Haitian Health Minister Florence Duperval Guillaume was named interim prime minister on Sunday to replace Laurent Lamothe, who resigned a week ago following several weeks of protests. From Reuters:
Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, is still recovering from an earthquake five years ago that leveled much of the capital, Port-au-Prince. In recent weeks, demonstrators in several cities have accused the government of corruption.
If elections are not held before Jan. 12, the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, parliament will shut down, leaving the country without a functioning government until presidential elections in late 2015.
A career health worker whose official title is minister of public health and population, she is seen as close to Haiti’s First Lady Sophia Martelly, and has overseen efforts to rebuild the country’s fragile medical services, including by starting new hospitals and handling a cholera epidemic and long-running HIV-AIDS treatment.
Named health minister in 2011, she is widely respected by international aid agencies. She previously was deputy chief of management science for Health in Haiti, an organization working with government and private groups across a wide range of medical problems.
She told a Harvard Kennedy School forum last year that her biggest challenge is reaching the 40 percent of Haitians not covered by basic health care, according to the official Harvard Gazette.
—————————————-
Global Health and Development Beat
International Monetary Fund policies left healthcare systems in the African countries worst affected by Ebola underfunded and lacking doctors, and hampered a coordinated response to the outbreak, researchers said.
A campaign is on to urge Sierra Leoneans to abandon traditional burial practices, such as relatives touching or washing the dead bodies, that are fueling the spread of Ebola in the West African country.
The United Nations mission to fight Ebola should be wound down quickly once the battle is won, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday during his first tour of countries stricken with the virus.
It took 10 years of lobbying, but Mozambique has quietly joined Cape Verde, South Africa and Tunisia as one of few African countries that allows therapeutic abortion.
Ignorance of AIDS has prompted more than 200 villagers in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan — including the boy’s guardian — to sign a petition unanimously calling for the boy’s expulsion.
The World Bank $170.2 million for women and adolescent girls to expand their access to reproductive, child and maternal health services in five countries in Africa’s Sahel region and the Economic Community of Western African States.
Going by the current pace of decline, India is unlikely to achieve its target of reducing the infant mortality rate to less than 39 per 1,000 live births by 2015-end, said a senior UNICEF official.
SK Chemicals Co., a petrochemical unit of South Korea’s third-largest conglomerate SK Group, said it has received a donation of $4.9 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for its project to develop a vaccine for typhoid fever.
Antibodies found in the immune system of Llamas may hold the secret to produce HIV vaccines and cure AIDS, say London-based researchers.
—————————————-
Buzzing in the Blogs
A look at how Chagas disease is turning up in unexpected places and whether people are prepared, in the PLoS blog. An excerpt:
Researchers, publishing in PLOS, sent out questionnaires on health policy for T. cruzi infection to about a dozen European countries. They wanted to gauge policy on the possibility of infection via blood transfusion, transplantation, and congenital transmissions. Some European countries are slowly beginning to acknowledge this growing public health problem, and some changes in health policies have been implemented.
Some, but not all, European countries have implemented national or regional measures to control transmission, but many countries still have no legislation about Chagas disease within their borders.
For risk of infection via blood transfusions seven European countries have either already implemented, or are in the process of, changing recommendations to enhance detection of cases of infection (France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom).
No country in Europe has a specific health policy against the risk of infection by organ transplantation. Only in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom are donors at risk of the infection being screened.
Of all the three possible routes of extraordinary infection, it is the congenital route that is the least well developed in terms of health policy. This in the face of the fact that control of congenital transmission has been demonstrated to be one of the most cost-effective measures to control the disease, since newborns with acute disease can be cured easily if treatment and diagnosis is early.
The recommendation from authors is an evolving health policy to control Chagas disease transmission in Europe. Across Europe, the map of policies is a mixed one — some laws and directives concerning blood banks and transplant programmes are urgently needed to avoid and reduce the risk of transmission. The differences in regulations emanating from the European Commission are not always in line with the Council of Europe, which should be addressed to give some coherence. Where laws and regulations do exists, more effort needs to be made to evaluate their implementation and impact.
—————————————-
Capital Events
Happy Holidays!
—————————————-
By Mark Leon Goldberg and Tom Murphy
Subscribe to receive the Daily Impact in your inbox each morning!
Have a news or story tip? Email us at [email protected].
Disclaimer: Opinions presented in this email do not necessarily reflect the views of PSI.
