UN: Africa plagued by counterfeit malaria/HIV pills
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Public health, Studies
A recent assessment by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that weak and or/useless drugs have proliferated across Africa and Asia, with malaria-ridden West Africa being the hardest hit (102-page PDF). Smugglers, organized criminals and shady manufacturers in more developed countries are getting rich at the expense of individuals and countries with little capacity to distinguish between fraudulent pharmaceuticals and the real thing.
From the accompanying press release:
As much as 50-60 per cent of anti-infective medicines tested in Asia and Africa have been found to have insufficient amounts of the active ingredients. Medicines with low levels of active ingredients pose a greater hazard than those with none, because substandard antibiotics and anti-malarial drugs can promote the development of drug resistant strains, or “super bugs” that can spread beyond the region.
The UN report calls for immediate action, including the naming, shaming and banning of companies producing the faux pills and stronger government regulatory efforts.
Lancet assesses Gates Foundation achievements
The journal Lancet tackled the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a recent issue, assessing the heavyweight’s grants and spending. The study seeks to chronicle the foundation’s grants from 1998 to 2007 (a time period in which it handed out almost $9 billion), and the accompanying editorial provides a clear-eyed, critical review of the foundation’s work, transparency and priorities.
Some of the more striking numbers from a report full of them:
- The $1.2 billion spent by the foundation in 2007 on global health alone rivaled the World Health Organization’s entire annual budget (some of which is, not coincidentally, itself provided by the Gates foundation).
- Three quarters of global health funding went to “HIV/AIDS, malaria, vaccine-preventable diseases, child health,
tuberculosis, and other tropical diseases and neglected
diseases.” - The 1094 grants issued from 1998 to 2007 ranged from $3,500 to $750 billion.
- Twenty organizations shared 65 percent of the foundation’s global health funding.
- As a whole, NGOs and nonprofits got $3.3 billion while Universities got $1.8 billion. The rest went to other organizations and governments.
- Administrative expenses totaled $264 million in 2007.
The report also breaks down Gates funding by geography:
In terms of the geographical location of primary recipients, $3·62 billion (40%) of all funding was awarded to supranational organisations such as global health partnerships and intergovernmental organisations. Of the remaining amount, 82% ($4·39 billion) went to recipients based in the USA, 13% ($0·70 billion) to recipients in Europe and other high-income countries (eg, Australia), and 5% ($0·24 billion) to recipients in low-income and middle-income countries.
(Hat tip to Rahul Parikh, who provides a particularly useful breakdown of the numbers involved.)
Prevention vs. treatment in global health
AHCJ members Christine Gorman and Maryn McKenna participated in a blog experiment, in which a group of people decide to blog about the same topic at the same time - similar to a blog carnival. The experiment, focused on global health and “prevention vs. treatment,” generated posts from a variety of viewpoints:
- Prevention vs. Treatment: A False Choice
- The gradual abandonment of anti-tobacco/anti-smoking programs in the U.S.
- Why we tend to value current health more than future health“
- The need for a vaccine against methicillin resistant staph aureus
- Why prevention vs. treatment is the wrong way to think about drug resistance to malaria
- Proving prevention works is a lot harder than you might think
- HIV Information for Myanmar offers a few words on the greater good from the late Bogyoke (General) Aung San, who led the fight for Burmese independence after World War II.
- Whether concerns over health reform in the U.S. will crowd out discussion of global health
- On why good decisions in public health “are about balance, and looking for long-term systemic solutions instead of the quick fix“
- And, from a public relations perspective: differences between ’selling-in’ stories that have a prevention angle over those that emphasise treatment“
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
