Author: Bruce Benton
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421439662
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
The remarkable story of how a large public-private partnership worked to control and defeat riverblindness—a scourge which had devastated rural communities and impeded socioeconomic development throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa for generations. Riverblindness (onchocerciasis)—a pervasive neglected disease, transmitted by the blackfly, that causes horrific itching, disfigurement, and loss of vision—is also known as "lion's stare" in reference to the fixed, lifeless glare of the eyes blinded by the disease. The disease has destroyed countless lives for generations, particularly in Africa. Its effects are so devastating that the areas where it is most common (large expanses of land around rivers where the fly breeds) end up abandoned as villages move farther and farther away to more arid environments in order to escape the fly-biting, and hence the disease. The disease devastates communities from multiple angles: a large portion of each stricken community's population is disabled, often permanently blind in the prime of life, placing a burden on the rest, and communities' efforts to escape infection force them to move to areas where farming is less productive. To defeat riverblindness would not only release these communities from the heavy toll of the disease, but would also open more fertile areas in Africa to be inhabited, thus alleviating extreme poverty. These were the goals of the World Bank, led by then-president Robert McNamara, when launching a partnership to combat riverblindness more than forty-five years ago. In this book, Bruce Benton tells the remarkable story of that partnership's success. An authoritative account of the launch and scale-up of the effort, the book covers the transformation of the fight from a top-down high-tech operation to a grassroots drug treatment program covering all of endemic Africa. How, Benton asks, did the effort become such a unique partnership of UN agencies, donors, NGOs, a major pharmaceutical company, universities, African governments, and the stricken communities themselves? Highlighting the importance of disease control in alleviating absolute poverty and promoting development, Benton examines the key developments, individuals, and notable qualities of the partnership in realizing success. He also extracts lessons from this particular story for addressing future challenges through partnership. Drawing on Benton's twenty years of experience managing the riverblindness program for the World Bank, along with extensive research and interviews with 100+ players in the program, Riverblindness in Africa is the first and only book of its kind. The story of the battle has an epic scale, both in terms of geography and the vast number of people and organizations involved. It provides a template for a broad range of global health efforts and is an excellent example of evolving, increasingly effective approaches to disease control and elimination.
Author: Ebrahim M. Samba
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 120
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Book Description
An analysis of the many factors that have contributed to the striking success of the Onchocerciasis Control Program in West Africa (OCP), a major public health initiative now entering its twenty-first year. Throughout its history, OCP has been distinguished by its large size, the complexity of its operations, the long time frame needed for success, and the degree of commitment required by donors and participating countries alike. The Program has also been distinguished by its explicit aim to eliminate a disease, which has been a major obstacle to socioeconomic development as well as a cause of great disability and suffering. In examining the Program's many successful features, the author, who has directed OCP since late 1980, draws upon extensive personal experience, supported by the results of several external evaluations, to show how international collaboration, careful planning, and well managed field operations can overcome what may seem to be insurmountable obstacles. Throughout this analysis, an effort is made to extract lessons useful in the management of other large public health programs. The book also gives careful attention to managerial principles that will be important when OCP ceases operation and participating countries take over responsibility for the surveillance and management of recrudescence. The book has two parts. Chapters in the first part give a detailed account of the history, structure, operation, and achievements of OCP. Part two, on the management of OCP, explains how sound budgeting, detailed plans, time-limited goals, task-focused training, and careful computation of costs worked to maintain well-organized operations and keep staff motivated and efficient
Author: Ellen Agler
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421427230
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Powerful stories of the debilitating effects of neglected tropical diseases throughout the world, highlighting the successes and challenges of those fighting to eliminate them. Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect over one billion of the world's poorest people. More than 170,000 people die from NTDs each year, and many more suffer from blindness, disability, disfigurement, cognitive impairment, and stunted growth. Yet NTDs are treatable and preventable, and the annual cost of treatment is incredibly low. In Under the Big Tree, public health leader Ellen Agler and award-winning writer Mojie Crigler tell the moving stories of those struggling with these diseases and the life-saving work that can be—and has been—done to combat NTDs. They introduce readers to people from all walks of life—from car washers in Lake Victoria and surgeons on motorbikes to under-resourced local nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and Big Pharma scientists—as they chronicle what has been called the largest public health program in the world. On the one hand, the solutions are simple: deliver medication to people who need it and leverage local systems to offer prevention, treatment, and education. On the other hand, solutions are complex: navigating local and national politics, delivering treatment to some of the most remote, vulnerable communities, and coordinating global and local donors, international NGOs, thousands of health workers, and millions of citizens. Drawing on interviews with major players in the NTD world who share their cutting-edge research and frontline experiences, Under the Big Tree is a moving introduction to the science, the tactics, and the partnerships working to address these terrible diseases that affect the most vulnerable people in the world. With a foreword by Bill Gates, this book fascinates, inspires, and gives readers concrete steps for further engagement.
Author: David Wigg
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 52
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Book Description
Author: Peter J. Hotez
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421420465
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Why do diseases of poverty afflict more people in wealthy countries than in the developing world? In 2011, Dr. Peter J. Hotez relocated to Houston to launch Baylor’s National School of Tropical Medicine. He was shocked to discover that a number of neglected diseases often associated with developing countries were widespread in impoverished Texas communities. Despite the United States’ economic prowess and first-world status, an estimated 12 million Americans living at the poverty level currently suffer from at least one neglected tropical disease, or NTD. Hotez concluded that the world’s neglected diseases—which include tuberculosis, hookworm infection, lymphatic filariasis, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis—are born first and foremost of extreme poverty. In this book, Hotez describes a new global paradigm known as “blue marble health,” through which he asserts that poor people living in wealthy countries account for most of the world’s poverty-related illness. He explores the current state of neglected diseases in such disparate countries as Mexico, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Nigeria. By crafting public policy and relying on global partnerships to control or eliminate some of the world’s worst poverty-related illnesses, Hotez believes, it is possible to eliminate life-threatening disease while at the same time creating unprecedented opportunities for science and diplomacy. Clear, compassionate, and timely, Blue Marble Health is a must-read for leaders in global health, tropical medicine, and international development, along with anyone committed to helping the millions of people who are caught in the desperate cycle of poverty and disease.
Author: Michael Fairbanks
Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press
ISBN: 1599472511
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
The sociologist Thomas Sowell writes, "We need to confront the most blatant fact that has persisted across centuries of social history—vast ddifferences in productivity among peoples, and the economic and other consequences of such differences." Poverty demeans dignity, shrinks the soul, wastes potential, and inflicts suffering on three billion people on our planet. We must also acknowledge that, during the past fifty yyears, the record in international assistance to the least developed countries has been disappointing; the economics-based abstractions developed in the think tanks of Europe and North America are insufficient. In the River They Swim is the antithesis of that search for solutions to the next big theory of global poverty. From the fresh perspective of advisors on the frontlines of development to the insight of leaders like President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Pastor Rick Warren, it tells the story of change in the microcosms of emerging businesses, industries, and governments. These essays display a personal nature to their work that rigorous analysis alone cannot explain. We learn that a Sufi master can teach us about the different levels of knowledge, the "different ways to know a river." These practitioners could have written about its length, its source, its depth, its width, the power of its current, and the life it contains. They could have invested time and money to travel to that river so that they could sit on its shores and look at it, feel the sand that borders it, and watch the birds at play over it. Instead, they dove in to swim in the river, felt its current along their bodies, and tasted something of it. They wondered, briefly, if they had the strength to swim its length, and now they share the answer. If human development is a river, the authors in this volume, and perhaps some readers, will no longer be satisfied to stand along its banks.
Author: Susan Hunter
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250086388
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
To the surprise of many, George W. Bush pledged $10 billion to combat AIDS in developing nations. Noted specialist Susan Hunter tells the untold story of AIDS in Africa, home to 80 percent of the 40 million people in the world currently infected with HIV. She weaves together the history of colonialism in Africa, an insider's take on the reluctance of drug companies to provide cheap medication and vaccines in poor countries, and personal anecdotes from the 20 years she spent in Africa working on the AIDS crisis. Taken together, these strands make it unmistakably clear that a history of the exploitation of developing nations by the West is directly responsible for the spread of disease in developing nations and the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Hunter looks at what Africans are already doing on the ground level to combat AIDS, and what the world can and must do to help. Accessibly written and hard-hitting,Black Death brings the staggering statistics to life and paints for the first time a stunning picture of the most important political issue today.
Author: Richard Dowden
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786741422
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 593
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Book Description
After a lifetime's close observation of the continent, one of the world's finest Africa correspondents has penned a landmark book on life and death in modern Africa. It takes a guide as observant, experienced, and patient as Richard Dowden to reveal its truths. Dowden combines a novelist's gift for atmosphere with the scholar's grasp of historical change as he spins tales of cults and commerce in Senegal and traditional spirituality in Sierra Leone; analyzes the impact of oil and the internet on Nigeria and aid on Sudan; and examines what has gone so badly wrong in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo. Dowden's master work is an attempt to explain why Africa is the way it is, and enables its readers to see and understand this miraculous continent as a place of inspiration and tremendous humanity.
Author: World Health Organization
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 88
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Book Description
Author: Janine M. H. Selendy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119416213
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 373
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Book Description
The revised and updated second edition of Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Changing Environment offers an interdisciplinary guide to the conditions responsible for water and sanitation related diseases. The authors discuss the pathogens, vectors, and their biology, morbidity and mortality that result from a lack of safe water and sanitation. The text also explores the distribution of these diseases and the conditions that must be met to reduce or eradicate them. The text includes contributions from authorities from the fields of climate change, epidemiology, environmental health, environmental engineering, global health, medicine, medical anthropology, nutrition, population, and public health. Covers the causes of individual diseases with basic information about the diseases and data on the distribution, prevalence, and incidence as well as interconnected factors such as environmental factors. The authors cover access to and maintenance of clean water, and guidelines for the safe use of wastewater, excreta, and grey water, plus examples of solutions. Written for students, and professionals in infectious disease, public health and medicine, chemical and environmental engineering, and international affairs, the second edition of Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Changing Environment isa comprehensive resource to the conditions responsible for water and sanitation related diseases.
