”
These new measures also ignore existing solid scientific evidence demonstrating that harm reduction programmes, including Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), are effective in keeping injecting drug users (IDUs) in treatment programmes, reducing risky behaviors and mitigating a wide range of health and social consequences of drug dependence.
Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV. In some areas of rapid HIV spread, such as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Legal barriers to scientifically proven prevention services such as needle and syringe programs and opioid substitution therapy (OST) mean hundreds of thousands of people become infected with HIV and Hepatitis C every year. The effectiveness of these programmes is well-documented, though access to such interventions is often limited in those locations where HIV is spreading most rapidly. According to various scientific reviews conducted by the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine (U.S.) and others, these programmes reduce HIV rates without increasing drug use.
“With an stimated 6 million heroin addicts, Russia’shard-line “war on drugs” has proved entirely ineffective in terms of curbing the growing numbers of injecting drug users," said IAS President Elly Katabira. “Injecting drug-use is also fuelling Russia's HIV crisis because, despite the addition of OST medicines to the World Health Organization’s essential medicine’s list, and despite the growing international acknowledgement of the success of harm reduction programmes – OST is banned in Russia and needle exchange programmes are scarce.”
Last year, the International AIDS Society, along with other leading scientific and health policy organizations, launched the Vienna Declaration (www.viennadeclaration.com), a statement seeking to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies. The statement calls for a complete reorientation of international drug policy towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfill human rights, and which would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources spent on law-enforcement towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions. Over 20, 000 scientists, policy makers and political figures, including three former Latin American presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), Ernesto Zedillo (México) and César Gaviria (Colombia), have signed the declaration.
“To deny people evidence-based treatment and then to jail them in overcrowded prisons -- where individuals already vulnerable to HIV infection are placed in an even higher risk setting -- amounts to nothing less than state complicity in human rights abuses," said Bertrand Audoin, IAS Executive Director. “Instead of criminalization, which has resulted in record incarceration rates and a massive burden on the taxpayer, the Russian government needs to turn its back on the harsh rhetoric of the “war on drugs” and instead invest time, effort and money in rehabilitation, substitution treatment, case management for drug users and protection from HIV infection.”
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with over 16,000 members from more than 196 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, which will be held in Rome, Italy in July 2011.
www.iasociety.org | www.ias2011.org
For general enquiries:
Email: info@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0800
For more information:
Sian Bowen (Geneva, Switzerland)
Senior Manager, Communications
Email: Sian.Bowen@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0864
Lindsey Rodger (Geneva, Switzerland)
Communications and Media Officer
Email: Lindsey.Rodger@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0822
The United States National Institutes of Health, the Centers for AIDS Research and the International AIDS Society announce a new round of innovative HIV research awards
20 June 2011 (Geneva, Switzerland) – The International AIDS Society (IAS), in partnership with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the NIH-supported Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR), today announced the launch of a new round of the joint research grant programme, Creative and Novel Ideas in HIV Research (CNIHR).
The CNIHR programme supports projects intended to advance the scientific understanding of HIV by exploring new approaches to pressing scientific questions on such issues as the long-term survival of individuals with HIV infection, strategies to control viral reservoirs and research leading toward a cure for HIV/AIDS, and new approaches for the prevention of HIV transmission including treatment as prevention. “The NIH is delighted to continue this important international partnership, which is designed to promote innovative research and new ideas from early-stage investigators whose primary focus has previously been in fields of scientific inquiry other than HIV/AIDS,” Dr Jack Whitescarver, NIH Associate Director for AIDS Research and Director of the Office of AIDS Research, said. “The science of AIDS is making important strides, and we need to continue to generate innovative ideas and build multi-disciplinary collaborations. We must recruit and train tomorrow’s leading HIV researchers from across many areas of science, whose work will benefit not only HIV, but other fields of research as well.”
Given the limited resources available to pursue the rollout of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to all who need it, as well as the fact that in resource-limited settings, new infections continue to outstrip numbers of people on treatment by two to one, there is a strong need for continued investments to find new strategies to tackle the HIV epidemic. “In the current economic climate of treatment funding shortages and with a scale of unmet need that can only increase, the IAS is highly concerned by the long-term sustainability of antiretroviral therapy rollout,” Elly Katabira, IAS President, said. “Along with our partners, the IAS is committed to investing in finding better and more cost-effective options to curb the epidemic. One of the ways we can pursue this is through the CNIHR research grant programme.”
The first round of grants was announced in 2010. The joint programme awarded a total of US$3.4 million to fund the research projects of outstanding early-stage researchers. Each awardee is funded for up to two years with up to $150,000 (direct costs) per year plus applicable indirect costs.
“The truly international nature of this programme – it is open to candidates globally – enables it to select the best research projects from all over the world,” Prof Michael Saag, Director of CFAR at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, commented. “The first 10 awardees come from a wide range of scientific disciplines and locations, including Australia, India, Mexico, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.”
The first step of the competitive application process is now open on the CNIHR website (www.cnihr.org) and will close on 17 October 2011. Applicants will be asked to complete a two-step process to assess the quality of their research projects. Awardees will be selected by mid-April 2012 and will be able to start their research projects in June 2012. The research projects will be supported in collaboration with a CFAR institution with expertise in each candidate’s area of proposed research.
“Through this programme, promising young researchers have access to CFAR’s solid expertise and infrastructure, which is extremely important for the success of their projects,” Prof King Holmes, Director of the CFAR at the University of Washington, said. Awardees will also have the chance to take part in a networking and training programme at the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012), which will be held in Washington D.C. on 22-27 July 2012, where the results of the selection process will be announced.
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world’s leading independent association of HIV professionals, with more than 16,000 members from almost 200 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, and public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, the next one of which will be held in Rome, Italy, in July 2011.
About NIH
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, behavioral and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
About CFAR
The Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) programme at the National Institutes of Health provides administrative and shared research support to synergistically enhance and coordinate high-quality AIDS research projects. CFAR accomplishes this through core facilities that provide expertise, resources and services not otherwise readily obtained through more traditional funding mechanisms. The CFAR programme emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, especially between basic and clinical investigators, and translational research in which findings from the laboratory are brought to the clinic and vice versa. It also places emphasis on inclusion of minorities and inclusion of prevention and behavioural change research. Both the University of Alabama at Birmingham CFAR and the University of Washington CFAR in Seattle participate in the CNIHR grant programme.
Visit http://www.niaid.nih.gov/labsandresources/resources/cfar/Pages/default.aspx
References
CNIHR grant website: www.cnihr.org
Information on 2010 awardees: http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=381
For more information
Lindsey Rodger
Communications and Media Officer, International AIDS Society
Email: Lindsey.Rodger@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0822
Opinion Piece by Dr Elly Katabira, International AIDS Society (IAS) President
Thirty Years On: Why We Need a Cure for HIV Now More Than Ever Before
June 03, 2011- Thirty years ago this month, health agencies in the US began monitoring unusual clusters of diseases that would later be identified as the first cases of AIDS. A year later, a young medical officer working at a Health Center documented and reported to the Ministry of Health the first cases of AIDS in Uganda found on the shores of Lake Victoria in the Rakai district.
Over the past three decades, I have worked extensively in the field of care and support for people living with HIV, watching the story of AIDS unfold in my own country and around the world. I have witnessed some of the devastating consequences of silence and stigma, as well as the incredible results that translating scientific evidence into action can produce.
Today, HIV experts are in agreement that “prevention”, “treatment” and “care” are the three pillars to successfully responding to the HIV epidemic. Lessons learnt, and in particular the compelling new evidence that HIV treatment is also HIV prevention and that expanding antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage has preventative benefits for the entire community, also show us that these three pillars must not be approached separately, but as three interconnected efforts.
Here at the International AIDS Society (IAS) however, we are convinced that the three pillar approach to ending the HIV epidemic is incomplete and, to mark this historic month, the IAS is calling for the addition of a fourth pillar -- “cure” -- to the international response to the HIV epidemic.
Under no circumstances should the inclusion of “cure” into the global response direct funding away from treatment, prevention and care programmes. The IAS will continue to advocate for increased funding across each of these pillars. The IAS does believe however, that it is imperative that donors, governments and the AIDS community make a viable economic investment in HIV cure research, and right now.
Globally, there are currently 33.3 million people living with HIV. Although significant progress has been made towards scaling up access to antiretroviral treatment, the increase in new infections in certain regions, a decrease in funding, and the fact that under new WHO guidelines HIV patients should be starting their treatment regimens much earlier, means that universal access targets are way off track. As new infections continue to outstrip numbers on treatment by 2 to 1 in resource-limited settings, the scale of unmet need can only increase.
Furthermore, while ART has greatly improved the quality of life of people living with HIV and reduced AIDS-related mortality rates, the virus remains persistent in certain cells even in patients being successfully treated. In turn, patients have no option but to undertake life-long treatment to keep the virus under control. Life-long adherence to these drugs remains both costly and tiring for the patient, while side-effects associated with ART usage can be severe. Lastly, resistance to treatment can occur for a number of reasons.
Funding research to develop a functional[1]or sterilizing[2] cure for HIV which could offer people living with the virus an alternative to the burden of a difficult life-long ARV regimen is therefore not only important for the health and human rights of people living with HIV, it is in our collective economic interest.
Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, co-discoverer of HIV, Nobel Laureate and IAS President-elect, is currently guiding the development of a global scientific strategy, Towards an HIV Cure. This strategy aims at building a global consensus on the state of the art research in the field of HIV reservoirs and defining scientific priorities that must be addressed to tackle HIV persistence in patients undergoing treatment, the key hurdle impeding any alternative to long-term therapy.
Thirty years after the first cases of AIDS, if we are ever to envisage the remission of the disease in infected individuals, or even the eradication of the virus, then we must invest in and aggressively pursue an HIV cure.
Dr Elly Katabira is President of the International AIDS Society, the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals.
www.iasociety.org | www.ias2011.org
[1] Functional cure some HIV genetic material remains in the body, but the patient’s immune defense fully controls any viral rebound, allowing patients to be free of antiretroviral treatment
[2] Sterilizing cure no HIV genetic material can be found in the body, HIV infection is eradicated
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with over 16,000 members from more than 196 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, which will be held in Rome, Italy in July 2011.
www.iasociety.org | www.ias2011.org
For general enquiries:
Email: info@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0800
For more information:
Sian Bowen (Geneva, Switzerland)
Senior Manager, Communications
Email: Sian.Bowen@iasociety.org:
Tel: +41 22 710 0864
Lindsey Rodger (Geneva, Switzerland)
Communications and Media Officer
Email: Lindsey.Rodger@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0822
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is at the heart of the NHS changes. Our quality standards play a central role, informing the commissioning of all NHS care, payment, and inspection systems.
To ensure you are offering the best and most effective treatments in these financially straitened times, it is essential that you understand NICE’s new remit and responsibilities.
The NICE Annual Conference 2011 will provide you with key updates on what the Health Bill means regarding how NICE will work with existing and new stakeholders. This year’s conference will focus on practical aspects, to support you and to ensure you are offering the highest quality care and value for money.
Call 0845 056 8339 and quote MGP25 to receive a special 25% discount
Who's speaking?
Sir David Nicholson, Chief Executive, NHS
Chris Ham, Chief Executive, The King's Fund
Dr Clare Gerada, Chair, Royal College of General Practitioners
Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS Medical Director, Department of Health
Cynthia Bower, Chief Executive, Care Quality Commission
Jill Matthews, Director - Primary Care Improvement, Department of Health
Earl Howe, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department of Health
Phil Hammond, Journalist and Broadcaster
Michael White, Assistant Editor, Guardian
Professor David Hunter, Professor of Health Policy and Medicine, University of Durham
For further information about speakers and the full agenda,
download the conference brochure here
NICE Annual Conference 2011 will answer burning questions at the forefront of everyone’s mind, bringing our experts and insight to help you deliver change in this tough economic climate.
What’s new for GPs in 2011?
GP Consortia — how will they work?
Setting up GP Consortia
Using NICE guidelines to support quality and productivity in GP Consortia
NICE’s role is more important than ever and the NICE Annual Conference is the only annual resource for all those in the healthcare sector committed to providing the highest quality care and value for money.
Book your place today and take advantage of a special 25% discount on the standard rate – call 0845 056 8339 and quote MGP25
www.niceconference.org.uk
Investigating Private Healthcare
The Office of Fair Trading is to investigate the private healthcare market to examine whether it is fully competitive.
The OFT study, due to be formally launched in Spring 2011, will examine the nature of competition in the market, concentrating its investigation on four key areas:
The concentration amongst private providers and whether this limits the extent of competition
The existence of any barriers preventing private providers from entering or expanding in the market
Restrictions on the ability of consultants to practice
How consumers access and assess information and exercise choice
The private healthcare market, which is currently worth more than £5.5 billion, is of growing importance due to an ageing population, improved medical outcomes and higher life expectancy. It is also important to the NHS as a result of ongoing Government initiatives which allow NHS patients to seek treatment from private healthcare providers in certain circumstances. The NHS currently accounts for almost one quarter of revenues paid to private healthcare providers.1
References
Office of Fair Trading press release Dec 2010.
GP notebook Which hospital GP's refer to
Share your views on private healthcare and win a sailing trip worth £1200
How can independent hospitals help support the NHS in the coming years and does PMI make a difference in referral?
Enter our survey now for your chance to win
On completion, you will be entered into a free prize draw to win a sailing trip on a 40ft yacht, which you can share with your practice team, friends or family.
CKS news
New and updated CKS topics – issued 7 March 2011
· Antenatal care - uncomplicated pregnancy (new)
· Boils, carbuncles, and staphylococcal carriage
· Knee pain - assessment (new)
· Melanoma and pigmented lesions (new)
· Otitis media with effusion
· Paronychia - acute
· Whitlow (staphylococcal and herpetic)
Get involved
Feedback on draft topics is a key part in the knowledge development process for the Clinical Knowledge Summaries. In addition to feedback from experts, professional organizations and patient groups, we are particularly interested to receive feedback from healthcare professionals who use CKS.
We are happy to acknowledge your involvement in a letter that you may wish to add to your continual professional development or appraisal folder and/or on the website. To register an interest with any topic please Contact us.
What else is new?
Annual Evidence Updates
· Prostate cancer from NHS Evidence - cancer
· Hearing disorders from NHS Evidence ENT and Audiology
· Critical illness rehabilitation from NHS Evidence - surgery, anaesthesia, perioperative and critical care
· Retinal vein occlusions from NHS Evidence - eyes and vision
· Inflammatory bowel disease from NHS Evidence - gastroenterology and liver diseases
· Chest pain from NHS Evidence – cardiovascular
· Multiple Sclerosis from NHS Evidence – neurological conditions
Patient safety
MHRA – Drug Safety Update: Modafinil (Provigil) – information to support safer use; now restricted to narcolepsy.
NPSA: Safer spinal (intrathecal), epidural and regional devices
HPA – Migrant Health Guide
A new free-to-use resource, the Migrant Health Guide is now available to support health practitioners who care for people who have come to live in the UK from abroad. The guide has been developed by a team of clinical and public health experts, as well as primary care practitioners, in collaboration with the Health Protection Agency, and is endorsed by both the Royal College of General Practitioners and Royal College of Nursing.
Clinical Knowledge Summaries
Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle
Clayton House, Clayton Road, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 1TL
TOP SCIENTISTS UNITE TO DEVELOP GLOBAL SCIENTIFIC STRATEGY TOWARDS AN HIV CURE - 28 February, 2011 (Boston, United States)
More than 30 scientists gathered for a one-day meeting prior to the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) to launch an international working group on HIV reservoirs and strategies to control them. Under the auspices of the International AIDS Society, the scientists will guide the development of a global scientific strategy Towards an HIV Cure. The strategy aims at building a global consensus on the state of the HIV reservoirs field and defining scientific priorities that must be addressed by future research to tackle HIV persistency in patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy, the key hurdle impeding any alternative to long-term therapy. This global scientific strategy will help mobilize and focus resources to fund the most promising strategies towards a sterilizing or a functional cure*, and stimulate international research collaborations.
The international scientific working group will be co-chaired by Professor Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, International AIDS Society (IAS) President-elect and 2008 Nobel Laureate for Medicine, and Professor Steve Deeks, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Positive Health Program (AIDS Program) at San Francisco General Hospital. The working group will work closely with an advisory board composed of leading advocates and major research stakeholders in HIV cure, including representatives of people living with HIV, funders and clinicians from high prevalence settings. The advisory group will be co-chaired by Pr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Dr. Jack Whitescarver, Director of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health.
“Antiretroviral therapy has greatly improved the quality of life and reduced mortality rates of people living with HIV. However, even in successfully treated individuals, HIV remains dormant in certain cells, obliging patients to undertake life-long treatment to keep these viral reservoirs under control. If we are to envisage a successful discontinuation of treatment, we need to better understand why and how HIV infection persists despite treatment and to develop new therapeutic strategies,” said Pr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi.
This initiative comes on the back of the successful workshop Towards a cure: HIV Reservoirs and strategies to Control Them, held in conjunction with the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) in Vienna in July 2010. The International AIDS Society (IAS) decided to continue to mobilize the scientific community and guide the development of the global scientific strategy Towards an HIV Cure, which will be presented at the XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012), to be held in Washington DC in July 2012.
In line with the International AIDS Society’s strategic plan for 2010-2014, the IAS Governing Council has prioritized an HIV cure as one of its four key policy areas. “It is our mission to mobilize the scientific community and advocate for increased investments in HIV cure research, in order to develop short-term and cost-effective treatment strategies,” said Bertrand Audoin, IAS Executive Director.
“As a physician, I am fully aware that HIV persistence remains a daunting and complex challenge,” said Elly Katabira, IAS President. “But we need to offer people living with HIV an alternative to the burden of a difficult life-long ARV regimen.”
Given the current economic situation and the pace of new infections that, in resource-limited countries, are still outstripping numbers on treatment by five to two, long-term remission of infected individuals, or even eradication of viral reservoirs is a time sensitive priority.
*Functional Cure HIV genetic material remains in the body, but the patient’s immune defense fully controls any viral rebound, allowing patients to be free of antiretroviral treatment;
Sterilizing Cure no HIV genetic material can be found in the body, HIV infection is eradicated.
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with over 16,000 members from more than 196 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, which will be held in Rome, Italy in July 2011.
www.iasociety.org | www.ias2011.org
For more information about this release:
Sian Bowen (Geneva, Switzerland)
Senior Communications Manager, IAS
Email:Sian.Bowen@iasociety.org:
Tel: +41 22 710 0864
Lindsey Rodger (Geneva, Switzerland)Communications and Media Officer, IAS
Email:Lindsey.Rodger@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0822
Towards an HIV Cure Media Backgrounder
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IAS hires a new Executive Director
December 23, 2010 – Geneva, Switzerland.
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Bertrand Audoin as its new Executive Director.
In his role as executive director, Bertrand will head the IAS secretariat based in Geneva, Switzerland. Responsible for the overall management of activities for the organization, he will be charged with implementing the organization’s strategic and operational plans under the direction of the IAS’ Governing Council and membership base. The Acting Executive Director Mats Ahnlund will go back to his job as Deputy Executive Director.
Bertrand joins the IAS’s Geneva headquarters from Paris where he was the General Director of Sidaction, a leading French HIV/AIDS NGO and civil society partner for the upcoming XIX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2012). Bertrand also works with the Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent Foundation as coordinator of its “Fonds de dotation Pierre Bergé” committee for HIV/AIDS programmes, an organization led by the former founder and co-owner of Yves Saint Laurent which supports health projects with a specific focus on HIV/AIDS.
Bertrand holds a post-graduate degree from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commercialese (EDHEC), Lille, France and completed the 61st National Session’s auditor programme at the Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale (IHEDN), Paris, France. Bertrand is fluent in both English and French.
“We are delighted to find a candidate of Bertrand’s expertise for this position,” said IAS president Elly Katabira. “Responsible for the roll out of public funds to Sidaction’s programmes in France and in more than 30 low and middle-income countries, Bertrand is adept at managing complex budgets and teams, and brings years of experience of working on diverse HIV issues to the IAS. He is a strong and respected leader, and I have no doubt that he will make a significant contribution to the IAS and to the global response to the HIV epidemic.”
Bertrand will take up the position on 1 February 2011. Until April 2011, when he will join the IAS full-time, Bertrand will still be involved with Sidaction in order to ensure its main fundraising program, held at the end of March, will be a success.
About the IAS
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with over 19,000 members from more than 190 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, which will be held in Rome, Italy in July 2011.
www.iasociety.org
www.ias2011.org
Under the Patronage of H.H. General Sheikh Mohammed bin
Zayed Al Nahyan
Abu Dhabi Attracts The World Health Care Congress
Middle East, December 5 - 7, 2010
Abu Dhabi – 15 February 2010: Under the Patronage of H.H. General Sheikh
Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme
Commander of the United Arab Emirates’ Armed Forces, the World Health Care
Congress (WHCC) Middle East will begin a three-year endeavor on December 5-7, 2010
in Abu Dhabi. www.worldcongress.com/me
The support of the Crown Prince, the Health Authority - Abu Dhabi (HAAD), the
regulative body of the Healthcare Sector in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi
Tourism Authority (ADTA), the body responsible for building and developing the Abu
Dhabi's tourism industry, for the World Health Care Congress Middle East is another
important step in the strategic commitment to excellence and innovation in health care in
Abu Dhabi to develop a global center for health care innovation and research.
The World Health Care Congress Middle East is the most prestigious health care event
convening global thought leaders and key decision makers from all sectors of health
care to share global best practices in health care innovation and improvement.
The Congress will feature the top industry influencers, including health Ministers, leading
government officials, hospital Directors, IT innovations, pharmaceutical and medical
device companies and health care industry suppliers.
H.E. Engineer Zaid Al Siksek, Chief Executive Officer of the Health Authority – Abu
Dhabi said: “Abu Dhabi is committed to continuous improvement, innovation and
excellence in health care for all of its residents, the Middle East in general, and to
inspire health innovation and improvement worldwide. We envisage the event attracting
a high regional and international turnout of health care executives, providers, and
government leaders to explore fresh ideas and unique insights.
World Health Care Congress Middle East will feature Executive Summits on:
• Health care Innovation and Investment
• Emerging Health Care Business Models
• Public and population health
• Hospital/Health Systems
• Health Care IT
• Chronic Care
• Health Technology and Interoperability
“The topics to be addressed at the summits will be actionable and strategic, designed to
address local and global challenges in quality, cost effectiveness, outcomes, and new
models for finance and improvements in healthcare delivery”, H.E. added.
“There is an increasing amount of innovation in health care throughout the world, yet
often dramatically better health delivery practices and outcomes are not even widely
recognized within their own countries,” said WHCC Chairman Vidar Jorgenson. “Abu
Dhabi is providing a great service by sponsoring a World Health Care Congress that will
focus on innovation, identifying and promoting these important health care innovations
with recognition throughout the world, inspiring even more health innovation and sharing
in the future.”
The congress is seen as a welcome boost to Abu Dhabi’s expanding business tourism
portfolio with the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) lending its support.
HE Mubarak Al Muhairi, Director General, Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), said:
“Major international events of this nature have substantial tourism benefits for the
destination bringing in speaker platforms and delegates who use our state-of-the-art
facilities, put revenue into the local market and interact with the destination, some for the
first time.”
“It give us a great opportunity to showcase the destination to a highly influential
international audience many of whom we hope to convince to return”, H.E. added.
-Ends-
About Health Authority – Abu Dhabi (HAAD):
The Health Authority – Abu Dhabi (HAAD) is the regulative body of the Healthcare Sector in the Emirate of
Abu Dhabi and ensures excellence in Healthcare for the community by monitoring the health status of the
population.
HAAD defines the strategy for the health system, monitors and analyses the health status of the population
and performance of the system.
In addition HAAD shapes the regulatory framework for the health system, audit against regulations, enforce
standards, and encourages adoption of world – class best practices and performance targets by all
healthcare service providers in the Emirate.
HAAD also drives programs to increase awareness and adoption of healthy living standards among the
residents of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi in addition to regulating scope of services, premiums and
reimbursement rates of the health system in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. www.haad.ae
For more information:
Rami Adwan
Media Specialist
Health Authority – Abu Dhabi
Tel: 00971 2 419 3318
email: radwan@haad.ae
About Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority
Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA) was established in September 2004.It has wide ranging
responsibilities for building and developing the emirate's tourism industry. These include; destination
marketing; infrastructure and product development and regulation and classification. A key role is to create
synergy in the international promotion of Abu Dhabi through close co-ordination with the emirate's hotels,
destination management companies, airlines and other public and private sector travel-related
organizations.www.abudhabitourism.ae/en/
About World Congress
World Congress, the leading global provider of healthcare conferences, forges health care communities by
convening senior executives from all segments of the industry and government policymaking. Whether it’s
our annual flagship event, the World Health Care Congress, its overseas counterpart, World Health Care
Congress Europe, or one of our more specialized Congresses and Leadership Summits, they produce the
premier industry forums that generate content that matters and foster connections that provide the lasting
benefits.www.worldcongress.com
For more information:
Patrick Golden
Director of Communications
World Health Care Congress
Tel: 1+781-939-2511
(c) 1+978-595-6003
email: patrick.golden@worldcongress.com
The Global Health Initiative: The Next Phase of American Leadership in Health Around The World
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
School of Advanced International Studies
Washington, DC
August 16, 2010
Thank you. Well, it is such a pleasure to be here again at SAIS, and I want to thank Dean Einhorn for that very warm and thoughtful introduction. But this is such an exceptional educational institution, and I had no idea we had 300 of your alumni, but I see in action every day the results of the work, the research, the study, and preparation that goes on here at SAIS. We are the very proud employer of many SAIS alumni, and I hope that there are more of you who are going to be joining our ranks in the years to come.
In addition to the contributions that Johns Hopkins has made in the fields of diplomacy and international law, I want to add to what Dean Einhorn said about the contributions in health. Hopkins is, of course, home to excellent medical and nursing schools, and home to the Bloomberg School of Public Health. That school’s motto, “Protecting health, saving lives, millions at a time,” captures both the possibility and the responsibility inherent in the pursuit of better health, whether here in our own country or in communities around the world. New breakthroughs and new knowledge about how to fight disease and save lives only add to our responsibility as researchers, teachers, students, government officials, and as a nation. Each of us, I believe, is called to find ways to bring those solutions to the people who need them, wherever they are.
And many contributors to global health are here with us, including representatives from several partner and donor countries, NGOs, the private sector, multilateral institutions, and public-private enterprises. And I want to acknowledge your and their outstanding contributions to saving lives around the globe, often millions at a time.
And that is the mission I’d like to discuss with you today: how the Obama Administration is building upon our country’s long-standing commitment to global health by bringing life-saving prevention, treatment, and care to more people in more places.
This is a signature of American leadership in the world today. It’s also an issue very close to my own heart. I have been privileged to visit many parts of the world on behalf of our country over the last 20 years. And in my travels, I’ve come to know countless people who are living proof of what successful global health programs can do.
I’ve met HIV-positive farmers in Kenya who now have the strength to spend their day in the fields earning a living thanks to antiretroviral drugs; children in Angola who wake up every morning under bed nets and then head off to school eager to learn, unafflicted by malaria; new mothers in Indonesia who proudly show off healthy babies brought into the world with the help of trained midwives; men and women who have grown into adulthood resisting diseases because they had childhood immunizations against polio or measles.
Now, these are but a few of the faces of global health that I have seen; people who are not only alive, but also contributing as parents, workers, and citizens, thanks to the governments, organizations, foundations, and universities like Johns Hopkins who collaborate to bring medical care and education about healthy behavior to more parts of the world.
These are also the faces of America’s commitment. No nation in history has done more to improve global health. We have led the way on some of the greatest health achievements of our time. Smallpox plagued humankind for thousands of years until we helped end it through the World Health Organization’s eradication campaign in the 1960s and 70s. The Expanded Program on Immunization has brought life-saving vaccines to nearly 80 percent of the world’s children, up from less than 5 percent when the program began 36 years ago, and it has done so in large part thanks to U.S. dollars and support. The global distribution of micronutrients, which we helped pioneer, has protected the health of many millions of young children and pregnant women.
And we are the global leader in the fight against neglected tropical diseases, treating 59 million people in the past four years alone. We help prevent and treat malaria for more than 50 million people every year and we provide nearly 60 percent – 60 percent of the world’s donor funding for HIV and AIDS. All told, 40 percent of the total global funding for development assistance for health comes from the United States.
This is clearly not a Democratic or Republican issue; this is a nonpartisan issue that really comes from the heart of America. And our leadership in this field has been possible because of strong support on both sides of the aisle. I commend the Bush Administration for its ground-breaking work in global health, and in particular in two of our country’s flagship programs: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and the President’s Malaria Initiative. I’d like to acknowledge two people who helped make these programs possible: Mark Dybul, the former Global AIDS Coordinator, and Admiral Tim Ziemer, the current head of PMI.
Now, beyond government, American organizations are making extraordinary contributions. From the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has given billions to revive immunization campaigns and discover new vaccines and other tools to prevent and treat disease, to the Carter Center, which has led the global campaign to eradicate the debilitating guinea worm parasite, to the Clinton Foundation, which has worked with pharmaceutical companies to make AIDS drugs more affordable for millions, and to hundreds of other organizations across America that are finding innovative ways to deliver life-saving and life-improving care to people worldwide.
Churches and faith communities have also led the fight to bring treatment to those in need, including by deploying health volunteers, who sometimes face dangerous circumstances to serve people in places where little or no care exists. Just two weeks ago, medical volunteers from several countries, including the United States, were murdered in Afghanistan as they traveled from village to village to treat eye conditions and run a dental clinic. That was a terrible loss for the families, a terrible loss for the world, and it was a terrible loss for those people who had been and would have benefited from their help.
So stories like these remind us that strengthening global health is not only a deeply held priority for our government, but for many American citizens and our nation as a whole. And it is an important part of our national story, one that isn’t told as often or as thoroughly as it should be.
Today, on behalf of the Obama Administration, I’d like to share with you the next chapter in America’s work in health worldwide. It’s called the Global Health Initiative, GHI for short, and it represents a new approach, informed by new thinking and aimed at a new goal: To save the greatest possible number of lives, both by increasing our existing health programs and by building upon them to help countries develop their own capacity to improve the health of their own people.
Now, before I discuss the specifics of the initiative, let me just take a step back. Some may ask why is a Secretary of State giving a speech about global health; there are a lot of other crises in the world, as I am well aware. Some might accuse me of taking a little break from those crises to – (laughter) – come to SAIS to talk about global health. What exactly does maternal health, or immunizations, or the fight against HIV and AIDS have to do with foreign policy? Well, my answer is everything.
We invest in global health to strengthen fragile or failing states. We have seen the devastating impact of AIDS on countries stripped of their farmers, teachers, soldiers, health workers, and other professionals, as well as the millions of orphaned and vulnerable children left behind, whose needs far exceed what any government agency can provide. The destabilizing impact of AIDS led the Clinton Administration to categorize it not just as a health threat but a national security threat, a position later echoed by then Secretary of State Colin Powell. And the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank focused on national security, launched a Commission on Smart Global Health Policy co-chaired by Helene Gayle of CARE and retired Admiral William J. Fallon, to find new strategies for global health, because we believe that will help us build a safer, more secure world.
We invest in global health to promote social and economic progress, and to support the rise of capable partners who can help us solve regional and global problems. We have seen places where people who suffer from poor health struggle on many levels. Poverty is usually widespread. Infrastructure is usually incomplete. Food production and school enrollments are usually low. People who would otherwise take the lead in driving progress for their families and nations are instead dragged down by disease, deprivation, and lost opportunity.
We invest in global health to protect our nation’s security. To cite one example, the threat posed by the spread of disease in our interconnected world in which thousands of people every day step on a plane in one continent and step off in another. We need a comprehensive, effective global system for tracking health data, monitoring threats, and coordinating responses. The need for such a system was driven home in recent years with the spread of SARS and the H1N1 virus. It is cheaper and more effective to stop an outbreak when it emerges, before it becomes a global threat. But that is very hard to do in places where health and public health services are scant or nonexistent.
We invest in global health as a tool of public diplomacy. For millions of people worldwide, the prevention, treatment or care that the United States makes possible is their main experience of us as a country and a people. And it can be a very powerful one. Giving people a chance at a long and healthy life or helping protect their children from disease conveys as much about our values as any state visit or strategic dialogue ever could.
And we invest in global health as a clear and direct expression of our compassion. Millions die every year simply because they lack access to very simple interventions, like bed nets, or vitamin-fortified food, or oral rehydration therapy. As a nation and a people, we cannot, we must not, accept those senseless deaths. It’s just not in our DNA. That’s why Americans frequently report that they support their tax dollars going to global health programs – not because of what the money can do for us, but because of what it can and does do for others. Few investments are more consistent with all of our values and few are more sound. Global health is a prime example of how investing our resources strategically can have an immediate and lasting impact on people, communities, and countries.
The list of diseases and deficiencies that threaten lives and livelihoods across the world is nearly limitless, but our resources are not. So therefore, we must be strategic and make evidence-based decisions in targeting the most dangerous threats, to ensure that our investments that, after all, come from the American taxpayer, deliver results. And we must also must stay focused on the long-term picture – not only addressing the urgent needs that people have today but building the foundation for better health tomorrow and for the next generation.
This thinking informs every aspect of the Global Health Initiative, which President Obama addressed last year. The United States is investing $63 billion – first, to sustain and strengthen our existing health programs, and second, to build upon those programs and take their work to the next level by collaborating with governments, organizations, civil society groups, and individuals to help broaden the improvements in public health that we can expect.
We’re shifting our focus from solving problems, one at a time, to serving people, by considering more fully the circumstances of their lives and ensuring they can get the care they need most over the course of their lifetimes.
Consider the life of a woman in one of our partner countries.
She lives in a remote village that has been home to her family for generations. Her parents went their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor, but now, thanks to the hard work of the international community, some quality health care is available to her. Within walking distance, there is a clinic supported by PEPFAR, where she first found out that she has HIV and now receives the antiretroviral drugs that keep her healthy. If she makes a longer journey by bicycle or bus, there is another clinic where she can receive prenatal care and where her children can receive immunizations. Sometimes health services come right to her door, in the form of health volunteers bringing bed nets to protect her family from malaria.
But while she can receive care for some health problems, for others she is on her own. Her local clinic is well-stocked with antiretrovirals, but it is empty of antibiotics or contraceptives. If she has trouble giving birth, the nearest facility equipped to perform emergency surgery is hundreds of miles away, so she faces the very real risk of becoming that 1 in 22 women in Sub-Saharan Africa who die in childbirth. And while her home has been sprayed for mosquitoes, she has no access to clean water, so her children may escape malaria only to die from diarrheal disease.
There is no question that this health landscape is much improved from just a few years ago. But its short-comings are significant.
There is too little coordination among all the countries and organizations, including in our own government, that deliver health services, so critical gaps in care are left unaddressed.
There is too little integration. Diseases are often treated in isolation rather than bundled together, forcing people like this woman to travel to multiple clinics to meet their and their children’s basic health needs.
There is too little innovation focused on designing technologies and strategies that can work in resource-poor places and help the people who are hardest to reach.
Step back even further and another problem comes into view: a lack of in-country capacity. In many places, donor countries and outside NGOs have stepped in to deliver critical services that countries didn’t have the money or the expertise to deliver themselves. But while that is absolutely the right response to an emergency, it is a temporary fix, not a long-term solution. Yet in too many places, it has come to serve as a long-term solution.
As a result, this woman’s current access to care is erratic, and her future access to care is uncertain. She is vulnerable to the vicissitudes of funding cycles and development trends in places far from where she lives. She has little control over the quality of care provided to her and her family, while if her elected leaders were more directly and more heavily invested, she and her fellow citizens would have more of a voice in the system.
The fundamental purpose of the Global Health Initiative is to address these problems by tying individual health programs together in an integrated, coordinated, sustainable system of care, with the countries themselves in the lead. We are taking the investments our country has made in PEPFAR, the President’s Malaria Initiative, maternal and child health, family planning, neglected tropical diseases, and other critical health areas – building on the work of agencies across the federal government, such as the Centers for Disease Control – and expanding their reach by improving the overall environment in which health services are delivered. By doing so, our investments can have a bigger impact and patients can gain access to more and better care, and as a result, lead healthier lives.
To illustrate how the Global Health Initiative will work, consider how it will impact one of our most successful global health programs: PEPFAR.
In the past seven years, PEPFAR has provided millions of people with prevention services across Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. It has also changed the conventional wisdom about treatment. Before PEPFAR, many believed that treating people with HIV in poor countries was impossible, because the drugs were effective only if they were taken according to a precise daily schedule and with sufficient food. For people living in places with food shortages and without health clinics, pharmacies, or health professionals, it seemed like treatment would forever be out of reach.
But the United States could not accept the injustice of allowing millions to die when we did have the drugs to save them. And through PEPFAR, we set up clinics, trained health professionals, and improved shipping and storage. So the experiment worked. Seven years ago, the number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa on antiretrovirals was fewer than 50,000. Today, more than 5 million people in the developing world are safely and effectively using these drugs, and PEPFAR is supporting about half of those people.
Under the Global Health Initiative, we will continue PEPFAR’s success by increasing its funding. In 2008, funding for PEPFAR was $5 billion. For 2011, President Obama has requested more than $5.7 billion, the largest amount any country has ever invested in the fight against global AIDS.
And we are raising our goal for treatment. Through the Global Health Initiative, we seek to directly support treatment for more than 4 million people worldwide—more than double the number of people who received treatment during the first five years of PEPFAR.
We are raising our goal for care, to more than 12 million people, including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children.
And we are raising our goal for prevention. Through the Global Health Initiative, we aim to prevent 12 million new HIV infections. To do that, we are embracing a more comprehensive approach and expanding on what we know works. We are moving beyond A-B-C—abstinence, be faithful, and consistent and correct use of condoms—to an A to Z approach to prevention. Because we need to use every tool we have—the full combination of medical, behavioral, and structural intervention. That includes male circumcision, the prevention of mother-to-child transmission, improvements and the investments of making detection more available and affordable, education, and when needed, legal, policy, or regulatory changes that will make it easier to protect populations.
Despite all the investments the United States has already made and that the world has already made, to stop this epidemic, we know we confront 2.7 million new infections every year. So if we are going to win this war, we need to get better results in prevention. And our strategy under the Global Health Initiative will enable us to do so.
So the immediate impact for PEPFAR is clear. Its funding will increase, its impact will increase, and its prevention strategies will become more comprehensive.
Similarly, we are strengthening our support for the other health programs we fund around the world.
We are increasing our support for the President’s Malaria Initiative, with the goal of reducing the malaria burden by 50 percent for 450 million people.
Against tuberculosis, we intend to save 1.3 million lives by increasing access to treatment.
And we are scaling up our work in family planning and maternal and child health—areas in which the United States can and must lead. Every year, hundreds of thousands of women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth, nearly all of them in the developing world, and for every one woman who dies, 20 more suffer debilitating injuries or infections. And every year, millions of children in the developing world die from wholly preventable causes.
Saving the lives of women and children requires a range of care, from improving nutrition to training birth attendants who can help women give birth safely. It also requires increased access to family planning. Family planning represents one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available in the world today. It prevents both maternal and child deaths by helping women space their births and bear children during their healthiest years. And it reduces the deaths of women from unsafe abortions.
The United States was once at the forefront of developing and delivering successful family planning programs. But in recent years, we have fallen behind. With the Global Health Initiative, we are making up for lost time.
All told, we will save millions of additional lives through our increased support to existing U.S. health programs around the world through this initiative.
But what about all the systemic challenges that surround PEPFAR and USAID programs and other U.S.-funded health programs in the field? The constellation of logistical, structural, legal, and political problems that decrease health and make life tenuous for the woman that I described a few minutes ago. As long as they persist, that will limit our or any donor’s impact. Women we save from AIDS will die in childbirth. Children we save from polio will die from rotavirus. And on a broader level—in terms of the scope and quality of medical and public health services available in communities and countries—the future will not look much different than the present.
We need to lay the groundwork now for more progress down the road by tackling some of those systemic problems, and working with our partner countries to uproot the most deep-seated obstacles that impede their own people’s health. That is how we can make our investments yield the most significant returns and save the greatest numbers of lives, today and tomorrow.
So let me explain a few key ways in which we are pursuing this goal.
First, we are working with countries to create and implement strategies for health that they take the lead in designing based on their distinct needs and existing strengths, and we are helping them build their capacity to manage, oversee, coordinate, and operate health programs over the long term.
Now, in practice, this will mean different things in different places. In some countries, our development experts are training community health workers to deliver basic care and answer basic health questions. In others, we are setting up supply chains and establishing drug protocols to ensure that medicine will reach patients efficiently. In still others, we are helping set up health information systems, so health workers can collect and analyze more data—from the number of births and deaths to more complex information, like the number of women who receive prenatal care at a clinic and return later to deliver their babies. Countries need a sustainable system for capturing and understanding data, to continuously monitor and improve their own performance.
Second, we are focusing on the needs and contributions of women and girls, who are still frequently overlooked and underserved by health professionals who don’t notice their suffering or hear their concerns. Our commitment to promoting the health of women and girls is, of course, for their sake, but also for the sake of their families and communities. Because when a woman’s health suffers, her family suffers and then there is a ripple effect throughout a village as well. But when women are healthy, the benefits are similarly broad.
Too often, the social, economic, and cultural factors that restrict their access to health services—such as gender-based violence, child marriage, female genital mutilation, lack of education, lack of access to economic opportunity, and other forms of discrimination—remain unacknowledged and unaddressed. We are linking our health programs to our broader development efforts to address those underlying political, economic, social, and gender problems. And we’re working with governments, civil society groups, and individuals to make sure that the needs of women and girls are recognized as critical not only by us, but by the health ministers, the people at the grassroots who administer care every day, that they are taken into account in the budgets and the planning of finance ministries, prime ministers, and presidents.
Third, we are improving how we measure and evaluate our own impact. This includes shifting our focus from “inputs” to “outcomes and impacts”—that is, determining our success not simply by how many bed nets we distribute, but by how many people actually avoid malaria by using them correctly—a fuller picture that demands that we invest in improving how we ourselves collect, analyze, and share data.
Fourth, we are investing in innovation, with a focus on developing tools that will help diagnose, prevent, and cure disease in the communities where we work, which are often remote and poor in resources. Many of the tools and techniques we use to keep people healthy here in the United States are unsuited to the realities of life in other places. So we need to be innovative about how to reach people effectively. One example is by using cell phones. In several countries, we’re working with public and private partners to help prevent maternal and newborn deaths by sending timely and critical health messages to pregnant women and new mothers via cell phone. The cell phone has penetrated where health clinics have not.
In another exciting example of the impact of innovation, we achieved a significant breakthrough just last month, when scientists in South Africa successfully tested the first microbicide gel to help prevent the transmission of HIV. This proof-of-concept trial was made possible with funding from PEPFAR through USAID and the South African Department of Science and Technology, and it has the potential to be a major breakthrough in the prevention of AIDS, because it is an affordable tool that women can use without needing permission from their partners. Too often, the men decide whether condoms will be used. But with such a gel, women will have the power to protect their own health.
Fifth, we are improving coordination and integration. And that begins with aligning all U.S. Government programs within a country by finding opportunities to bundle services—much like PEPFAR did in Kenya, by linking HIV and AIDS programs with maternal and child health, TB, and family planning.
Coordination starts at the top, here in Washington. The Global Health Initiative brings together experts from across our government. And here today are the three extraordinary heads of agencies—who also happen to be three exceptional doctors—who are leading the day-to-day operations of the initiative: Dr. Raj Shah, the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development; Dr. Eric Goosby, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator at PEPFAR; and Dr. Tom Frieden, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control. Their agencies, along with the National Institutes of Health and other agencies from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Defense, the Peace Corps, among others, will work together under the guidance and direction of Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew who is also here with us today. Now, this is a unique leadership structure and it embeds our commitment to coordination at every level, from the White House down.
Sixth, we are working with existing partners and seeking out new ones. We want to align our efforts with that of other donor countries and multilateral organizations, many of which do outstanding work to improve global health. Let me just mention one in particular: the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. This organization has had a transformative impact on the world, not only in the millions of lives it has saved, but by creating a new model for how global community can come together to contribute and to coordinate in the fight against epidemics. The United States was proud to be the Fund’s first donor and its largest donor. We remain the largest donor under President Obama’s request for 2011.
But our most critical collaborations will be with our partner countries, and we are going to be calling on them to bring their full commitment to this effort. Because after all, their contributions will determine whether we succeed with our goal of building integrated, coordinated, sustainable systems of care for more of the world’s people.
We need only look around the world today to see how critical country leadership is. In places where governments invest in their people’s health, where civil society groups are empowered and engaged, where health is recognized as a priority in every sector and at every level of society, health improves and people thrive.
Consider the progress in South Africa with respect to HIV/AIDS. This country has one of the world’s highest burdens of HIV. For too long, some of South Africa’s leaders had a view of the epidemic that denied the link between HIV and AIDS. But that has now changed. Under President Zuma, the South African Government has come forward with a real, renewed commitment to battling the epidemic, with increased funding and strong goals for increasing testing and treatment. The United States has demonstrated our support with additional funding to help South Africa build its capacity to meet those goals and address the epidemic over the long term.
To galvanize country leadership, we are bringing to bear the full weight of American diplomacy. Our diplomats are working closely with their counterparts worldwide to embed a deep commitment to health—not only in the office of the health minister, but the foreign minister, the defense minister, the finance minister, and especially at the top, in the offices of prime ministers and presidents. Too often, we’ve seen health relegated to the sidelines and treated as a lesser priority in terms of how much money is allocated and how much attention is devoted. In fact, we’ve seen that the United States and other donors come in with money and countries actually take money away from health thinking that we’re going to make up the difference. The United States is willing to invest our money, our time, and our expertise to improve health in countries. But we are now asking their governments to demonstrate a similar commitment, in terms of human resources, serious pledges to build capacity, and where feasible, financial support.
We expect these countries to step up. And their people expect the same.
Now, this will not be easy. The changes we are working to achieve through the Global Health Initiative are broad and deep, and there are many obstacles standing in the way. But if we succeed, we will have transformed how health is delivered and received across the world.
Now, we have already come so far as a nation and as a global community in saving and improving lives. And we are grateful to all who brought us to this point, particularly the heroic health workers, and the visionary leaders, the determined scientists and researchers, and committed activists. Thanks to them, we are able—and I would argue, we are obligated—to go even further; to save more lives, to take on more difficult tasks, to commit ourselves to the patient, persistent work of building the foundation for a healthier future.
This is a challenge worthy of us, as a nation and as a people. And we are rising to meet it, as we have done many times in the past. Together, we can give millions of people the chance at healthy lives, and create a healthier, more stable, more peaceful world.
Coming to SAIS to talk about this is truly a privilege because this is a place that will be providing the leaders we need in the future to realize this vision, to ask the hard questions about just because this is the way we’ve always done it before and we’ve had some success, is this the way we should continue. To challenge the Congress whose own structure often creates stovepipes that prevent our own government from working together. To do the difficult, but essential work of convincing countries’ leaders that investing in their own people’s health is not just a worthy goal, but critical to the future of security, peace, and prosperity they claim to be seeking.
So we’re aware of all the pitfalls and all the obstacles, internal and external. But we cannot sit idly by. And we have to do all that we can in our power in this time to make a difference. And that’s what I know you came to SAIS in order to find your own way forward in achieving. And we welcome your participation and we invite you to be part of helping to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges now and in the future.
Thank you all very much.
DEAN EINHORN: Thank you, Secretary. Thank you, Secretary Clinton, for that comprehensive and compelling description. Let me say there’s no one in this audience today or, I dare say, in the audience of the media out there that thinks they heard a speech for a day. This is a speech that people will be studying and that young leaders will be learning about for years to come, and we’re privileged.
Secretary Clinton has agreed, most graciously, to accept questions from our community here today. And so let me return this program back to her and thank – many thanks again.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, Dean. Well, I would be happy. I don’t know what the arrangements are. Shall I just call on people?
MODERATOR: Whatever you would like. I can call on people for you.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Why don’t you go ahead and call on people.
MODERATOR: Okay. Okay, so when I call on you, if you could please stand up, give your name and your affiliation, and be brief and only ask one question. (Laughter.) If you want, we’re going to let Harley (ph) have the first question since he’s departing us and you’re stealing him away. So –
QUESTION: It will be a pleasure to come and join both you and Raj Shah over at State and USAID. I thank you for a terrific speech. I tremendously appreciate the attention that the Secretary of State can bring to global health issues. I think everyone in the field really appreciates that. You said that global health has everything to do with foreign policy and I completely agree with you. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you think about the different contributions diplomacy and development have to global health, and then more specifically how you implement that when the U.S. is engaged in places where we have both humanitarian and strategic interests.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I would start by making the point that I think the United States has both strategic and humanitarian interest across the world – not just in the headline places that we are so well aware of right now, but in so many other places. I like to think about every day considering what the headlines are, but then equally importantly, what are the trend lines – what are the problems that the United States and the world will deal with in a year, five years, ten, twenty years, if we don’t begin thinking about them and even more acting on them now.
And health is such a clear example of that. We have, as I pointed out in the speech, so many intersecting goals when it comes to being the leader in global health. Of course it has to do with foreign policy. Of course is has to do with national security. Of course it has to do with the health of our own people. It has to do with the values of America. It has to do with how we present ourselves in the world and what we’re seen as really committed to.
So when it comes to how we begin to better integrate and coordinate this, diplomacy is a key role. I mean, from the very beginning of my time as Secretary of State, I’ve talked about elevating diplomacy and development alongside defense – the three Ds of smart power, if you will. Because as I look at the real world in which we live, they are not separate, they are all connected. We see, perhaps, the military taking a lead in some places like Afghanistan, but our diplomats and our development experts are in there every single day doing what we can to improve governance, to improve health and education, to improve agriculture, and it is viewed now as a necessary cooperative integration of American power.
What we’re trying to do is take a look at every program and policy that we have across the government, and more effectively design and execute those to deliver on that promise of integrated networked power. This fall, we’ll be releasing the first ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review; the Defense Department has done one for many years. And having watched the effectiveness, both for the Defense Department and for Congress and the public, of putting together a statement of mission and goals and strategies and tactics, we’re doing the same. And this Global Health Initiative really gives life to what we’re trying to put forward as our new approach to this integrated approach.
Now, there are many sort of real world examples. When you think about a country like Nigeria, we have PEPFAR, CDC, and USAID all operating in Nigeria. Yet, we had a polio outbreak in northern Nigeria a few years ago. So we had our aid program and our development experts on the ground doing extraordinary work, but we didn’t anticipate and quickly respond to what became a series of rumors about how the polio vaccine was a design to sterilize Muslim children. And no matter how hard our development experts or our doctors or our nurses or anybody from one of our agencies worked, that problem undid much of the efforts that we were engaged in.
So we also have launched a kind of diplomatic effort to go along with, to support, undergird, our development and health efforts. So when Deputy Secretary Jack Lew was with Dr. Eric Goosby in northern Nigeria recently – in Kano, right? Right? He went to see the sort of chief of the area, the emir, and was pleased that the emir vaccinated with the polio oral vaccine his own grandchild. That spoke louder than any lecture we could give, any argument we could make. So we can’t do one without the other. We have to have a coordinated effort.
And what has happened too often is that people work so hard. I mean, I’ve never seen harder working people than the people I’ve seen from USAID or PEPFAR or CDC, or our other government efforts. They work so hard to save lives, improve lives, change governments – all the things that they do on a daily basis. But very often, in the countries in which they serve, they don’t work together. I’ve had members of Congress tell me repeatedly who are interested in our development work that they go to the embassy in a country in Latin America or Africa or Asia, and they ask to meet everybody working in development, so all the different agencies’ leaders and workers come together, but that’s the only time they’ve been together. We have to end that. I mean, we have the smartest, most able dedicated people working in development and health in the world in the United States Government. But if they don’t work together, they cannot possibly leverage what they’re doing to get anywhere near to the goals that we set.
So this is just a passion of mine because I want to see our development efforts be viewed as the best in the world across the board, led by USAID, which I want to see returned to become the premier development agency in the world and working with all of the other agencies, departments that do health. We cannot afford in a time of limited financial resources to have everybody doing their own thing. If we’re going to have a clinic then that clinic needs to do not only HIV/AIDS, but family planning and polio vaccine and other matters.
If we’re going to have a country team in a country working together, they don’t all need their own SUVs. (Laughter.) I mean, we have got to get smart about how we spend our money, because we don’t have limitless resources. And I feel a particular obligation, as I have said on numerous times in the past 18 or so months, at a time when American unemployment is recorded at slightly less than 10 percent, and we know structural unemployment is worse. And we’re asking hardworking, maybe unemployed Americans to keep paying their taxes and some of that money will go to fund our development and diplomacy efforts worldwide. I have to be able to look them in the eye and tell them they’re getting their money’s worth. And we just can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and be able to tell them that. We have to get smarter, more agile. And I’ve seen wonderful efforts by Raj and Eric and Tom and others in their own agencies to really bring that idea forth, and now we’re going to try to do it across government, which, as those of you who are checking in for your first year here at SAIS, is not easy. (Laughter.)
So any ideas you’ve got, send them our way, because we are committed to making these changes for the long term.
MODERATOR: Any students over here? This young woman with the brown hair, yes. If you can wait for a microphone. Please remember to give your name.
QUESTION: My name is Monica Sanor (ph). I’m a second year student at SAIS. Thank you so much, Secretary Clinton, for coming here and speaking to us. It’s quite an honor for all of us and I’m glad to speak on behalf of my class when I say that.
As a current intern at USAID, and I’m, of course, the message – I’m not speaking on behalf of the U.S. Government here – (laughter) – just my personal --
SECRETARY CLINTON: Might as well. (Laughter.)
QUESTION: How – Rwanda just underwent elections we’re calling free and fair. A lot of other Sub-Saharan countries are undergoing their own elections or upcoming elections. How do you reconcile that key facet of leadership, especially in Africa and where a lot of our global health funding is going, and the impact that has on whether or not a program goes forward, has that support, and maybe future recommendations for working with African leadership?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Great question and at the core of so much of the work that we do and the analysis that we undertake every day. That’s why I mentioned South Africa. Leadership matters. It matters enormously. For years, the South African leadership, unfortunately, was in denial or was refusing to accept the facts about HIV/AIDS, and the epidemic exploded in South Africa, which now has the highest percentage of HIV-infected people anywhere in the world.
President Zuma has changed that. Dr. Goosby and I were in South Africa last year just this month, and we saw firsthand on the ground what a difference it makes when a president says we’re going to start treating people, we’re going to work with our generic drug manufacturers to produce more drugs, we’re going to open more clinics, we’re appointing a health minister who is young, dynamic, and very committed. It was stunning and wonderful to see. So leadership matters.
Now, we can go into countries and deal with emergencies and we can even set up parallel systems, which we have done in many places because there was no other way to do it. So we run our own health clinics, we run our own immunization programs, and we save lives and we improve the quality of life. But if there’s no buy-in from the leadership, these are not sustainable.
We have countries not just in Africa but in Asia as well that are becoming quite wealthy in one respect off of natural resources, and yet you see very little of the money going into health. And at some point which is really underlying what the Global Health Initiative is attempting to do, we have to tell countries we cannot help them any more than they are willing to help themselves. Now, maybe their help is just getting the right people appointed to the right jobs because they don’t have any more resources than that, but sometimes it’s allocating their own resources so they’ve got skin in the game, so to speak, and they all of a sudden care about where that money is going. And some of it is working with us on training programs. There are just a myriad of ways that leaders and governments can show their commitment.
But I’ve been in enough countries everywhere in the world to know that leadership is the alpha and the omega as to whether you’re going to have sustainable, effective, health care in any country. So I’m hoping that through this partnership this Global Health Initiative is offering to countries that we will see greater buy-in by leaders. We’re going to try very hard to prevent the diversion of resources out of health, which has been a pattern. Well, if the Americans and the Global Fund are going to come in and do health, we’ll build roads, or – we need roads, so that’s a good substitute, we’ll just take the money out of health.
So our argument has to be no, this has to be a comprehensive approach. Of course, you need a road because you need a road that actually can bring people to the clinic. But you’ve got to – it can’t be one or the other.
We also want to do more work with other donor countries and other NGOs and multilateral institutions. I mean, what we’re trying to do inside the U.S. Government to better coordinate and integrate we would like to see globally. So we are talking with a lot of the donor countries that have programs in the countries that we’re doing the Global Health Initiative, and we’re trying to see how we can maximize the impact of our resources. Ideally, someday I would love to see like a map of the world all lit up and so if the United States is doing a health system in Country X, then the Scandinavian countries take all their resources and go to Country Y, which the United States can’t do and nobody else will do, and we want the Global Fund to be supplementing, not supplanting, the resources that go in. I mean, you can see how this could become the integrated system we hope for, but it’s very difficult.
We’ve also started discussions with China on development. At the last Strategic & Economic Dialogue that I and Secretary Geithner led in Beijing last May, we put development on the agenda. And we talked about the fact that the Chinese are omnipresent in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia. Particularly if we just focus on Africa, there are, we think, millions of Chinese who are working and involved in the contracting and the businesses that are being developed there. And often, the Chinese will offer some kind of development aid in return for a mining contract and what we’re trying to do is to make sure that if they’re going to do it, that it somehow gets integrated. We’ve had conversations about one country where the Chinese are building a road and we’re building a hospital, and we would really like it if the hospital would come to the – the road would come to the hospital. So, there’s all – those discussions are ongoing. To go back to the first question about diplomacy and development, we are trying to look at this holistically and both buttressing and supporting leadership. Trying to get health higher up on national agendas has to be one of our biggest diplomatic efforts, because our development experts can’t really accomplish what they’re trying to if they don’t get the support and the buy-in from the countries.
MODERATOR: I’m hopeful there’s some students in the far back who have questions. Is there anybody in the back who wants to ask a question? Okay, Mike (ph), if you can take a microphone.
QUESTION: Madam Secretary, I’m Sam Christophe (ph). I’m a student here at SAIS. My question is about the relationship between the health initiative and the MDGs. Obviously, health is an important part of the Millennium Development Goals, sorry MDGs – I think three, four, and five or four, five, and six. A number of the targets under the initiative, while they are ambitious, even if they’re achieved, I think it’s by 2014, will still fall well short of the MDGs. I just wonder – I mean, do you see the MDGs as no longer achievable, and I mean, if you do, what sort of outcomes will you be looking for from the summit next month in New York? Thanks.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I certainly do see the MDGs as achievable, but I also see their achievement as taking longer than any of us would have hoped for when they were first adopted back in 2000. I’m looking forward to the summit during the United Nations General Assembly in September. I’ve agreed to participate because what we’re doing is continuing on the path toward the Millennium Development Goals. But we are also taking stock, and we’ve met with the UN officials responsible for the summit and the work on behalf of the MDGs through the various UN organs, to ask that everybody take stock. We all have to ask ourselves where we’ve made progress and why, where we’ve fallen short and why, what can we do to try to fill the gap as we continue on the path toward achieving the goals that were set for it.
I am sensing a much greater openness to accountability, to measurement. It’s not enough just to care a lot and go out and try to do good; that is a sine qua non of making it happen. But you have to be willing to ask yourself how much good am I really doing and am I doing it in a way that’s likely to maximize progress toward the MDGs or other goals that have been set.
So I think we can say that the picture in 2010, 10 years after, is a mixed one. I think we can take some pleasure and pride in the progress that has been made. Child mortality is down, for example. There are some positive milestones that have been reached on the way to the goals. But we have a long way to go, and we hope to use the UN process in September as a forum for bringing a lot of the multilateral organizations and the country donors together to have this very frank discussion.
Raj Shah has started this extraordinary effort in USAID to really maximize use of science and technology in tackling and solving global development challenges, and we’ve got some great ideas. In the United States, we’ll be working to implement them, but we want to spark this kind of effort worldwide. We think that technology can make a big difference in collecting and disseminating information that will help us better educate people about what they can do for themselves. So I think that we see the glass half full, but it’s got a long way to go till it gets to the top. But we are absolutely committed to the MDG process and to the eventual achievement of them.
MODERATOR: Okay. Last question, hopefully from a student. You’re very eager back there. We’ll go ahead and call on you in the green. I know you’ve been patiently waiting.
QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Allison Aslan (ph). I’m an incoming student here at SAIS. And I’m wondering what metrics do you intend to use to measure the success of the Global Health Initiative, specifically with regards to promoting women’s health.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we will be rolling out metrics. Right, guys? (Laughter.) But let me just answer that in a brief non-scientific, non-statistician way. Because that’s one of the other initiatives that both Raj and Eric have undertaken in AID and PEPFAR, and to some extent CDC is like the epicenter of statistical evaluation and reporting and can give the rest of us some real guidance and help about how best to do that.
There are many different indicators on women’s health in – for example. We are focusing on maternal mortality because that is so measurable. We know where we have a better idea of what works and what it will take to have more women deliver babies successfully. There’s all kinds of interventions from the very simplest, like a safe birthing kit, which is a piece of twine and a clean razor blade and a bar of soap and a piece of plastic to put under the women, all the way up to tertiary care for complicated pregnancies. So we will be judging outcomes on how many women safely are able to deliver a healthy baby, and how do we best meet the needs along the way. And that is part of – that is built into our country ownership concept.
We will also be looking at family planning distribution. I believe strongly that better access to family planning is directly related to lowering maternal and child mortality if women are better able to space their children and the births are more likely to be safe and successful. We also would like to see increases in the legal age for marriage, because we know that young girls are more likely at physical risk for pregnancy and delivery. And so this is another way that development and diplomacy work together. We are encouraging countries to pass stronger laws and then enforce those laws against child marriage so you don’t have girls between 10 and 16 trying to deliver babies.
We’re looking at the access to care, which was kind of the example that I gave, because HIV/AIDS now has a woman’s face in Africa. There is an enormous amount of work to be done to prevent the continuing sexual abuse of girls and women by men infected with HIV. Some have the very unfortunate superstition that having sex with a young girl cures you of the disease. So there are lots of educational components about how we try to change behavior and protect girls and women.
So, I mean, those are just some of the examples of how we will on a broad kind of matrix judge ourselves, but also try to get partner countries. I mean, we would really like to see with the MDGs, which sort of set the format, agreed upon measurements. And we do have some, but we don’t have enough. And they’re often honored more in the breach than in the actual implementation. So I think there’s a lot that we can do by just pulling together what we already know and trying to, frankly, publish it in more digestible, understandable forms.
It was fascinating to me that in our last strategic dialogues with Afghanistan, both when I was there last month and then in the recent visit by President Karzai and members of his government, their number one development request was to help on the issue of maternal mortality. Now, when you think about it – and we’ll sort of round all the way back to the first question about foreign policy, diplomacy, and development – there are varying degrees of attitudes within Afghan culture about interventions in health. But there is general agreement about trying to keep women alive as they deliver babies. So working – the Unites States working with other partners in a concerted effort on maternal mortality in Afghanistan gives you an opportunity to connect with segments of the population that may or may not be particularly supportive of anything else that we and others are doing.
So you have to look at how this fits into the overall strategic goals that we have in foreign policy. So that’s why I would end where I started. Now, sometimes with humanitarian emergencies like what we’re seeing in Pakistan, what we saw with the Haiti earthquake, you just act. You just do what’s right because it’s the moral imperative to do so. And the American people are very generous in responding to those disasters.
But once the disaster has receded and the wreckage, the human cost of death and destruction and injury and devastation of infrastructure and farmland is left, then I think we have both a humanitarian and a strategic imperative. And I think that we are at our best when we’re able to produce results where people see us as we see ourselves. The American people see us and I certainly see our country as an incredibly generous nation that really has gone time and time again to the aid of others with whom we don’t have much of a connection. And perhaps the cold real politik wouldn’t dictate that we did so, but we have. And so I want to see us, if we’re going to be investing time, money, blood in our efforts, that we go into it with a very clear view of what we are trying to accomplish and that we take into account the values and the cultures and traditions of others, but we recognize there are certain issues that have to be addressed, leadership being absolutely at the top.
So I’m very optimistic about the Global Health Initiative, about what it can mean in terms of results, but what it can also represent as frankly a new model of how we better present ourselves to the world, how we are more cost effective and efficient in delivering services, and where the United States leads by our values and people can see what that means to them.
Thank you all very much.
(Applause.)
Three Former Latin American Presidents Sign Vienna Declaration, Join Global Call to Action for Science-Based Drug Policy Reform
Former Leaders Urge Alternatives to “War on Drugs”
in Lead Up to XVIII International AIDS Conference
13 July 2010 [Vienna, Austria]– Former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), Ernesto Zedillo (México) and César Gaviria (Colombia) today announced their endorsement of the Vienna Declaration, the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010, www.aids2010.org) taking place from 18 to 23 July 2010.
The Vienna Declaration (www.viennadeclaration.com) seeks to improve community health and safety by calling for the incorporation of scientific evidence into illicit drug policies. The declaration was opened for endorsement by academics and members of the public on 28 June 2010.
“The war on drugs has failed,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso. “In Latin America, the only outcome of prohibition is to shift areas of cultivation and drug cartels from one country to another, with no reduction in the violence and corruption generated by the drug trade.”
Authored by an international group of distinguished scientists and experts, the Vienna Declaration highlights the ways that over reliance on drug law enforcement results in a range of health and social harms including growing HIV rates among people who use drugs.
The three former heads of state are the co-presidents of the influential Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, which strives to inform drug policy in the region and to contribute towards more effective, safe and humane drug policies. Joining them in supporting the Vienna Declaration are three other influential Latin American figures – Peruvian writer, journalist and essayist Mario Vargas Llosa, Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and Sergio Ramírez Mercado, writer and former vice-president of Nicaragua.
“The war on drugs has had such an incredibly negative impact on Latin America, and the fact that the Vienna Declaration is receiving this level of endorsement from former heads of state should serve as an example to those currently in power,” said AIDS 2010 Chair Dr. Julio Montaner, President of the International AIDS Society (IAS) and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE). “I hope that the Vienna Declaration will inspire many more political leaders to cast aside the drug war rhetoric and embrace evidence-based policies that can meaningfully improve community health and safety.”
The Vienna Declaration calls on governments and international organizations, including the United Nations, to take a number of steps, including:
· undertaking a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies
· implementing and evaluating a science-based public health approach to address the harms stemming from illicit drug use
· scaling up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options
· abolishing ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
· endorsing and scaling up funding for the drug treatment and harm reduction measures endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations
The Vienna Declaration lists a range of harms stemming from the war on drugs, and notes that the criminalization of people who use drugs has resulted in record high incarceration rates, thereby placing a massive burden on taxpayers.
“Instead of sticking to failed policies with disastrous consequences, we must direct our efforts to the reduction of consumption and the reduction of the harm caused by drugs to people and society,” said Cardoso. “Repressive policies are firmly rooted in prejudices, fears and ideological visions. The way forward to safeguard human rights, security and health is a strategy of peace not war.”
Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injecting drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV. In some areas of rapid HIV spread, such as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, injecting drug use is the primary cause of new HIV infections. Legal barriers to scientifically proven prevention services such as needle and syringe programs and opioid substitution therapy (OST) mean hundreds of thousands of people become infected with HIV and Hepatitis C every year. The effectiveness of these programs is well-documented, though access to such interventions is often limited in those locations where HIV is spreading most rapidly. According to various scientific reviews conducted by the World Health Organization, the Institute of Medicine (U.S.) and others, these programs reduce HIV rates without increasing drug use.
“We welcome the support of Presidents Cardoso, Zedillo and Gaviria, as well as the many doctors, scientists, researchers and public figures who have already put their support and endorsement behind the Vienna Declaration,” said Dr. Evan Wood, founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) and the Chair of the Vienna Declaration Writing Committee. “This level of support, especially before the conference has started, demonstrates the urgency that global leaders in many disciplines believe we must move towards reforming drug policies.”
As an estimated 20,000 conference participants travel to Vienna this week, conference organizers are encouraging them to join the growing call for evidence-based drug policies.
“The approach to drug policy proposed in the Vienna Declaration will prevent new HIV infections and ensure that people who struggle with addiction have access to the medical and support services they need,” said Dr. Brigitte Schmied, AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair and President of the Austrian AIDS Society. “Access to proven interventions and to the highest standard of health are rights that each of us values, including those living with addiction.”
The Vienna Declaration was initiated by the IAS, the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy, and the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Those wishing to sign on may visit www.viennadeclaration.com, where the full text of the declaration, along with the list of authors, is available. The two-page declaration references 28 reports, describing the scientific evidence documenting the effectiveness of public health approaches to drug policy and the negative consequences of approaches that criminalize drug users.
About AIDS 2010
The XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010) is the biennial meeting of researchers, implementers and diverse leaders involved in the global response to HIV. It is convened by the IAS in partnership with international, regional and local partners. Visit www.aids2010.org for more information and to register for the conference, which is taking place from 18 to 23 July 2010 in Vienna, Austria.
International AIDS Society
The International AIDS Society is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with 14,000 members from 190 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and program planners.
International Centre for Science in Drug Policy
ICSDP aims to be a primary source for rigorous scientific evidence on illicit drug policy in order to benefit policymakers, law enforcement, and affected communities. To this end, the ICSDP conducts original scientific research in the form of systematic reviews, evidence-based drug policy guidelines, and research collaborations with leading scientists and institutions across diverse continents and disciplines.
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS
The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) is Canada’s largest HIV/AIDS research, treatment and education facility. The BC-CfE is based at St Paul’s Hospital, Providence Health Care, a teaching hospital of the University of British Columbia. The BC-CfE is dedicated to improving the health of British Columbians with HIV through developing, monitoring and disseminating comprehensive research and treatment programs for HIV and related diseases.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Mahafrine Petigara
Edelman
Email: mahafrine.petigara@edelman.com
Tel: +1 604 623 3007, ext. 297
Michael Kessler
Media Consultant, AIDS 2010
Email: mkessler@ya.com
Tel: +34 655 792 699
GLOBAL HEALTH LEADERS SPEAK OUT ON THE INTERCONNECTED CRISES OF HIV AND DISCRIMINATION AMONG GAY MEN AT AIDS 2010
20 July 2010 (Vienna, Austria) -- Leading figures in the global AIDS response meeting here are focusing on rapidly increasing rates of HIV among gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM) and on the pressing need to promote broad access to HIV prevention, treatment and care for MSM worldwide. A media briefing at the AIDS 2010 conference, to be held on Tuesday, 20 July at 1 pm, will report on strategies to reverse the stigma, discrimination, human rights abuses and lack of targeted services that are leading to rapidly increasing HIV infection rates among MSM. The impact of the epidemic on MSM worldwide was documented and analyzed here as part of a highly successful day-long symposium, "BE HEARD," hosted by the Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF).
The breadth of participants expected at Tuesday's press conference indicates that HIV among MSM is no longer viewed as either a small or isolated problem, but rather as a major driver of the global epidemic. MSM in low- and middle-income countries are 19 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, yet only one in five has access to the HIV prevention, care and treatment services they need.
Press conference speakers outlining the need for greatly improved responses to the impact of HIV on MSM will include Elly Katabira (President-Elect of the International AIDS Society [IAS]), Stephen Lewis (Co-Director of AIDS-Free World); Paul DeLay (Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS); George Ayala (Executive Officer of the MSMGF); Gift Trapence (Director of the Centre for the Development of People, Malawi [CEDEP]); Joel Nana (Executive Director of the African Men for Sexual Health and Rights [AMSHeR]); and prominent Moroccan AIDS activist Othman Mellouk.
"Discrimination against MSM is not limited to any one area of the world, and the failure to respect the human rights of MSM and to integrate MSM communities into evidence-based HIV prevention efforts is a driver of the epidemic in every global region," said incoming International AIDS Society (IAS) President Elly Katabira. "In many parts of the world, MSM are the group most impacted by HIV. Even where the epidemic is predominantly heterosexual, however, MSM bear a large but often overlooked share of the HIV burden."
The recently unveiled Strategic Plan of the IAS calls for the scale up HIV prevention for men who have sex with men, removal of laws criminalizing homosexuality and advocacy to ensure that governments and bodies such as National AIDS Commissions fund and provide HIV-related services for MSM.
"When MSM are involved in AIDS responses, HIV rates decline," said George Ayala, Executive Officer of the Global Forum on MSM and HIV (MSMGF). "When MSM are ignored or stigmatized, HIV transmission in MSM communities increases. Respecting the human rights of MSM is not only the right and just thing to do - it is also an essential piece of good public health policy that can significantly reduce the size and impact of this epidemic."
Tuesday's press conference will report key findings from a day-long pre-conference, BE HEARD, which featured more than 100 of the world's top experts on human rights and HIV among sexual minorities and involved more than 500 attendees from 80 countries. BE HEARD highlighted a wide array of pressing health and human rights issues facing sexual minorities, including the spread of HIV among MSM in low- and middle-income countries, criminalization of homosexuality and the potential impact of new biomedical approaches to HIV prevention. MSMGF launched the biennial International AIDS Conference pre-conference in 2004 in response to the need for much greater attention to MSM health and human rights issues at both local and international levels.
WHAT: PRESS CONFERENCE, "Be Heard: Elevating Issues Concerning MSM,
HIV and Human Rights"
WHEN: Tuesday, 20 July, 1:00 - 2:00 pm
WHERE: AIDS 2010 Media Center Press Conference Room 1
About the MSMGF
The Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF) is an expanding network of AIDS organizations, MSM networks, and advocates committed to ensuring robust coverage of and equitable access to effective HIV prevention, care, treatment, and support services tailored to the needs of gay men and other MSM. Guided by a Steering Committee of 20 members from 17 countries situated mainly in the Global South, and with administrative and fiscal support from AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), the MSMGF works to promote MSM health and human rights worldwide through advocacy, information exchange, knowledge production, networking, and capacity building.
About the IAS:
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals, with 14,000 members from 190 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. Our members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners. The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference, which will be held in Vienna, Austria from 18 to 23 July 2010.
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Jack Beck
The Global Forum on MSM & HIV (MSMGF)
P: 510.271.1956
E: jbeck@msmgf.org
Mark Aurigemma
International AIDS Society
P: 646-270-9451
E:mark@aucomm.net
TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2010
Human Rights Protections Essential in Drive for Universal Access
Release of Important New Research that Could Empower Women to Lower Risk of HIV Infection Highlights the Intersection of Science and Human Rights
20 July 2010 [Vienna, Austria]–The call for human rights as a fundamental component of efforts to prevent new infections and provide treatment for people living with HIV pervaded the XVIII International AIDS Conference today as delegates and local residents prepared for the HIV and Human Rights March through the streets of Vienna this evening. Conference participants are giving voice to the conference theme of Rights Here, Right Now through a number of plenary presentations, sessions, and Global Village and Youth Programme activities.
The examination of the rights of women in the context of HIV took on a powerful new dimension with the release Monday evening of the CAPRISA 004 microbicide trial results. The study provides the first data demonstrating the effectiveness of an antiretroviral-based vaginal microbicide in reducing a woman’s risk of sexually transmitted infection with HIV and genital herpes. The trial tested the safety and effectiveness of a 1% tenofovir gel among nearly 900 women at two sites in South Africa. As today’s plenary speaker Everjoice Win noted, women have a greater likelihood of being on the receiving end of violent or coercive sexual intercourse and these results are a significant step toward a tool that puts the power of HIV prevention in women’s hands. The CAPRISA trial results will be presented at 13:00 in Session Room 7.
“We welcome news of progress on a prevention tool that would give women greater control over their health and their lives,” said Dr. Julio Montaner, AIDS 2010 Chair, President of the International AIDS Society (IAS) and Director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS in Vancouver, Canada. “Empowering women in this way as part of a broader agenda to ensure human rights brings us one step closer to the goal of universal access.”
Among the many human rights –focused activities at AIDS 2010 are a Youth Programme agenda dedicated to human rights, harm reduction and health resources, and Global Village Networking Zones dedicated to accessibility, human rights, harm reduction, people living with HIV, sex workers, women, the LGBT community, men who have sex with men, and the black diaspora.
“We are reminded today of the strong link between scientific advancement and human rights protections,” said Dr. Brigitte Schmied, AIDS 2010 Local Co-Chair and President of the Austrian AIDS Society. “Science is now poised to give us another important new tool to help women protect themselves from HIV and save lives.”
New Concepts in HIV/AIDS Pathogenesis: Implications for Interventions
In his plenary remarks, Dr. Anthony Fauci (United States) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases focused on the early and complex pathogenic events that occur within the first hours to days of sexual exposure to HIV. These early events, which include the spread of virus to lymphoid tissue and the establishment of viral reservoirs, determine the subsequent course of HIV infection and represent a period of vulnerability for the virus that provides a window of opportunity for intervention. Fauci discussed how growing understanding of these events is informing the development of HIV vaccines, other new prevention interventions, early treatment of HIV infection and potentially a cure in certain individuals.
Among other topics, Fauci discussed recent data from his laboratory on the role of a receptor for the HIV envelope on the surface of CD4+ T cells called α4β7 that, in certain forms, defines a subset of CD4+ T cells that are highly susceptible to productive HIV infection. α4β7 is a cellular protein that guides immune system cells to the gut. In HIV infection, the gut is rapidly depleted of CD4+ T cells, the main target of HIV, triggering the process that ultimately leads to AIDS. Fauci suggests that an HIV envelope conformation that allows initial binding to α4β7 on mucosal CD4+ T cells should be seriously considered as a target for HIV vaccine development.
Violence Against Women and Girls
Everjoice Win (Zimbabwe) of ActionAid International described the magnitude of violence perpetrated against women and girls around the world and drew the strong links between this violence and HIV. She noted that both are rooted in gender inequality and described the violence as both a cause and a consequence of HIV. She cited as examples the greater likelihood of a woman being on the receiving end of violent or coercive sexual intercourse and of an HIV-positive woman being the target of domestic violence from partners or family members who blame or stigmatize them.
The international community has recognized violence against women as a violation of human rights and human rights treaties establish the responsibility of states for preventing violations, punishing perpetrators and ending impunity. Win declared that states should not use culture, religion, or tradition as excuses for not addressing violations of women’s human rights. In outlining strategies for action, Win called for the recognition and prioritization of violence against women in the AIDS response, and vice versa. She urged donors to address the intersection between HIV and violence and called for the investment in more research to build an evidence base on how they are a cause and consequence of each other. She also urged stronger and well-enforced anti-violence laws that take HIV into account.
Universal Access: Treatment and Prevention Scale Up
South African Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi discussed efforts to achieve universal access to HIV treatment and prevention on the eve of the deadline world leaders first set in 2005. A medical practitioner by training, Dr. Motsoaledi has a long history of public service focusing on strategies to address poverty, unemployment and access to services. South Africa continues to be the country most heavily affected by HIV and has experienced a dramatic revitalization of its response to the epidemic in the past year.
Human Rights March, Rally and Live Performance by Annie Lennox
Beginning at 18:30, conference delegates and the public are invited to congregate at Schottentor. The march, which is part of the Human Rights and HIV/AIDS: Now More Than Ever campaign, will begin at 20:00 and end at Heldenplatz, where a rally with government leaders, advocates and people affected by HIV will be held. Singer/songwriter/activist an UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador Annie Lennox will give a live performance and a special presentation of her SING Campaign. For more information, visit www.HIVHumanRightsNow.org.
Visit www.aids2010.org for complete programme information and comprehensive online coverage, as well as a link to the Vienna Declaration, the official declaration of the XVIII International AIDS Conference, which calls for a reorientation of international drug policy.
About the AIDS 2010 Organizers
AIDS 2010 is convened by the IAS, the world’s leading independent association of HIV professionals, in partnership with a number of international, regional and local partners. International partners for AIDS 2010 include:
· Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), including its co-sponsors, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)
· International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO)
· Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+)/International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW)
· World YWCA
· Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC)
Local and regional partners for AIDS 2010 include local scientific leadership and:
· City of Vienna
· Government of Austria
· Aids Hilfe Wien
· Austrian AIDS Society
· East European & Central Asian Union of PLWH (ECUO)
· European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS)
· European Commission
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Regina Aragón (Vienna)
International AIDS Society
Regina.Aragon@gmail.com
+43 699 172 85 713
Christian Strohmann (Vienna)
AIDS 2010
Christian.Strohmann@aids2010.org
+43 699 181 73002
Scott Sanders (Vienna)
High Noon Communications
scott@highnooncommunications.com
+43 699 172 84 833
World Congress Abu Dhabi Dec 2010
Hello Dr. Qureshi –
We are due for a new release, which I can forward along to you once it is complete. I have included a link to one below that announces the program. Please let me know if you would like it in a different format, such as a Word document.
http://www.worldcongress.com/events/HR10004/pdf/100208%20-%20WHCC%20ME%20-%20Eng%20_PG_%202-%20Final.pdf
Would you happen to have an attendee list from the International AIDS Conference that you would be able to share? We run a program on affordable health innovations at the Middle East conference, and I would be interested in knowing whether there were any attendees in Vienna that might be applicable to our program.
Best Regards,
Patrick
Patrick Golden
Director of Communications
Director, WHCC Affordable Health Innovations Global Initiative
World Congress
Phone: 781-939-2511/ Fax: 781-939-2526
Cell: 978-595-6003
Skype: patrick.golden48
patrick.golden@worldcongress.com
www.worldcongress.com
www.whcchealthinnovations.org
WHCC Affordable Health Innovations Blog
http://blog.whcchealthinnovations.org
Dear Colleague,
Please find link below Issue 29 of the Lockharts Newsletter which we hope you will find informative.
The Newsletter is attached as a pdf document.
With best wishes,
Andrew Meadows
Lock Harts
http://www.lockharts.co.uk/site/library/lockhartsnews
AIDS 2010: LATEST NEWS FROM XVIII INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE
This electronic update provides information about the XVIII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2010), which will be held in Vienna, Austria from 18 to 23 July 2010.
For more information, please visit
www.aids2010.org
Primary Care Bulletins
The Knowledge Resources News and Information Bulletin is edited by Des Conway (Chair of CASH Board) and produced by library staff working for NHS Nottingham City. It aims to highlight news and developments relevant to all primary health care professionals.
For more information, please visit
News and Information Bulletin - February 2010
Knowledge Resources Service
Register by 24h00 (CET) on 24 February 2010 and save
Register now for AIDS 2010 and save on your registration fee. A late fee surcharge will be added starting on 25 February. All registrations for AIDS 2010 must be submitted using the online registration form available here. Before registering you will need to create a conference profile if you do not already have one. If you had a profile for previous IAS or International AIDS Conferences it is still active and you should not create a new one. The two-tiered fee structure for AIDS 2010 offers lower registration fees for delegates from middle- and low-income countries and students/post-docs. Click below link for further details about registration
Book your accommodations for Vienna now. ClICK HERE to read more about available hotels and individual and group bookings, and to make your reservation.
For more information, please visit www.aids2010.org
Important Information about SWINE FLU
(Last updated 11:46 AM Wednesday 15 July 2009)
With more than 9,700 confirmed cases of swine flu in the UK, important changes have been made to the way the virus is being tackled. Read the latest official advice to help protect yourself and others.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the level of the swine flu alert to Phase Five.
This is a "strong signal that a pandemic is imminent," it says.
Key Messages
If you have flu-like symptoms and have recently returned from Mexico or another affected area, or been with someone who has:
Stay at home and contact your GP or NHS Direct on 0845 4647
Do NOT go into your GP surgery, or to a hospital, as you may spread the disease
If you are unsure about your symptoms, use this special
flu symptom checker
Key Reading
For an explanation of swine flu, its symptoms and treatment, go to Swine flu A-Z
For quick questions and answers go to Swine flu Q&A
For the latest updates on the swine flu outbreak go to Swine flu latest news
For information in other languages and formats go to Swine flu - other languages
Key Actions
Remember, preventing the spread of germs is the single most effective way to slow the spread of diseases such as swine flu. You should always:
Ensure everyone washes their hands regularly with soap and water
Clean surfaces regularly to get rid of germs
Use tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze
Place used tissues in a bin as soon as possible
You can also prepare now in case the swine flu becomes widespread by:
Establishing a network of "flu friends" - friends and relatives - who can help if you fall ill. They could, for example, collect medicines and other supplies for you, so you wouldn't have to go out
Having a stock of food and other supplies, including basic cold remedies, available at home. This should be enough to last two weeks, in case you and your family are ill
For more information go to
Swine flu A-Z
http://217.64.234.91/conditions/pandemic-flu/Pages/Introduction.aspx
Source & more info
http://www.nhs.uk/AlertsEmergencies/Pages/Pandemicflualert.aspx
Anti-Aging Exhibitions & Conferences
The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) welcomes you to our world-wide series of Anti- Aging Exhibitions and Conferences. Anti-Aging medicine is a medical specialty founded on the application of advanced scientific and medical technologies for the early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunction, disorders, and diseases. The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) welcomes you to our world-wide series of Anti- Aging Exhibitions and Conferences. Anti-Aging medicine is a medical specialty founded on the application of advanced scientific and medical technologies for the early detection, prevention, treatment, and reversal of age-related dysfunction, disorders, and diseases.
A4M began its mission in 1992 with just 12 physicians and has now grown into a worldwide international medical society with representation in over 100 nations. The Academy has trained over 70,000 new physicians in its hands-on scientific, clinical and academic programmes. Today it influences over 100,000 health professionals via its educational training courses, seminars, board certification programmes, videos, website, textbooks, and outreach programmes.
A4M supports a series of worldwide events in Anti-Aging Medicine, and we encourage physicians to continue their training and education in the Anti-Aging medical specialty by attending these scientific programmes. This is also an opportunity for technology suppliers to introduce their products and services to an elite audience of medical professionals whose practices service an affluent patient base.
17th Annual World Congress on Anti-Aging Medicine
23 - 25 April 2009 Orlando, FL, USA
3 Unforgetable Days. 75 + Renowned Expert Speakers. 90 + Ground-breaking Presentations
This spring, the world's leading anti-aging experts will gather in Orlando to convene the largest and most influential conference and expo worldwide on preventative medicine and bio-medical technologies!
This Conference is Your Opportunity to:
- Connect with 3000 + peers on the latest hot-button anti-aging issues;
- Learn about the most recent advancements and technologies from leading experts
- Source cutting edge products from 300+ exhibitors;
- Get ahead of your competition in this booming segment of the healthcare market.
You'll discover why the anti-aging medicine and regenerative biomedical technology is a $50+ billion annual industry and growing!
If your profession even remotely relates to advanced preventative or anti-aging medicine, you won't want to miss this conference.
For more information, please visit www.anti-agingevents.com/orlando
IAS 2009
Overview
As the fifth conference in the HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention series, IAS 2009 will feature reports on the latest developments in the areas of basic, clinical and prevention science.
The world's largest open scientific conference on HIV/AIDS the 5th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (IAS 2009) will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2009. The event will be organized by the IAS, in partnership with South African-based NGO, Dira Sengwe, organizer of the series of South African AIDS Conferences.
Held every two years, the conference attracts about 5,000 delegates from all over the world. It is a unique opportunity for the world's leading scientists, clinicians, public health experts and community leaders to examine the latest developments in HIV-related research, and to explore how scientific advances can � in very practical ways � inform the global response to HIV/AIDS.
Conference Venue
IAS 2009 will take place at the International Convention Centre (CTICC), Cape Town, South Africa.
Key Dates
31 March 2009
Satellites applications close
1 May 2009
Late Breaker Abstract submissions open
6 May 2009
Registrations late fee deadline
25 May 2009
Late Breaker Abstract submissions close
31 May 2009
Exhibitions applications close
For more information, please visit www.ias2009.org
IAS Statement: Time Running out for G8 HIV Commitments
*** Details of video material at the end of this statement ***
TIME RUNNING OUT FOR G8 TO LIVE UP TO UNIVERSAL ACCESS BY 2010 COMMITMENT
Additional evidence of the exciting potential of HIV treatment as prevention increases need to frontload funding
Geneva, 28 November 2008 - With 2010 fast approaching, the Group of 8 (G8) countries must act quickly to fulfill their financial commitments to universal access to HIV prevention, treatment care and support, according to the International AIDS Society (IAS), the world�s leading independent association of HIV professionals.
The IAS recognizes that the current global financial crisis puts pressure on government spending, and appreciates that the Group of 20 (G20), which includes the G8, have recently reaffirmed the importance of development assistance commitments previously made. �The significant progress to date in providing HIV treatment, care and prevention wouldn�t have happened without donor funds,� said Professor Julio Montaner, IAS President and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence on HIV/AIDS. �Continued funding is essential to ensure we maintain the gains to date and achieve the ultimate goal of universal access.�
Since their Gleneagles meeting in 2005, G8 countries have repeatedly stated their commitment to universal access by 2010. Based on the G8's own reporting at its July 2008 meeting in Hokkaido, Japan the IAS has calculated that G8 countries have, to date, pledged approximately US$ 22.2 billion specifically for global HIV programmes between 2008 and 2010. This amount is just 36% of the UNAIDS-estimated US$ 61 billion that is needed over this period.
The IAS supports the assessment made by UNAIDS that, in order to finance a strong HIV response in low- and middle-income countries, international donors -- in particular, high-income countries -- will need to mobilize approximately two-thirds of the total resources needed in the future. Based on historical funding patterns indicating that the G8 has covered about 80% of high-income countries contributions to global AIDS spending, the IAS urges the G8 to contribute at least US$ 32.5 billion between 2008 and 2010.
The HIV funding gap is contributing to the infection of an estimated 6,800 people and the death of around 5,500 people from AIDS-related illness every day, said Professor Montaner. Given all the technical hurdles to jump in the race to universal access, funding should be the easiest one. With the beginning of 2010 just one year away, the G8 must show true leadership and quickly pay its share.
Mounting scientific evidence is demonstrating the value of quickly frontloading funds to halt and reverse the spread of HIV. A recent modeling study by Granich et al. published 26 November in The Lancet demonstrates that nationwide annual HIV testing in South Africa, followed by immediate antiretroviral therapy for those who are HIV-positive and the continuation of proven prevention approaches, could virtually eliminate HIV transmission within a decade.
This treatment approach buys two health outcomes with one product the prevention of millions of new infections while maintaining a healthy quality of life for the millions currently living with HIV infection, said Professor Montaner, who himself has published a number of analyses modeling the potential preventive impact of universal treatment coverage.
The moral case for universal access has been clear for some time, however, the financial case for treatment as prevention is now equally clear, stated Professor Montaner. More funds may be required today, but this will achieve enormous savings in the near future. The end of the HIV pandemic is within our grasp. There is no time to waste.
The IAS is the world's leading association of HIV professionals, with more than 11,000 members working at all levels of the global response to HIV/AIDS. IAS members represent scientists, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic in 183 countries worldwide. IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and the host of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention, which will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2009.
For more information, contact:
Karen Bennett (Geneva, Switzerland)
IAS Senior Communications Manager
Email: karen.bennett@iasociety.org
Tel: +41 22 710 0832
Regina Arag'n (California, USA)
IAS Communications Consultant
Email: rraragon@pacbell.net
Tel: +1 510 393 9435
Information referenced from:
International AIDS Society, Known G8 Commitments Specifically for Global HIV Response 2008 to 2010
http://www.iasociety.org/Web/WebContent/File/G8Table%20(20%20Nov).pdf
Hokkaido Toyako G8 Framework for Health, Report of the Health Experts Group- Annex
http://www.g8summit.go.jp/eng/doc/index.html
Kaiser Family Foundation/UNAIDS - Financing the Response to AIDS in Low- and Middle- Income Countries: International Assistance from the G8, European Commission and Other Donor Governments, 2007 http://www.kff.org/hivaids/7347.cfm
UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, 2008.
http://www.unaids.org/en/KnowledgeCentre/HIVData/GlobalReport/2008/
The G20 Declaration of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy - November 15, 2008, paragraph 14.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/11/20081115-1.html
VIDEO MATERIAL
Five 2 ' 3 minute video interviews on G8 commitments to HIV are available on the IAS FTP. Interviews were conducted with:
- Julio Montaner, IAS President and Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (Canada)
- Craig McClure, IAS Executive Director (Switzerland)
- Hoosen M Coovadia, Victor Daitz Professor of HIV Research, Doris Duke Medical Research Institute, University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa)
- Viola Onwuliri, Professor, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University of Jos (Nigeria)
- Elly Katabira, IAS President-Elect and Associate Professor of Medicine, Department of Research, Makerere Medical School (Uganda)
Video was recorded at the ARV Clinic of the Gugulethu Community Health Centre in Cape Town, South Africa. Gugulethu is the Xhosa word for Our Pride and is one of our largest townships in the City of Cape Town.
Video is downloadable, free of rights, to all journalists. It has been loaded in various formats (avi, mov and flv) and file sizes.
In addition, cutaway footage of the Community Health Centre is also available.
To access this material, go to: ftp://iasociety.org/media
Login/username: ias_ftp_media
Password : media4567
In Case You Missed It
PEPFAR Highlighted at White House Summit on International Development
I strongly believe in the timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required. We are a blessed nation and I believe we have a duty to help those less fortunate around the world. We believe that power to save lives comes with the obligation to use it. And I believe our nation is better when we help people fight hunger and disease and illiteracy.� � President George W. Bush
Full Remarks by President George W. Bush
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081021-5.html
Full Remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2008/10/111103.htm
Fact Sheet: White House Summit on International Development
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081020-1.html
Excerpt from Remarks by President George W. Bush
The President [Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia] talked about our fight against HIV/AIDS. And it's a noble battle and it's a necessary battle. In 2003, as she had mentioned, we launched PEPFAR. The program is the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history. Ambassador Dybul and I believe that the program is effective because it is defined by a few key principles. You know, if you're going to have a new era of development, it's important to have clear definitions. It's one thing just to throw money at the problem, it's another thing to insist upon strategies that actually work. So the emergency plan demands specific measurable targets for progress. His job is to not only put the implementers in place and to find those souls who are on the front lines of saving lives and empower them; his job is to report back to the President and say, �Here is the progress we're making, Mr. President.� That way it gives me a chance to say, �Well, if you're not making enough progress Mark, do something differently, please.�
It employs a prevention strategy that works: ABC, which means abstinence, be faithful, and use condoms. This isn't guesswork; this is a program that is working. It puts local partners in the lead, because they know the needs of their people best. It enlists new partners from the international community, the private sector and the faith community.
I can't tell you how many people that I've met in the United States who say, I'm part of PEPFAR, because my church has adopted the program. You know, there's nothing better than having people who hear the universal call to love a brother like you'd like to be loved yourselves on the front line of helping to save lives.
And the United States government is smart enough to enlist the compassion and love and hard work of people in the faith community in the United States to help our brothers and sisters in need. So far, the results are striking. When we launched the initiative in 2003, only 50,000 people in sub-Sahara Africa were receiving anti-retroviral treatment.
Today we support treatment for nearly 1.7 million people in the region, and tens of thousands of more around the world, from Asia, to the Caribbean, to Eastern Europe. PEPFAR has supported care for nearly 7 million people, including millions of orphans and vulnerable children. PEPFAR has allowed nearly 200,000 children in Africa to be born HIV-free. PEPFAR is working. And I want to thank the United States Congress for coming together to re-authorize and dramatically expand this program.
I'm sure that many of you had the same experiences that Laura and I've had in meeting people whose lives have been touched by the initiatives we're talking about today. I'll never forget meeting Harriet Namutebi. She is -- we met her in Africa on our trip five years ago. She lost her brother, her husband, and one of her children to AIDS. She was diagnosed, she locked herself in her room, she refused to eat, and she wanted to die.
But at a clinic supported by PEPFAR, Harriet was given a new lease on life. Counselors at the clinic showed Harriet how to live positively with HIV. A loving soul took this person who was in despair and said, here's a chance for you.
Thanks to the antiretroviral treatments Harriet received, she is now in good health. She cares for four children. She is an enthusiastic member of the clinic's drama group, which educates others about HIV. She is living proof of what people in Africa call the �Lazarus Effect� -- communities once given up for dead are now being brought back to life. And it is a joy to be a part of PEPFAR. � �
Excerpt from Remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
We recognized that investments in basic health are essential for development. So we launched the largest international health initiative ever undertaken in one country: $48 billion over five years to combat tuberculosis and malaria and HIV/AIDS in the hardest hit countries. �
But if there is one idea that I want to stress today, it is this: When times are hard, as they are now, every nation is focused on protecting its own interests. That is entirely legitimate, and it is to be expected. But what we cannot do � what we must not do � is to allow our generosity and our concern for others to fall victim to today�s crisis. Reneging on our commitments to the world�s poor cannot be an austerity measure.
Not when there are so many children around the world, girls and boys, who long for that basic education, which will open their minds, and expand their horizons, and enable them to reach their full potential.
Not when there are so many men and women for whom AIDS need not be a death sentence and so many young orphans, who still need care and still have a chance at a better life than their parents ever had. ��
For more information, please visit www.PEPFAR.gov or contact:
Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Public Affairs, (202) 663-2802,
PughKA@state.gov
www.jiasociety.org
Dear Journalist
We take this opportunity to introduce you to the Journal of theInternational AIDS Society (JIAS), which is an open access, peer-reviewedonline journal encompassing all aspects of HIV-related research acrossvarious disciplines. JIAS� focus is on studies that show practicalapproaches to the fight against HIV in the countries most affected by theepidemic.
We will notify all journalists of JIAS contents on a monthly basis, and weinvite you to read the full text of the articles on www.jiasociety.org. Wetrust the contents of the journal will provide you with valuable backgroundinformation for your news reports, and keep you informed of the latestdevelopments in HIV research.
Currently on JIAS (read full articles at www.jiasociety.org) :
- Prevention of the Sexual Transmission of HIV-1: Preparing for SuccessBy Myron Cohen, Pontiano Kaleebu, Thomas Coates -
HIV Prevention: What Have We Learned From Community Experiences inConcentrated Epidemics?By Bruno Spire, Isabelle de Zoysa , Hakima Himmich
- Benefits of an Educational Program for Journalists on Media Coverage of HIV/AIDS in Developing CountriesBy Jorge L Martinez-Cajas, C'dric F Invernizzi, Michel Ntemgwa, Susan MSchader, Mark A Wainberg
- HIV/AIDS, Conflict and Security in Africa: Rethinking RelationshipsBy Joseph U Becker, Cristian Theodosis, Rick Kulkarni
Editors-in-Chief: Elly Katabira, M.D. (Uganda) and Mark Wainberg, Ph.D.(Canada)Executive Editor: Shirin Heidari, Ph.D. (Switzerland)www.jiasociety.org
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International AIDS Society
In Case You Missed it
Support for the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)
Senator Barack Obama: I think the PEPFAR program has saved lives and has done very good work, and he [President Bush] deserves enormous credit for that. (Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, 8/16/08)
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General, United Nations: "I warmly congratulate the United States Government on the new legislation that will allow for 48 billion dollars to be spent on the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria over five years. I also welcome the commitment of the G8 to keep working towards the goal of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment by 2010." (Opening Session, XVII International AIDS Conference, 8/03/08)
Dr. Peter Piot, UNAIDS: "Considering the resource implications of expansion of treatment and prevention access over at least the next decade,
it should be clear by now that there's not 'too much money going to aids' but too little.
It is in that context that the decision by US Congress to re-authorize PEPFAR with 39 billion dollars for AIDS alone,
and signed last Wednesday by President Bush, is a truly historic deed.
The long overdue lifting of the law banning people living with HIV from entry into the United States is another terrific bonus.
We should celebrate it and make sure that every single country in the world that is still having this ban abolishes it as soon as possible.
It is the combination of building on our results today, investing in research, broadening the coalition, and reinvigorating political leadership, that gives us the foundation for a strong, long-term response.
Because let's be realistic. We've done the easy bit.
If we thought the first phase was hard, we must prepared for an even toher time ahead." (Opening Session, XVII International AIDS Conference, 8/03/08)
Margaret Chan, M.D., Director-General, World Health Organization: "In this regard, let me join others in expressing appreciation for the renewal of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief." (Opening Session, XVII International AIDS Conference, 8/03/08)
Former President Bill Clinton: Just this past week, the United States Congress passed and the President signed a bill committing to increase PEPFAR to $48 billion dollars over the next five years. That is a stunning development for which we should all be grateful.� (XVII International AIDS Conference, 8/04/08)
Dr. Pedro Cahn, International AIDS Society President: We can - and we absolutely must do better. Too many lives depend upon us; too many lives have already been lost; countless more are in peril. And we are doing better We applaud the United States Government for passing the PEPFAR reauthorization bill, which includes lifting the 20-year ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by people living with HIV. We now look forward to the final removal of HIV from the list of communicable diseases that ban visitors entry to the US. It is an enormous victory for USA and international advocates, including the IAS, who have worked tirelessly for years to delete this symbol of discrimination and stigma. It also challenges other countries with policies and laws restricting the entry, stay and residence of people living with HIV to end these practices immediately.� (Opening Session, XVII International AIDS Conference, 8/03/08)
African Leaders Say PEPFAR Is Showing Results:
President H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Uganda: Now on behalf of the Ugandans, let me commend and appreciate the support we have received and continue to receive from the partner governments, from the Global Fund and from the UN agencies. Without your support, it would have been very difficult to reach where we are today. My particular thanks go to the American people, to President Bush for the generosity they have exhibited. (Opening Ceremony of the 2008 HIV/AIDS Global Implementers Meeting, Uganda, 6/03/08)
First Lady Janet K. Museveni, Uganda: I add my voice to those of the Ugandans who spoke before me in thanking you for your interest, your financial and other forms of support in this cause ever since Uganda made its first appeal to the international community more than two decades ago. And let me thank you, Ambassador Dybul, and, through you, pay special tribute to President Bush and the American people for extending this immeasurable support not just to Uganda but to the whole of Africa. May God indeed repay him, his Government and the American people a hundred fold, for not letting us fight this evil disease single-handedly.� (Closing Ceremony of the 2008 HIV/AIDS Global Implementers� Meeting, Uganda, 6/06/08)
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa: I want to say again just how deeply appreciative we are of the contributions that have come through PEPFAR and the Global Fund, that these have made very significant inroads into the pandemic AIDS and TB and malaria. You have already saved millions of lives and the new legislation has the potential for sustaining a response to build on all of the gains that have already been achieved the United States has a very, very wonderful opportunity of helping to make God's world a far better place. (Global AIDS Alliance Senate Emergency Call � Briefing for Reporters, 6/18/08)
When the United States takes action of this kind, it has an important impact on other nations. The G8 have promised $60 billion for universal access to people who are living with AIDS. When the United States takes the action that is being suggested in the legislation, that will generate more specific country commitments.� (Global AIDS Alliance Senate Emergency Call � Briefing for Reporters, 6/18/08)
News Publications Praise PEPFAR:
Wall Street Journal: In fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa, the United States has an unparalleled success in PEPFAR, aka the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.� (Coburn of Africa, 6/28/08)
Wall Street Journal: Before the president launched his Emergency Program for Aids Relief in 2003, only 50,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa afflicted with the disease were receiving treatment. Since then, the U.S. has helped deliver lifesaving treatment to nearly 1.5 million Africans � many of them women and children. To put this in perspective, the president's AIDS initiative is the largest commitment ever by any nation for an international health initiative dedicated to a single disease. (Editorial, The U.S. Keeps Its Global Commitments, 7/08/08)
San Francisco Chronicle: This humanitarian program was launched by the White House in 2003 and focused on 15 counties, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, with $15 billion in aid. The program may well be one of the president's most impressive - and least noted - accomplishments. Nearly two million receive anti-retroviral drugs. Prevention efforts are credited with forestalling infection of seven million more. (Editorial, Don't stall the war on AIDS, 7/02/08)
Washington Post: The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is American "soft power" at its life-saving best. Since 2003, PEPFAR has supported HIV testing and counseling for more than 33 million people and care for more than 6.6 million (including more than 2.7 million orphans and other children infected and affected by HIV). The program has funded medicine for about 1.5 million men, women and children worldwide, the vast majority of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Even President Bush's harshest critics concede that PEPFAR, which has cost $15 billion so far, is one of his best accomplishments.� (Editorial, Senate Roadblock, 7/01/08)
Baltimore Sun: Something extraordinary happened in February when President Bush visited Africa: He was cheered by locals and showered with kisses. That is in no small part a result of the $15 billion President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which has helped millions suffering from HIV/AIDS find treatment�� (Editorial, Don't let politics impede lifesaving AIDS relief for Africa, 7/02/08)
Indianapolis Star: It is a shining foreign policy achievement for the Bush administration, it has saved hundreds of thousands of African lives, it has broad bipartisan support in Congress and it could trigger a huge humanitarian effort by other governments.� (Editorial, Holding health hostage, making millions wait, 6/26/08)
Indianapolis Star: PEPFAR is often hailed as the most successful foreign aid program since the Marshall Plan, and enjoys such bipartisan support that it is on track to be re-funded for $50 billion over the next five years, $20 billion more than Bush even asked for� (Editorial, AIDS initiative stands out as bright spot of Bush years, 6/16/08)
Orlando Sentinel: By all measures, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), now 5 years old and up for reauthorization, is a global success story. Its achievements include: saving the lives of 1.5 million men, women and children through antiretroviral treatment; extending care to 6.5 million people affected by HIV, including more than 2.5 million orphans and vulnerable children; and providing prevention services to tens of millions more, including programs emphasizing abstinence and being faithful. (Editorial, Wenski: Save lives, move AIDS bill now, 6/16/08)
Tucson Citizen: The president's program - known as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - has provided AIDS treatment for 1.4 million people. It is responsible for a phenomenon that has come to be known as the "Lazarus effect," almost literally bringing people back to life. PEPFAR has supported more than 2.7 million children orphaned by AIDS. In Africa, it has been our country's No. 1 ambassador, building a reputation for American generosity, one orphan, one clinic and one village at a time. (Editorial, Kyl, others stalling on AIDS legislation put lives in jeopardy, 7/07/08)
The Times (NJ): Most of the money would come through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which was established six years ago to fight HIV/AIDS and has been possibly the biggest foreign-policy success of this administration. It has kept nearly 1.5 million people with AIDS alive, more than 60 percent of whom are women and girls. It has succeeded in preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in 10 million pregnancies. (Editorial, Pass Lantos-Hyde bill, 7/08/08)
Buffalo News: Putting a face on the problem crystallizes the fact that this is not a matter of mere numbers but of flesh and blood, and the United States has an opportunity to make the world a better place. �We believe, fervently, that we belong together in this one family. The family of humankind,� Tutu said. Congress must act for the sake of the world, and of America�s place within it.� (Editorial, Pass disease-control plan, 6/29/08)
Anchorage Daily News: Treat AIDS patients. Care for AIDS orphans. Battle malaria. Overcome drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis. Train tens of thousands of health care workers. By any decent definition, this is good work, the stuff of the beatitudes. It's expensive -- $50 billion over the next five years. It's worth it. �Bottom Line: The U.S. should continue its leadership in the worldwide fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. (Editorial, Aids Relief: It's simply the right thing to do, 6/27/08)
Arizona Republic: One of the successes of the Bush administration is the strong U.S. support for fighting HIV/AIDS in developing countries. (Editorial, Keep leading on AIDS, 7/03/08)
The Oregonian: Possibly the least ambiguous and most admired achievement of the Bush administration is a massive increase in U.S. AIDS assistance to Africa. Since 2003, the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief has provided testing and counseling for 33 million Africans, and care for more than 6 million. Five years ago, about 50,000 sub-Saharan Africans were on AIDS drugs; the number is now 1.4 million. (Editorial, Keep, expand Bush AIDS initiative to help Africa, 7/01/08)
Waco Tribune-Herald: Bush has received bipartisan approval for his AIDS leadership in this country and even greater approval in Africa and across the globe.� (Editorial, Senate should pass global AIDS bill, 6/30/08)
Vallejo Times-Herald: It became the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a five-year, $15 billion initiative against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis that has by almost any measure been tremendously successful. In sub-Saharan Africa, now at the heart of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the program is credited with bringing life-saving medical care and medications to 1.5 million people with AIDS. It's also projected to prevent 7 million new infections and provide care for 10 million people, many of them women, children and orphans. (Editorial, A Bush triumph that should be renewed now, 6/29/08)
Las Vegas Sun: Our hope now is that the rest of the world takes America's generosity to heart and steps up funding to help eradicate diseases that have claimed the lives of tens of millions of Africans. As humanitarian efforts go, this should top the list.� (Editorial, Senate Comes Through: Massive AIDS relief bill for Africa is well on its way to reality, 7/21/08)
The Oklahoman: PEPFAR's numbers are impressive Bush deserves credit for a visionary idea, one where the wealth of America could be brought to bear on a global crisis. That the program has avoided many of the problems usually associated with big-government initiatives is a bonus and another reason to believe taxpayer dollars can make a difference across the world.� (Editorial, Making a Difference: Global AIDS program is money well spent, 7/21/08)
The Seattle Times: Congress boosted the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, to $48 billion, tripling current funding. This is good. The AIDS-relief plan offers the strongest and most compassionate response of developed nations to the battle against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. It also represents bipartisanship at its best.� (Editorial, Increased Funding for Global Diseases, 7/18/08)
for more information please visit www.PEPFAR.gov
Contraception update
Government statistics
- In 2007, 76% of women aged 16'49 years were using some form of contraception1
- The most popular method of contraception was the contraceptive pill (27%), followed by the male condom (22%)1
- The combined oral contraceptive pill is over 99% effective if taken properly, and can also be used to treat:2
. painful/heavy periods
. premenstrual syndrome
. endometriosis
- Younger women are more likely to take the pill or use condoms, whereas older women have often undergone sterilisation or rely on their partner's vasectomy.1
Over the past decade:
- there have been 2.6 million attendances at NHS community contraception clinics 91% of these were made by females3
- the proportion of female attendees aged under 16 years has increased by 48%.3
The teenage pregnancy rate in the UK is falling.4
In 2007 long acting reversible contraception (LARC) accounted for 21% of primary methods of contraception. LARCs include the intrauterine device (IUD), injectable contraception, implants, and the intrauterine system (IUS).3
Guidance on contraception
Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare www.ffprhc.org.uk
- Progestogen-only implants. London: 2008, FFPRHC.
- Combined oral contraception first prescription of COC (updated). London: 2007, FFPRHC.
- Condoms male and female. London: 2007, FFPRHC.
- Female barrier methods. London: 2007, FFPRHC.
- Intrauterine contraception. London: 2007, FFPRHC.
- Oral contraceptive use and cancer risk. London: 2007, FFPRHC.
- Emergency contraception guidance. London: 2006, FFPRHC.
National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence www.nice.org.uk
- Long acting reversible contraception: the effective and appropriate use of long-acting reversible contraception. Clinical Guideline 30. London: NICE, 2005.
- Prevention of sexually transmitted infections and under-18 conceptions. Public Health Intervention Guidance 3. London: NICE, 2007.
Useful links
British Association for Sexual Health and HIV www.bashh.org
Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare www.ffprhc.org.uk
Family Planning Association www.fpa.org.uk
NHS Clinical Knowledge Summaries http://cks.library.nhs.uk/contraception
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists www.rcog.org.uk
References
1. UK Statistics Authority www.statistics.gov.uk
2. NHS Direct www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk
3. NHS Information Centre www.ic.nhs.uk
4. Every Child Matters www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/health/teenagepregnancy
AIDS 2008 Official Press Release: Day 6 (8 August 2008)
Global Public Health Goals Thwarted By Human Rights Violations, Gender Inequality and Stigma
More than 24,000 Participants from 194 Nations
Contribute to Success of Conference
Mexico City [8 August 2008] As the XVII International AIDS Conference drew to a close, HIV experts from around the globe highlighted the dramatic negative impact that stigma and the denial of human rights, including gender inequality, continue to have on the effectiveness of HIV treatment and prevention scale up. Fear of violence, discrimination and unwarranted prosecution prevent many people living with or at risk for HIV from seeking testing and treatment, and drive others to place themselves at risk for infection.
The voices of those who bear the brunt of this pandemic have been loud and clear in Mexico City this week, said Pedro Cahn, International Co-Chair of AIDS 2008 and President of the International AIDS Society and Fundaci�n Hu�sped in Buenos Aires, Argentina. �If the world does not heed the call to ensure the human rights and dignity of every person affected by HIV, we will not achieve our goal of universal access.
Those most at risk, including injection drug users, men who have sex with men and sex workers, as well as women and youth, must never be seen simply as patients or prevention targets,� said Dr. Lu�s Soto Ram�rez, Local Co-Chair of AIDS 2008 and Head of the Molecular Virology Unit at the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias M�dicas y Nutrici�n Salvador Zubir�n and Coordinator of the Clinical Care Committee of CONASIDA, Mexico's National AIDS Council. Their experiences and contributions are central to the development and implementation of effective programmes. As we strive for universal access we must once and for all commit to the ideal that every life is worthy of respect.�
Speakers in the final plenary session underscored the connection between public health and human rights, and also addressed the intersection of HIV and Tuberculosis (TB).
Confronting TB/HIV In the Era of Increasing anti-TB Drug Resistance
Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death among people living with HIV in Africa and a major cause of death elsewhere. At least one-third of the 33 million people living with HIV worldwide are co-infected with TB, and these individuals have up to a 15% risk of developing active TB every year.
Dr. Chakaya Jeremiah (Kenya), Chief Research Officer of the Centre for Respiratory Diseases Research at Kenya Medical Research Institute, gave an overview of the challenges presented by the dual epidemics of HIV and TB. To reduce the burden of TB in people living with HIV, he urged the HIV community to take greater responsibility for implementation of the 3 �I�s recommended by the World Health Organization. The three Is include: intensified case finding; isoniazid preventive therapy; and TB infection control. Jeremiah noted good progress being made to decrease the burden of HIV in TB patients through HIV testing of TB patients and the initiation of preventive therapy for HIV-positive TB patients.
Jeremiah also profiled the emerging threats of multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant TB (MDR/XDR-TB). The experience with XDR-TB in South Africa paints a bleak picture with very poor patient outcomes. According to Jeremiah, both MDR/XDR-TB are the consequence of sub-optimal TB control and inadequate infection control practices in health care settings.
HIV Prevention Lessons from Community Experiences in Concentrated Epidemics
In his plenary remarks, Bruno Spire (France) identified reducing stigma, combating prevention fatigue, and diversifying HIV testing as key steps to prevent sexual transmission of HIV in concentrated epidemics. Spire proposed a �triple therapy� strategy to combat stigma and discrimination rooted in evidence of stigma�s negative impact on HIV risk reduction. The strategy includes fighting for better acceptance of people living with HIV (PLHIV), improving laws and policies to protect those most vulnerable to infection, and implementing prevention programmes that incorporate community mobilization and peer support. He cited examples of female sex worker mobilization efforts in India, Chile and France, and an initiative to mobilize men who have sex men in Africa, as important examples of this successful strategy. Spire is President of AIDES, France�s primary nongovernmental HIV organization, and a researcher at the French National Institute for Medical Research.
To combat prevention fatigue, Spire called for pragmatic solutions for those who do not consistently use condoms, including risk reduction programmes adapted to individual and community needs. He pointed to data showing that access to antiretroviral therapy and perceived good health have a positive impact on consistent condom use among people PLHIV. Spire also emphasized the importance of a variety of HIV testing approaches. This includes routine testing with opt-out options, which Spire said demonstrates higher rates of HIV detection, as well as increased access to voluntary counseling and testing, particularly in community settings. In addition to facilitating earlier access to care, learning one�s HIV status enables earlier adoption of safer behaviors. Spire noted that rates of unprotected intercourse are more than 50% lower among those who know their HIV status.
Criminalization of HIV is Costing Lives and Increasing Suffering
According to Edwin Cameron (South Africa), Justice of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the enactment of laws that criminalize transmission of or exposure to HIV has become so widespread, and criminal prosecutions so frequent, that they have become a crisis in efforts to deal rationally and effectively with HIV. Citing examples from locations as diverse as the United States, Sierra Leone and Singapore, Cameron highlighted the irrational nature of these laws and their ineffectiveness in achieving their purported goal of preventing the spread of HIV. Rather, they radically increase HIV stigma and become barriers to testing and treatment. Prosecutions often single out already vulnerable groups such as sex workers, men who have sex with men and, in European countries, black males. Women are especially victimized by these laws, which expose them to assault, ostracism and further stigma.
Cameron stated that one of the outcomes of AIDS 2008 should be a major international pushback against such misguided criminal laws and prosecutions. He urged delegates � strengthened in their resolve to fight against stigma and discrimination � to return home committed to persuading lawmakers and prosecuting authorities of the folly and distraction of criminalization.
Roadmap for Action on Women, Girls and HIV/AIDS
Citing violence against women as both a cause and consequence of HIV infection, Zonibel Woods (Canada) of the Ford Foundation highlighted the fear of violence from partners as a reason that some women do not seek treatment for HIV. Woods declared that providing access to treatment cannot be divorced from ensuring a woman�s right to live free from violence, and that attempts to scale up HIV treatment, while ignoring stigma and discrimination, will not work. For real progress, the legal and policy environment to address violence against women must be strengthened along with the commitments to invest in, enforce, monitor and evaluate such policies.
Confronting gender-based violence is one of three priorities in Wood's roadmap for responding to HIV in women. She also outlined the importance of ensuring women�s right to sexual and reproductive health, and investing in women�s organizations so that women can participate effectively in decisions that affect their lives. Policies and budgets must support the full range of reproductive health services, including quality pregnancy and delivery care, and access to contraception. In addition, research and investment in technologies that put control of prevention in women�s own hands also remain critical. In closing, Woods welcomed the recent decision by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria to invest in gender transformative programs. However, she emphasized that success in this regard depends on the engagement of women�s organizations in setting in-country priorities, and the inclusion of experts in gender equality and women�s empowerment funding on proposal review panels.
Conference Closes With Rapporteur Reports, Calls to Action
At the Closing Session, delegates heard summary remarks from AIDS 2008 Co-Chairs, Dr. Pedro Cahn and Dr. Luis Soto Ramirez, as well as from community representatives. Global Fund Executive Director Dr. Michel Kazatchkine gave a closing keynote address following a taped transmission from the official conference hub held at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine of the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa. Incoming IAS President, Dr. Julio Montaner, Director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and Founding Co-Director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network, gave an inaugural address, followed by remarks from OXFAM Ambassador and singer Annie Lennox. To conclude today�s Closing Session, Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and Local AIDS 2008 Co-Chair Luis Soto Ram�rez officially transferred the International AIDS Conference glass globe from Mexico City to Vienna, Austria, the host of AIDS 2010. Accepting the globe for Vienna were: Sonja Wehsely, Executive City Councillor for Public Health and Social Affairs; Frank Amort, from Aids Hilfe Wein; and AIDS 2010 Local Co-chair Brigitte Schmied, from the Otto-Wagner Hospital.
With more than 24,000 participants from over 190 countries, AIDS 2008 was the second largest in the history of the International AIDS Conference, and the first to be held in Latin America. The conference theme, Universal Action Now, emphasized the need for continued urgency in the worldwide response to HIV/AIDS, and for action on the part of all stakeholders.
During the conference, a team of 50 rapporteurs prepared written summaries of conference sessions to record what was discussed and identify next steps on a range of issues. Prior to the Closing Session, chief rapporteurs from eight topic areas presented weekly summaries. All reports and summaries are available online at
www.aids2008.org.
-END-
About the Organizers
The International AIDS Conference is convened every other year by the International AIDS Society (IAS), the world's leading independent association of HIV professionals with more than 10,000 members from 185 countries. Local partners include the Federal Government of Mexico, the Government of Mexico City and local scientific and community leadership. International institutional partners for AIDS 2008 include: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), and its co-sponsors, the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Food Programme (WFP); International Council of AIDS Service Organizations (ICASO); Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+)/International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS (ICW); World YWCA; and the Asian Harm Reduction Network (AHRN).
Additional Resources
For additional information, including programme information, abstracts, rapporteur and scientific summaries, and links to webcasts, podcasts, transcripts and presentations from key conference sessions, please visit www.aids2008.org.
FOR MEDIA ENQUIRIES:
On-site Media Centre
+52 55 52 68 2418
+52 55 52 68 2419
International Media: Karen Bennett or Mallory Smuts
Karen.Bennett@iasociety.org
Mallory.Smuts@iasociety.org
U.S. Media: Regina Arag'n
rraragon@pacbell.net
Mexican Media: Julia Garc'a or Liliana valos
Julia.Velazquez@Fleishman.com
Liliana.Avalos@Fleishman.com
Latin American Media: Leandro Cahn
Leandro.Cahn@huesped.org.ar
more News on
www.aids2008.orgh
Labour's perverse polyclinic scheme is the next step in privatising the NHS
The giant healthcare centres set to replace local GP surgeries are good for no one but the firms who will profit
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday April 29 2008
Article history
Everything is getting bigger and further away. Hospitals, post offices, schools and prisons are being "rationalised" and "consolidated". The government says this process improves efficiency. Instead, it outsources inefficiency: we must travel further to use public services. This is bad for the environment, bad for community life, and bad for universal provision. But we haven't seen anything yet. We are about to be confronted with the biggest shutdown of all: the government has started the process of closing England's network of doctors' surgeries.
If you know nothing of this, don't blame yourself. The announcement was buried in an interim report published last October by a junior health minister. The report was 52 pages long, and the policy was explained in a single paragraph on pages 25 and 26. Rather than being brought before parliament, it was released four days before MPs returned from their recess. Since then there has been no further public announcement. But in December, the Department of Health sent a letter to all the strategic health authorities in England, demanding that the policy be implemented immediately. The greatest transformation in the history of the NHS is taking place without public debate, public consent or formal consultation.
The government's policy is to consolidate doctors' surgeries into a series of giant health centres, or polyclinics. Thousands of small practices will be closed and patients will be processed in buildings containing up to 50 GPs. The new clinics will also house some services at present provided by hospitals, which allows the government to claim that it is bringing healthcare "closer to home". The net effect will be a massive reduction in convenience.
The policy was launched by Ara Darzi, a colorectal surgeon who has been raised to the peerage and made an undersecretary of state for health. He wrote his interim report in three months, during which he claims to have spoken to thousands of people. But it contains no record of who they are, how they were selected, or what their answers were: he reveals only that "their views have helped shape this interim report". His final report will not be published until June, but the Department of Health has instructed England's primary care trusts to advertise for bidders for the new polyclinics by May 2008: the first notices have already been posted in the Health Service Journal.
During a parliamentary debate launched by the Conservatives last week, health secretary Alan Johnson claimed three times that this policy is not being imposed on PCTs. "There is no national policy for replacing traditional GP surgeries with health centres or, indeed, polyclinics"; "we are not specifying polyclinics as any part of the exercise"; "[the Tories say] we are imposing a system of polyclinics throughout the country. We are not." Three times, in other words, he misled the House. The letter sent by the Department of Health in December ordered that "each PCT will be expected to complete procurements during 2008/09". In a parliamentary answer in February, health minister Ben Bradshaw confirmed that "every PCT in the country will be procuring a new ... health centre during 2008-09". A press release published by the Labour party on April 15 confirmed that the new centres would be built "in every town and city". I hope MPs demand that Alan Johnson apologise to parliament.
Lord Darzi insists that polyclinics will offer "a more personalised service". This is nonsense: in the enormous new centres we are less likely to be able to see the same GP, and more likely to get lost in the system. A recent paper in the British Medical Journal reveals that "patients in small practices rate their care more highly in terms of both access and continuity", and that small practices "achieved slightly higher levels of clinical quality than larger practices". The centres will be built not where they are most convenient for patients but - as Darzi revealed to the Commons health committee - where the NHS happens to own land. If you live in a village or a distant suburb and depend on public transport, as many elderly and sick people do, visiting the doctor could take all day. Ara Darzi is the new Dr Beeching, shutting down the branchlines of our primary health service.
So why is this happening? In seeking to surreptitiously privatise healthcare, the government has a problem. Primary care is already in private hands - GPs run their own practices. But they are the wrong hands: the corporations demanding guaranteed streams of income from the taxpayer can't play in this field. Polyclinics are perfectly designed to let them in, while preventing doctors from competing.
It's not just that GPs can't raise the capital; because the contracts are much bigger than ordinary practices' and involve many different services, the tendering process is expensive and fiendishly complex. The big service companies can produce the same bid for any number of clinics: they need spend their money only once. The Department of Health says that PCTs should use a type of contract called Alternative Provider Medical Services, which is designed to allow corporations to bid. This is not a public-private partnership: it is the outright privatisation of primary healthcare.
Do I need to explain the implications? The American health system, which the British government seems determined to emulate, is both more expensive and less efficient; those who can't afford to pay are either excluded or treated like battery pigs. The independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) - private clinics which carry out routine NHS operations - have been a costly disaster since being introduced in England in 2003. Private companies receive their money regardless of whether they carry out the work they are contracted to do. The government refuses to release comparative figures, but the little evidence we have suggests that their costs are much higher than the public sector's.
The risks have been transferred back to the taxpayer, and the standards of treatment are sometimes appalling. In 2006 Angus Wallace, professor of orthopaedic and accident surgery at Nottingham University, told the Guardian: "We expect failures of hip replacements at approximately 1% a year and knees at about 1.5% a year. But we have got some of the ISTCs that are looking at 20% failure rates." Because they put profits first, companies that run these centres have generated a stack of litigation claims and a huge NHS bill for repairing the damage they have caused. Far from reversing its policy in the light of this evidence, the government is setting up a competition panel to ensure that the health service never discriminates in favour of the public sector when awarding contracts.
Did any of us ask for this? Are there crowds on the streets demanding the privatisation of the NHS? Even the Tories have come out against it: David Cameron's speech last week placed them to the left of Labour. Why, after the 60-odd quarters of consecutive growth that Gordon Brown keeps boasting about, can he not maintain a public service founded in the midst of poverty and rationing? What mysterious hold on policy do the corporations possess, that they can persuade this government to wreck Labour's finest achievement and damage its chances of re-election?
monbiot.com
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www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/29/nhs.health
NOTTINGHAM GP FINED OVER UNLICENSED DRUG
BRYAN HENESEY, 09:00 - 29 April 2008
A GP has been fined for advertising an unlicensed weight-loss injection to patients.
Dr Dinesh Maini, a GP at Nottingham Laser Clinic on Derby Road, was prosecuted for illegally possessing, intending to sell and advertising Lipostabil for cosmetic purposes.
Dr Maini was up before City of London Magistrates' Court last week where he pleaded guilty to three charges of advertising and storing the "fat jab" drug in March 2005.
He was prosecuted by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and ordered to pay 10,500 in court costs and fines.
He advertised the service on the clinic's website and in the Evening Post, the court heard.
He was told by the MHRA to stop advertising the unlicensed medicine. However, he continued to advertise it on the website.
The MHRA visited the clinic and seized 187 full packs and three incomplete packs of Lipostabil.
Dr Maini has not used, advertised or stocked Lipostabil at the clinic since.
Mick Deats, head of Enforcement and Intelligence at the MHRA, said: "This successful prosecution highlights the robust action the MHRA takes against those who illegally advertise, sell and administer unlicensed medicines for cosmetic purposes.
"Consumers should be aware that Lipostabil is unlicensed in the UK and the safety of this product for cosmetic use has not been established."
Lipostabil is licensed in Germany - its country of origin - as an intravenous medicine for use in treating fat blockages in blood vessels. It is not, however, approved or licensed for cosmetic use.
Dr Maini became a GP at Lenton Medical Centre in 1997. He opened the Nottingham Laser Clinic, at the same premises, in 2004.
He is a member of the British Association of Cosmetic Doctors (BACD), and The British Medical Laser Association (BMLA).
A legal spokesman for Dr Maini said: "The prosecution related to events that occurred more than three years ago.
"(Dr Maini) has been fully co-operative with the MHRA ever since they first drew his attention to the issue.
more News on
www.mhra.gov.uk
Health Story
GPs should reclaim round-the-clock care, NHS report says
Thursday, 10 Apr 2008 00:01
GPs should reclaim responsibility for round-the-clock care, the NHS Alliance has said in its report on the health service.
The collaboration of clinicians, managers and board members says the continuity of care general practice work provides is often critical, especially for people with complex and long-term conditions and the elderly.
The alliance argues that GPs do not need to provide all the care themselves but should be responsible for services and to join up care to make sure patients do not fall into gaps.
Its report, In Sickness and in Health, says GPs taking responsibility for 24-hour care would help patients to know where to go for care at different times of the day.
NHS Alliance chairman and GP Dr Michael Dixon said: "When the GP contract was negotiated, we didn't have practice-based commissioning or any other mechanism that would allow GP practices to commission out of hours and urgent care.
"Now that we do have the means, we should grasp the opportunity. Many doctors are concerned that healthcare is becoming more fragmented - highlighted by a recent survey that found one in five GPs would be willing to return to working out of hours."
He added: "The decisions about who should provide what services need to made locally, as close to the patient as possible, by GP practice-based commissioners supported by their primary care trusts and patient groups. And these are the people who should monitor the service as well.
"We have to build care around the patient, instead of expecting the patient to navigate a system that is convenient to the service."
The NHS Alliance report also calls for a new type of doctor: a community specialist consultant, equivalent to a hospital consultant but with special training in the clinical and management skills needed to work across the boundaries between hospitals and primary care.
Responding to the report, health minister Lord Ara Darzi said: "I share the prime Minister's view that primary care is the lynchpin of a 21st century NHS and welcome this important contribution to the debate on its future.
"The next stage review will aim to build on the strengths in primary care, deepening the focus on health promotion, delivering more personalised, accessible and integrated services and rewarding high quality care - objectives which the NHS Alliance clearly shares.
"I look forward to ongoing collaboration, with the NHS Alliance and primary care professionals, to help us achieve our shared vision."
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Pill Reduce Risk of Cancer
Research study published in Lancet and the BMJ which combined the results from 45 smaller studies in 21 countries. The finding show that taking the pill sharply reduces the risk of developing ovarian cancer and the protective effect increases with the length of use.
The lancet editorial says the dramatic findings reopens the question of whether oral contraceptives should be made available in light of the latest study� we strongly endorse more widespread over- the �counter access to a preventive agent that can only prevent cancers but also demonstrably save the lives of tens of thousands of women�
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Surgeons success be open to Public
Mr Bernard Riberiro The president of the Royal College of Surgeons SAID THAT Britain's 6000 surgeons must be more open about what they do and accept assessment of the out comes of their operations to guarantee patients safety .�
He remarked Trust is a big issue in medicine. Trust comes with information and the patients who has information will trust the doctors. An attempt must be made to record the complications, readmissions and the infection rate.
To produce data is robust, believable and trusted by surgeons and everyone else is a mammoth task It is a challenge but I think surgeons will rise to it
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HIV in India
2.5 millions people in India living with HIV
July 2007 The 2006 estimates released in New Delhi by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) and WHO, indicate that national adult HIV prevalence in India is approximately 0.30% , which corresponds to an estimated 2 millions to 3.1 millions people living with HIV in the country.
The Indian government has greatly expanded and improved its surveillance system in recent years and increased the number of population groups covered.
The minister of Health called upon the medical professionals and civil society organisations to fight the stigma and discrimination.
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World Medical Association
General Assembly ,Copenhagen Denmark, October 2007
Recommendations for the adoption of the Telemedicine has been encouraged because of its speed and its capacity to reach patients with limited access to medical assistance, in addition to increase its power to improve health care.
The Physician must aim to ensure that patient confidentiality and data integrity are not comprised and the quality of care highly maintained at all times.
www.wma.net
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WHO Day 2008
WHO has announced that the topic for world health Day 2008 will be Protecting Health from climate change Sixty years ago WHO was founded as part of the international commitment to build global security and peace in the same spirit of universal solidarity, WHO is seeking to unite the nations of the world in combating the threat to public health safety from climate change.
Strike in Israel
Two months strike by the senior lecturers in country's universities hundreds of medical students will be stuck in their preclinical studies and will be unable to proceed to work in hospitals
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BMA accepts Govt; proposals for extended GP surgery hours
The Government wants GPs to open surgeries for three more hours a week, including until 8 pm one night a week.
The Govt; said that it intended to impose the contract on GPs that could mean that practices who don't comply will loose as much as 35000 a year.
GPs believe extended hours will harm continuity of care. Two third of GPs reject contract deal.
The Pulse reported that GPs face penalties for lunchtime or half-day closure.
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Doctor's Gifts
A Medical Defence Union survey revealed that GPs receive more gifts from patients than any other doctors.
MDU legal adviser warned that gifts could be misconstrued and provoke complaints. The contract requires GPs to keep a record of all gifts worth over 100.
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Health Care treatment cheaper in Europe than UK
A survey published in Health Economics (2008 ;17;S8-103) revealed that surgical procedures e.g. appendicectomy, cataract hip replacement, Stroke and heart treatment and dental filling .
Hungary, Poland and Spain seems the cheapest than England, Denmark ,Germany and Netherlands and France e.g. cost of hip replacement range from ( 1200 Euros in Hungary to 8500 Euros in Netherlands, and a single dental filling cost from 8Euros in Hungary to 150 Euros in U.K
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Iraqis lack health
International Organisation for Migration reported that 57% of the population have no access to health care in particular over 2 millions displaced people are unable to get the medicine
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Saudi Arabia
Heart Disease increasing
An international symposium on heart diseases was held in Riyadh .on 11 February 2008 a great concern about growing rate of Heart Diseases in the Kingdom, announcing coronary heart disease s the No1 killer.
The four day conference was inaugurated by Prince Sultan Al-Kabeer, hon; president of the Saudi Heart Association.
More than 2000 local and international delegates including 100 speakers participated in the conference.
(Arab news)
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Saudi Arabia
Ophthalmology FRCS
Magrabi Eye & Ear Hospital in Jeddah organised four day clinical course for eye surgeons who wish to sit the final FRCS exam in the UK and Ireland.
( Arab news)
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U.K
Overseas doctors /New system
GMC has introduced a new system to benefit the foreign doctors working in the UK From October , all new overseas doctors are required to work in approved practice settings for 12 months.
*www.gmc-uk.org
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MPS Complaints handling
MPS handled 3,300 calls in the UK alone from doctors asking for help and advice about complaints.
Main reason for complaints %
- Failure in delay or wrong diagnosis 30
- Attitude or rudeness 14
- Inadequate/inappropriate treatment 11
- Other 10
- Failure/delay to visit 8
- Failure to perform ,or inadequate examination 5
- Failure /delay/ inappropriate referral 5
- Prescription Problem/error 4
- Miscellaneous 3
- Removal from list 3
- Administration 3
- Failure to investigate 2
- Consent issues 2
(www.mps.org.uk)
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China
Taiwan's Department of Health take legal action local doctors suspected of acting brokers for Chinese doctors seeking liver- transplant patients.
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Pakistan
The Pakistan Medical Association has called upon the Government to clarify over conflicting medical reports about the death of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. PMA said that these reports were sending wrong message among the medical profession.
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UK
Health inequalities
Health report says there is a consistent north-south divide , with poorer health in the north in comparison to the south in almost all cases
The report identifies a rising prevalence of obesity, drinking , chronic liver disease, cirrhosis and the high rate of teenage pregnancy of the 15 countries in the EU to 2004 among major areas of concern in the UK
The health minister ,Dawn Primarolo, said This report shows that mortality rates from cancer, heart diseases, and suicides are declining. But there is still a lot to do in tackling health inequalities.
Health Profile of England 2007 at
www.dh.gov.uk
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GAZA
Human Right Watch said Seven patients who were denied access to life saving care out side Gaza , at least three patients have died since June 2007.
Israel authorities have removed the security prohibitions.
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Available now on www.PEPFAR.gov...
SAVING LIVES CREATING HOPE
PEPFAR and Warner Bros. Entertainment are proud to present the trailer for Saving Lives Creating Hope. Developed through a public-private partnership between PEPFAR and Warner Bros., the engaging new trailer gives audiences a sneak peek of PEPFAR's Saving Lives Creating Hope documentary. [ Trailer ]
"Saving Lives Creating Hope" is an unforgettable tale of the human spirit: of bold leadership and the transformational power of partnerships in the fight against global AIDS. In the documentary, government, faith, community and private sector leaders from Haiti, Rwanda and Tanzania share inspiring stories of the impact of PEPFAR. [Documentary ]
The trailer was premiered with remarks by President and Mrs. Bush on Africa policy and their upcoming trip to Africa, available online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/africa/.
Remarks by President Bush and President Kikwete of Tanzania in Joint Press Availability
February 17, 2008
State House
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
10:29 A.M. (L)
PRESIDENT KIKWETE: Mr. President, welcome. I stand before you with a deep sense of gratitude and satisfaction to once again welcome you, Mr. President, and your entire delegation, to our dear country, Tanzania. (Applause.) The outpouring of warmth and affection from the people of Tanzania that you have witnessed since your arrival is a genuine reflection of what we feel towards you and towards the American people.
Welcome, Your Excellency, and your great wife, Madame Laura Bush, as enduring partners for our empowerment as we struggle to pull ourselves to prosperity and back from backwardness and development, infested by poverty, disease and depravation of basic social and economic services. We welcome you, Mr. President, as a supportive
