A theme that I’ve been following over the last few months (ever since reading about Nigel Crisp‘s ideas in “Turning the World Upside Down”) is how innovation can transfer from developing economies to developed, particularly in the field of public health. So I was interested to read Vijay Govindarajan’s recent conversation in the Harvard Business Review about how Aravind […]
Happy Mandela Day! The UN has adopted July 18th as Mandela Day, described as a “global movement to take his life’s work into a new century and change our world for the better”. The idea is to donate 67 minutes of your day to doing something good…in commemoration of the 67 years that Nelson Mandela […]
So I’m a bit jetlagged. I’m watching Dan Pink’s entertainingly animated talk at the RSA from April, considering the implications for behaviour change and global health. If human motivation is nuanced in the way that Pink argues, and our institutions are hardwired to consider only the most basic of our innate desires – what does […]
I’m in the US for a couple of weeks, visiting family and, importantly, experiencing the joys of speedier internet access. What will I be watching? First, I’ll be keeping up with the happenings in Vienna with the webcasts from the XVIII International AIDS Conference. I’ll also be catching up on the 2010 Aspen Ideas Festival Global Health track by browsing the video […]
UNAIDS has released a report in advance of this week’s XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna with the title “Young People are Leading the HIV Prevention Revolution“. The study says: The report shows that for the first time reductions in HIV prevalence among young people have coincided with a change in sexual behaviour patterns among people. The […]
Princeton Lyman and Stephen Wittels of the Council on Foreign Relations have written a thoughtful article in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs (No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The Unintended Consequences of Washington’s HIV/AIDS Programs). Far less sensationalist than the NYTimes reporting in May, this in-depth analysis explores the paradox that US commitments supporting HIV […]
The WHO has launched the Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities, an effort to link cities who “address the environmental and social factors that contribute to active and health ageing in societies.” This is in response to statistics cited on the WHO site, including: (1) In 2000, more than 600 million people in the world were […]
On Thursday, two new studies were released in the journal, Science, showcasing promising new discoveries in the search for an HIV vaccine. These studies follow a vaccine trial in Thailand last year, which was the first vaccine to show any efficacy, but with low results. These latest findings center around “broadly neutralizing antibodies”, which have been shown to neutralize more than 90% […]
Two scientists in South Africa are calling for a month-long period of abstinence, to break the cycle of HIV transmission. Alan Whiteside of the University of Whiteside, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is quoted as saying: “This kind of initiative could provide hyper-endemic countries with a one-off, short-term adaptation that is cost-effective, easy to monitor […]
Steven Chapman at Population Services International (PSI) has written a thoughtful piece on PSI’s approach to sustainability. He comments: More than 10 years ago, PSI published its first position statement on sustainability – distancing itself from the almost exclusive focus on financial sustainability used by other social marketing organizations. Instead, we emphasized producing health and quality-of-life benefits at […]
The lead-up to the G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto week before last witnessed a slew of commentary, most detailing the demise of the G8 and the rise of its larger sibling, the G20. While this is not a new theme, it is a consistent one (Jeff Sachs asked the question on everyone’s mind in […]
Check out the pocket card on investing in women from the Women Deliver conference, which advocates for a $12 billion increase in funding for family planning and maternal and newborn care, projected to increase social and economic productivity by $15 billion, currently lost to maternal and newborn death.
Last year, in June, a study was released in South Africa which found that more than one in four men in South Africa admitted to raping a woman. During the World Cup, 30,000 women have been given condoms, or tampon-like devices, which have “teeth”, or hooks inside that attach to a man’s penis during penetration. Once […]
For those wanting better insight into the inner-workings of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, I highly recommend the lengthy and meaty transcript from the Council on Foreign Relations conversation with Michael Kazatchkine (the Global Fund’s Executive Director) earlier this month. Of note: …everything that we would fund is evidence-based, so all of […]
I admit, I’m completely caught up in World Cup fever. It’s obvious from my decline in postings since the games opened two weeks ago. Most evenings I’m glued to the television screen and most mornings I awake to the sound of vuvuzelas on the streets at 6am. So, in the mayhem, I somehow missed the encouraging […]