Where is maternal and child health now?

After we were honored with Dr. Rosenfield's contributions in class yesterday, this article in the Lancet appropriately revisits his efforts to direct researchers to the M in MCH:

ScienceDirect - The Lancet : Where is maternal and child health now?: "21 years ago, Rosenfield and Maine1, 2 and 3 posed the question "where is the M in MCH?", conceiving the safe motherhood movement. What has happened to maternal and child health (MCH) since? [...] Inadequate focus and funding is certainly one of many reasons for this slow progress. Additionally, progress has been impeded at times by competition, conflicts, and changes of direction in global policy.3 We consider two such competitions—the mother versus the child, and community versus clinical care—and how these become obsolete with a shift to a continuum of care approach.

How did mother versus child become a competition? Despite the name, in the 1980s most MCH programmes focused on the child, with maternal care mainly limited to family planning. The justifiable need for more attention for women contributed to the downplaying of links between maternal and child health to such an extent that the ten action points for safe motherhood in 19973 did not mention the purpose of motherhood—a live, healthy newborn baby. Meanwhile child health programmes focused primarily on infectious diseases, largely ignoring the causes of 4 million neonatal deaths every year.5 The separation of maternal health and child health programmes contributed to inaction for newborn health...'"

Wide Income Gap Linked To Deaths In Both Rich And Poor Nations

Wide Income Gap Linked To Deaths In Both Rich And Poor Nations: " A wide income gap between the most affluent and the worst off in society is closely associated with higher death rates worldwide, especially for younger adults, finds a study published on the British Medical Journal website (bmj.com) as part of a global theme issue on poverty and human development."

Computer Game Helps Ugandan Children Recovering From Cerebral Malaria

Computer Game Helps Ugandan Children Recovering From Cerebral Malaria

Excess Female To Male Births In Canada Linked To Chronic Dioxin Exposure

Excess Female To Male Births In Canada Linked To Chronic Dioxin Exposure: "Almost 90 Canadian communities have experienced a shift in the normal 51:49 ratio of male to female births, so that more girls than boys are being born, according to two new studies. James Argo, who headed the research, attributes this so-called 'inverted sex ratio' of the residents in those communities to dioxin air pollutants from oil refineries, paper mills, metal smelters and other sources [...]"

HIV Is Spread Most By People With Medium Levels Of HIV In Blood, Says Study

HIV Is Spread Most By People With Medium Levels Of HIV In Blood, Says Study: "People with medium levels of HIV in their blood are likely to contribute most to the spread of the virus, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Distribution of nets splits malaria fighters - International Herald Tribune

Distribution of nets splits malaria fighters - International Herald Tribune: "...Villages like Maendeleo are at the center of a debate that has split malaria fighters: how to distribute mosquito nets.

Recently, Dr. Arata Kochi, the blunt new director of the World Health Organization's malaria program, declared that as far as he was concerned, 'the debate is at an end.' Virtually the only way to get the nets to poor people, he said, is to hand out millions free.

In doing so, Kochi turned his back on an alternative long favored by the Clinton and Bush administrations %u2014 distribution by so-called social marketing, in which mosquito nets are sold through local shops at low, subsidized prices %u2014 $1 or so for an insecticide-impregnated net that costs $5 to $7 from the maker %u2014 with donors underwriting the losses and paying consultants to come up with brand names and advertise the nets [...]"

200 journals join in theme issues on poverty and human development

200 journals join in theme issues on poverty and human development: "Through an international collaboration, more than 200 medical and scientific journals are publishing theme issues this week on the relationship between poverty and human development. The initiative, coordinated by the Council of Science Editors, includes presentations on seven of the journal articles which will be webcast live from the National Institutes of Health on Monday, October 22, 2007."

The effects of malnutrition on child mortality in developing countries

The effects of malnutrition on child mortality in developing countries [Bull World Health Organ. 1995] - PubMed Result: "Conventional methods of classifying causes of death suggest that about 70% of the deaths of children (aged 0-4 years) worldwide are due to diarrhoeal illness, acute respiratory infection, malaria, and immunizable diseases. The role of malnutrition in child mortality is not revealed by these conventional methods, despite the long-standing recognition of the synergism between malnutrition and infectious diseases. This paper describes a recently-developed epidemiological method to estimate the percentage of child deaths (aged 6-59 months) which could be attributed to the potentiating effects of malnutrition in infectious disease. The results from 53 developing countries with nationally representative data on child weight-for-age indicate that 56% of child deaths were attributable to malnutrition's potentiating effects, and 83% of these were attributable to mild-to-moderate as opposed to severe malnutrition. For individual countries, malnutrition's total potentiating effects on mortality ranged from 13% to 66%, with at least three-quarters of this arising from mild-to-moderate malnutrition in each case [...]"

Jay Keasling and synthesizing the future

My heart's in Accra - Pop!Tech: Jay Keasling and synthesizing the future: "...Keasling is interested in manufacturing Artemisinin. Artemisinin is the latest weapon in the battle against malaria, a disease that effects 300 to 500 million people a year, killing 1-3 million of them. 90% of the people the disease kills are children under five years old. The economic impact of malaria is profound - nations effected are estimated to lose up to 50% of their GDP due to productivity losses from the disease [...]"