A new study said HIV-positive children are much more likely to die from pneumonia than children who are not infected with the AIDS virus. It’s estimated there are more than three million children under age 14 living with HIV. From VOA:
Researchers said deaths from pneumonia among HIV-positive children could be dramatically reduced by expanding current treatments.
Dr. Harish Nair led the study to better understand the scope of the problem. He’s with the University of Edinburgh’s Center for Population Health Sciences.
“We’ve been working on pneumonia estimates for over a decade now. And we realized that there are no estimates for pneumonia and HIV-infected children. We all know that pneumonia is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in HIV-infected children,” he said.
While it was clear pneumonia threatened HIV-positive children, Nair says it was not known just how many were actually affected. The global study his team conducted – the first of its kind – shed light on the problem.
He said, “What we see is globally of the 116 million episodes of pneumonia occurring each year in under-five children, one-point-four-million episodes are in HIV-infected children. And of the 920,000 deaths from pneumonia in under-five children we find there are 88,000 deaths in HIV-infected children.”
Africa and South Asia are the worst regions for HIV-positive children dying from pneumonia. Their weakened immune systems put them at greater risk. Pneumonia has been linked to poverty, poor living conditions and inadequate health services.
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Global Health and Development Beat
The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says he remains “very confident” the Ebola outbreak that has devastated West Africa can be stopped.
UNICEF says it is stepping up assistance for hundreds of thousands of Syrian children at risk of illness and death due to bitterly cold weather.
The Guardian profiles one voluntary community-based distribution worker in Laos, trained by the Laotian government and the UN population fund to spread the word about family planning and distribute free contraceptives in his community.
The rate of new Ebola cases in Liberia has plunged, Sierra Leone is beginning to turn the corner in dealing with the deadly virus and health officials are now focused on Guinea, a USAID official said on Tuesday.
Research shows that South Africa is home to about 153,000 sex workers as a new plan aims to decriminalize the professions. Commissioned by the South African National AIDS Council, the research used data gathered from sex worker interviews in 12 sites nationwide to estimate the country’s sex worker population.
The World Health Organization says governments flouted their obligations during the Ebola crisis and wants more power to tackle health emergencies in future, documents published by the international agency showed.
Colombian Health Minister Alejandro Gaviria denied that the Chikungunya epidemic was out of control and said its expansion was below expected, despite the more than 80,000 cases of infection registered.
UNFPA describes how it is working in Somalia to create safe-havens for pregnant women. They often face insecurity and a lack of access to health resources – putting them and their unborn children at risk.
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Buzzing in the Blogs
Ending AIDS requires more investments in health workers, says Diana Frymus in the USAID Impact blog. She writes:
For example, USAID and the Touch Foundation created a PEPFAR-supported public-private partnership in Tanzania to expand training of health workers and strengthen management capacities of the Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences and Bugando Medical Center. Through this partnership, student enrollment has jumped from 277 students to over 1,800 across 14 different health worker cadres—a sixfold increase since 2004. Enrollment of medical students alone increased from 10 to 750 students over the last 10 years.
The program has also focused on strengthening deployment of graduates to underserved rural areas with the highest prevalence of infant and maternal mortality, HIV and malaria. With 96 percent of medical doctors trained in the program still employed in the Tanzanian health system, the program has become a model for achieving high graduate placement and retention rates.
However, there is still work to be done. Significant health work force shortages remain and systemic challenges continue to impact the support needed to enable and sustain health workers’ delivery of HIV services.
The new PEPFAR Human Resources for Health (HRH) strategy highlights the need to overcome these barriers. USAID continues to contribute to PEPFAR’s health work force investments by building upon and leveraging past contributions and advancements that span beyond training and include health worker deployment, retention and management.
The strategy’s five objectives outline a common roadmap for ensuring adequate supply and quality of the health work force to expand and sustain HIV and AIDS services:
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Assess HRH capacity needs to deliver HIV/AIDS services.
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Support adequate supply and appropriate skills mix of health workers to deliver HIV/AIDS services.
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Establish recruitment, deployment and retention strategies to ensure a consistent and sustainable supply of trained health workers.
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Establish sustainable financing for health workers, which ensures adequate local financing for health workers that provide HIV/AIDS services and sustained capacity for sites where PEPFAR salary support has been transitioned.
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Improve health worker performance for service quality.
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Capital Events
Wednesday
6:00 AM – Author Event: Dictators and Democracy in African Development – Institute for Policy Studies
Thursday
10:00 AM – Top Priorities for Africa in 2015 – Brookings
12:00 PM – The UNEP and Climate Change – Environmental Law Institute
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By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
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Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
