Gene Therapy May Thwart HIV

Today’s article is about HIV. Timothy Brown, the first man to be cured of HIV, has driven scientists to find an effective way to end HIV. He was cured when he was diagnosed with HIV and received a bone marrow transplant from a donor who had defective CCR5 receptors on his T-cells, the receptors that HIV uses to infiltrate cells. Soon after, the HIV in his body started to decline. Scientists have tried to apply the same concept in very small clinical trials with minor success, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Further research need to be done.While this is a small success in the battle against HIV, it also brings to attention a very large issue in healthcare: money. Even if this gene therapy were to be at a stage where it could be used outside of clinical trials, it's still technologically advanced and expensive. It is not efficiency use in developing countries. Especially countries in Africa. HIV has hit Africa the hardest, but Africa also has the poorest countries in the world. There is no way that this gene therapy could be supplied to the people who need it most. As we have discussed, the poor need this technology significantly more than the rich, yet they suffer even more without it. While the relatively well off at least have anti-retroviral medication to slow down the effects, the poor have nothing to use. When we applaud such discoveries, research, and advancements, we also have to keep in mind the people we end up helping, and those who we still are not bringing help to. We don't realize that although there is a big accomplishment here, many, many more are still suffering.

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/gene-therapy-may-thwart-hiv.html

Vaccines against major childhood diseases to reach 37 more countries

The goal of the GAVI alliance is essentially to meet the fourth Millennium Development Goal, which is to “reduce child mortality.”  The alliance recently announced that they will be funding a large project to vaccinate forty of the world’s poorest countries from pneumococcal and rotavirus diseases, including diarrhea, pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis.  Since the two largest killers of children worldwide are pneumonia and diarrhea, this is significant progress towards fourth MDG will be met since the alliance will have vaccinated 90 million people from pneumococcal diseases and 40 million from the rotavirus by 2015.  While the fourth MDG is certainly a vital one to improving international health, should the GAVI alliance direct their money toward a goal that has more beneficial outcomes?  For example, educating people in low-income countries allows them to develop skills that helps raise individuals as well as the country itself, out of extreme poverty.  Accompanied with education is the education and therefore empowerment of women as (and economic) contributors to society.  This then satisfies not only the second MDG to “achieve universal primary education”, but the first and third MDGs to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” and “promote gender equality and empower women.”  So although vaccinating poor children is an exceptional goal, the GAVI alliance may wish to consider navigating such a large influx of donations and funds towards an implement that could accomplish several MDGs.  This implement could be perhaps the organization of schools throughout low-income African countries.  Advocating certain ideas such as women’s rights, paths to economic success, methods of preventing malnutrition and diseases such as H.I.V. address several MDGs.  Through education, we can teach poor countries how to raise themselves out of poverty and prevent hunger, disease, and high rates of mortality.

http://www.gavialliance.org/library/news/press-releases/2011/vaccines-against-major-childhood-diseases-to-reach-37-more-countries/

Pediatric HIV — A Neglected Disease?

The New England Journal of Medicine discusses children with HIV are due to their mothers passing to them during pregnancy. Most happen in low-income countries. The children themselves cannot do anything about it and are "voiceless." So children, who got HIV when they were born, mostly depend on the mother’s lifestyle.  However, the authors mention that there needs to be a batch of first-line drugs available for these children with HIV, and that will solve most of the problem. In all reality, the medication would save some lives of children yes, but it would not solve the problem in a long term period. Because this complicated situation will not be solved unless start a program to educate women. This could involve changing entire cultures depending on which country is being regarded. Women need to be educated, and told how they can prevent passing HIV to their infants. Also, it is just as important to inform the men as well because they need to understand how important this really is too. Another issue is access to these drugs and prenatal care for these mothers and infants. The family, no matter how educated, needs access to those before they can even take action to prevention. This all takes money, and that just is not possible for these places that need it the most. Many low income families have financial problem. Overall new drugs would help out the HIV infected children, but they are virtually useless if there is no access to healthcare services, money, or education of the HIV situation. This does not mean that new drugs should not be created and the effort should just stop, but before we put all of our efforts into these drugs, the real issues need to be addressed.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1107275

The Child Mortality Decline

According to the report that UNICEF/WHO joint press release, the number of deaths in children under age five is decreasing at a rapid rate. Though the very poor countries, children healthcare and preventative measures are clearly still making a difference from this press release. The article states that the mortality rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is "declining twice as fast as it was a decade ago."  Sub-Saharan Africa is a region with highest number of under-five deaths in the world. Even though this is the case, women's health care is another aspect that can be improved greatly to continue the decline of child deaths. When the mothers are treated properly in the pre-natal stage and they are educated on how to safely prepare for their baby, the children have a much higher chance of having a healthy childhood. On the other hand, the majority of the deaths are due to infectious diseases, care for the mother will still help to eliminate those whos' deaths concern lack of pre-natal care. Because a common theme among healthcare articles is education for prevention, organizations must make sure that all parties are being properly educated. The men, woman, and children must know preventative measures they can take to lead a healthier lifestyle (or the healthiest possible given the poor conditions.) Because the mortality rates seem to be improving greatly, the purpose of this article is to not only show the decline but also to make people aware that the number of those children dying every day is still vast and there is always further room (and a crucial need) for further improvement.

http://www.unicef.org/media/media_59795.html

Obesity Rates Rising Around the World

Obesity always one of the big issue in the world, not just in United States, but people who lived around the world as a whole.

 Obesity may mislead people it was not a poverty disease, but it was wrong. Because poverty tends to don’t have money buys foods for their needs. This is not to be confused with adequate nutrition. As poverty level increases, the desire for parents to feed their children "filling" food that will satisfy them for longer periods of time increases as well. This means that instead of getting nutrient beneficial food, these children who live in a developing countries are begin fed high carbohydrate, high fat and low nutrition food products. At the same time, if they keep eating high carbohydrate and high fat foods. This will cause them getting more chances on chronic diseases. This is an increasingly dangerous pathway. The closer that we get to these dangerous diets, the more health problems that are being introduced into these poverty hidden areas. These are people who are already struggling to make payments for the necessities of life. These are people who live on the bare minimum, who have difficulty dealing with any additional bills. What ends up happening is that the more situations like this occur, the greater likely that our already burdened hospitals will have to deal with an even greater influx of patients. Our hospitals have enough to deal with, and obesity and hunger need to be on the front line of priorities for the world.

http://isurfhopkins.com/local/12962-obesity-rates-rising-around-the-world.html