Ton van der Velden

Dear all,

Please find here some of the RH news from May 2008.

But first:

The Global Fund welcomed the announcement by Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda of Japan of a new contribution worth US$ 560 million for the coming years from 2009 onwards.

UNAIDS has raised lots of money for the next five years: thanks to its efforts, AIDS will shortly become the biggest single item in foreign aid. But two questions remain: How to spend it wisely? And should we spend so much on HIV/AIDS? In 1997, UNAIDS chief Peter Piot foretold in 1997 that "AIDS will cut through Asian populations like a hot knife through cold butter." But aside from a few explosive heterosexual epidemics within large commercial sex networks in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia that never happened. In a recent article in the British Medical Journal, Roger England suggests that we are spending too much on HIV and AIDS and in another article he suggests that “UNAIDS is out of touch with reality, and its single issue advocacy is harming health systems and diverting resources from more effective interventions against other diseases”. Paul de Lay replied on behalf of UNAIDS, and England reacted. Of course England is not the only one writing about this. For some more facts and opinion see also Jim Chin’s presentation from 2007. (Chin is the author of The AIDS Pandemic: The collision of epidemiology with political correctness and has had a long running battle with UNAIDS. See here UNAIDS’ response to his book.) If anything this is a discussion that is long overdue and it should be held in the office of every UN agency and NGO out there. For more input see also Reassessing HIV Prevention

The World Health Statistics 2008 and the Burden of disease statistics, both by WHO are out.

Family planning

Policies and projects:

Canada’s drug advisory committee says emergency contraception should be available over the counter. See also here.

World Fertility Patterns 2007 provides the latest available data about the level, trends and age pattern of fertility for countries and regions of the world.

And linked with that this, may be interesting: Key Challenges and Issues facing the World Contraceptives Markets, which analyzes the worldwide markets for Contraceptives in Millions of US$. The specific product segments analyzed are Oral Contraceptives, Condoms, Implants/ Injections, and Others. Sorry, you need to pay for it…

And then the science:

The Effects of Unintended Pregnancy on Infant, Child, and Parental Health: A Review of the Literature

Challenges in Translating Evidence to Practice: The Provision of Intrauterine Contraception

Injectable contraception: what should the longest interval be for reinjections? shows that a 4 week grace period is as safe as a 2 week grace period.

Safety and efficacy of a single-rod etonogestrel implant (Implanon): results from 11 international clinical trials

New Vaginal Ring Offers Nonhormonal Contraception: Presented at ACOG

Immediate start of hormonal contraceptives for contraception is a Cochrane review that found little strong evidence that quick start leads to fewer pregnancies or fewer women stopping early. However, fewer women on quick-start of Depo became pregnant than the women who started with another method.

The impact of intrauterine devices on subsequent fertility finds high pregnancy rates.

Other family planning research is here,, here, and here.

MCH

Tracking Progress in Maternal, Newborn & Child Survival tracks coverage for interventions needed to attain the Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5.

Misoprostol in resource poor countries

A global action plan for the prevention and control of pneumonia

Violence Against Young Children: A Painful Issue

Progress toward interruption of wild poliovirus transmission--worldwide, January 2007-April 2008.

Effect of timing of umbilical cord clamping of term infants on maternal and neonatal outcomes

Over to malaria:

Malaria infection might cause children's immune systems to attack their own DNA, 
resulting in more severe disease than in adults, say Cytokine-associated neutrophil extracellular traps and antinuclear antibodies in Plasmodium falciparum infected children under six years of age

Pharmacokinetics and tolerability of artesunate and amodiaquine alone and in combination in healthy volunteers shows that in this WHO recommended treatment the total drug exposure to both drugs was reduced significantly when they were given in combination.

Enhanced Efficacy of Amodiaquine and Chlorpheniramine Combination over Amodiaquine Alone in the Treatment of Acute Uncomplicated Pl. falciparum Malaria in Children

Antimalarial Drug Quality in the Most Severely Malarious Parts of Africa –A Six Country Study shows 35 percent of all treatments failing basic content testing.

Malaria Treatment in Africa

And for a change of pace:

Eliminating Blinding Trachoma

Prolonged and exclusive breast-feeding improves cognitive development as measured by IQ and teachers' academic ratings in children at age 6.5 years, according to Breastfeeding and Child Cognitive Development

Cesarean delivery is an independent risk factor for stroke, according to the results of Increased risk of stroke in patients who undergo cesarean section delivery: a nationwide population-based study

The management of childhood pneumonia in settings with a high burden of HIV

Pneumonia research to reduce childhood mortality in the developing world

HIV/AIDS

News/Politics:

2008 AVAC Report: The Search Must Continue provides a comprehensive review of recent developments in AIDS vaccine research.

Some Guidance:

HIV Medications: When to Start and What to Take

Initiating Therapy: When to Start, What to Use

Integrating HIV prevention in the care setting: health manager's guide

HIV/AIDS and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Literature Review

Screening for Tuberculosis in Individuals with HIV Infection, A Clinical Guide for HIV Care Providers in Resource-limited Settings

Advocacy, communication and social mobilization (ACSM) for tuberculosis control: A handbook for country programmes is primarily intended for staff that plan, organize and supervise TB control activities at the national level.

HIV, Tuberculosis, and Multidrug Resistance: Implications for HIV-Infected Children

Is poverty a driver for risky sexual behaviour? evidence from national surveys of adolescents in four African countries

Some Science:

Monitoring effectiveness of programmes to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission in lower-income countries

Effectiveness of interventions for the prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in female sex workers in resource poor setting: a systematic review

Genital herpes has played a more important role than any other sexually transmitted infection in driving HIV prevalence in Africa.

Potential impact of infant feeding recommendations on mortality and HIV-infection in children born to HIV-infected mothers in Africa: a simulation.

Can the burden of pneumonia among HIV-infected children be reduced?

Costing adult male circumcision in high HIV prevalence, low circumcision rate countries and closely linked with that Is male circumcision as good as the HIV vaccine we’ve been waiting for? As well as Understanding the Impact of Male Circumcision Interventions on the Spread of HIV in Southern Africa which concludes that circumcision will not be the silver bullet to prevent HIV transmission

Improvement of Vaginal Health for Kenyan Women at Risk for Acquisition of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1: Results of a Randomized Trial : while “vaginal health” is a tad to reductionistic for my taste, apparently periodic presumptive treatment can reduce the incidence of bacterial vaginosis and promoted colonization with normal vaginal flora.

The Impact of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) on HIV Epidemics in Africa and India: A Simulation Study

Tuberculosis and latent tuberculosis infection in close contacts of people with pulmonary tuberculosis in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Risk Factors and Mortality Associated with Default from Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis Treatment

Barriers to access to antiretroviral treatment in developing countries: a review

Preventing HIV Antiretroviral Resistance through Better Monitoring of Treatment Adherence

A study has shown that pregnant women can be rapidly tested for HIV in labor wards of rural hospitals — and antiretroviral therapy (ART) can be delivered effectively to prevent transmission of the virus to their children.

Other RH

A meta-analysis of human papillomavirus type-distribution in women from South Asia: Implications for vaccination

Primary syphilis

More on fistula: Sharing the Burden: Ugandan Women Speak About Obstetric Fistula

US interest

Problems with contraception play big part in unplanned pregnancies, study says

And on related news:

“The Unplanned Family Research Council has been spearheading a campaign to restrict federal funding for contraception to groups that offer comprehensive reproductive health care, including abortion ( the domestic gag rule). Their goal is to throw sand in the gears of the nation's largest provider of family planning services, Planned Parenthood, by mandating onerous and superfluous policies on the health care provider. [..] The Unplanned Family Research Council had gotten Bush to appoint one of their own, Dr. Susan Orr, a former Senior Director for Marriage and Family Care at the Unplanned Family Research Council to oversee the Title X program. Her most notable accomplishment in the year she has served is to defend the abstinence-until-marriage approach in the face of incontrovertible evidence it has failed. Now that the Unplanned Family Research Council is within days of hitting another nail into Title X's coffin, Dr. Orr suddenly and quietly resigns from her post so, one suspects, to not appear to have orchestrated the undermining of her own program from within.” (quoted from this website) See also here

Other attacks on abortion include the bans-in-waiting or trigger laws; laws that will immediately go into effect when Roe vs Wade is overturned. Currently if Roe were overturned, abortion would likely become illegal in twenty-one states, remain legal in twenty, and in nine the future of legal abortion is unclear.

You've probably heard that the Bush administration is once again withholding funding for the UNFPA. Because UNFPA provides funding for health services, including voluntary family planning, in China, where the government maintains a "one-child policy," the Bush administration decided to unjustly withhold U.S. funding to UNFPA, as it has for the last seven years. But you may have missed the news that might be even bigger. Now the Bush administration has threatened to dramatically expand the interpretation of the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits U.S. funding to organizations that support coerced abortion or involuntary sterilization. Until now, Kemp-Kasten has only been used to withhold funding from UNFPA. Now there's a threat to cut off funding to other organizations solely because they operate health programs in China. Buried in the statement released by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte is the ominous warning: “During the course of our evaluation of UNFPA's work, we learned of other organizations that conduct activities in China. The relevant funding agencies are conducting a comprehensive analysis to determine what appropriate and lawful actions can be taken. “ Stay tuned…

Viet Nam interest

Civil society perspectives on HIV/AIDS policy in Nicaragua, Senegal, Ukraine, the United States, and Vietnam

Local environmental predictors of cholera in Bangladesh and Vietnam.

Types, availability, and perception of social support among parents of young children with cognitive delays in Vietnam.

Suicidal process, suicidal communication and psychosocial situation of young suicide attempters in a rural Vietnamese community.

Barriers to access prevention of mother-to-child transmission for HIV positive women in a well-resourced setting in Vietnam.

High tuberculosis prevalence in a psychiatric hospital in Vietnam.

Impact and Perspective on Chronic Kidney Disease in an Asian Developing Country: A Large-Scale Survey in North Vietnam.

A multi-center randomised controlled trial of gatifloxacin versus azithromycin for the treatment of uncomplicated typhoid fever in children and adults in Vietnam.

Holding the line: family responses to pregnancy and the desire for a child in the context of HIV in Vietnam.

Relationship between paternal involvement and child malnutrition in a rural area of Vietnam.

Double burden of malnutrition: the Vietnamese perspective.

Participatory village and commune development planning (VDP/CDP) and its contribution to local community development in Vietnam

Cost of providing the expanded programme on immunization: findings from a facility-based study in Viet Nam, 2005

Exclusive breastfeeding in Vietnam: an attainable goal

Gender imbalance at alarming stage: A recent Institute for Social Development Research survey conducted in the northern and coastal regions showed that up to 20 provinces and cities recorded a ratio of 111 boys to 100 girls. In another 16 provinces and cities, the ratio reached as high as 128 to 100.

Unreported births and deaths, a severe obstacle for improved neonatal survival in low-income countries; a population based study

Nigeria interest

Home-Based Sexuality Education: Nigerian Parents Discussing Sex With Their Children

Food insecurity, HIV/AIDS pandemic and sexual behaviour of female commercial sex workers in Lagos metropolis, Nigeria

Predictors of early sexual initiation among a nationally representative sample of Nigerian adolescents.

Missed treatment opportunities for schistosomiasis mansoni, in an active programme for the treatment of urinary schistosomiasis in Plateau and Nasarawa states, Nigeria.

Acceptability of measures aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV among pregnant women.

Keratitis in children as seen in a tertiary hospital in Africa.

Etiologic agents and outcome determinants of community-acquired pneumonia in urban children: a hospital-based study.

Compliance with seat belt use in Benin City, Nigeria.

The prevalence of congenital malaria among neonates with suspected sepsis in Calabar, Nigeria.

Poverty and maternal mortality in Nigeria: towards a more viable ethics of modern medical practice.

Cash management and revitalization of public medical centres in Nigeria: a strategic analysis.
Anesthesia for cesarean section in pregnancies complicated by placenta previa.

Faith and child survival: the role of religion in childhood immunization in Nigeria.

Uptake of voluntary counselling and testing for HIV by pregnant women in a prevention-of-mother-to-child-transmission programme at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Nigeria

High efficacy of two artemisinin-based combinations (artemether – lumefantrine and artesunate plus amodiaquine) for acute uncomplicated malaria in Ibadan, Nigeria

Cambodia Interest

Asian Traditions and Contemporary International Law on the Management of Natural Resources

Declining Artesunate-Mefloquine Efficacy against Falciparum Malaria on the Cambodia-Thailand Border.

Cost of increasing access to artemisinin combination therapy: the Cambodian experience

Poverty, user fees and ability to pay for health care for children with suspected dengue in rural Cambodia.

Cost of increasing access to artemisinin combination therapy: the Cambodian experience.

Using the ICF to address needs of people with disabilities in international development: Cambodian case study.

Abortion-related complications in Cambodia

Social Marketing Zinc to Improve Diarrhea Treatment Practices: Findings and Lessons Learned from Cambodia

Egypt interest

First and foremost: Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls.

Rickets in the Middle East: Role of Environment and Genetic Predisposition

Fournier's gangrene in Mansoura Egypt: A review of 74 cases.

The association between cigarette smoking and work status among Egyptian adolescent males.

Introducing computer-assisted training sessions in the clinical skills lab at the Faculty of Medicine, Suez Canal University.

EuroOOPS: An international, multicentre study to implement nutritional risk screening and evaluate clinical outcome.

Medical and socio-cultural aspects of infertility in the Middle East

Ethiopia interest

Clinical and Epidemiological Study of Cutaneous Tuberculosis in Northern Ethiopia.

Concordant HIV infection and visceral leishmaniasis in Ethiopia: the influence of antiretroviral treatment and other factors on outcome.

Increased resistance of Streptococcus pneumoniae isolates to antimicrobial drugs, at a referral hospital in north-west Ethiopia.

Clinical Course and Outcome of Schizophrenia in a Predominantly Treatment-Naive Cohort in Rural Ethiopia.

Depressive Symptoms Among Female College Students Experiencing Gender-Based Violence in Awassa, Ethiopia.

Scourge of Life or an Economic Lifeline? Public Discourses on Khat (Catha edulis) in Ethiopia.

Outbreak of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Silti woreda, Ethiopia: risk factor assessment and causative agent identification.

Smoking, HIV and non-fatal tuberculosis in an urban African population.

Appraisal of interpretation criteria for the comparative intradermal tuberculin test for the diagnosis of bovine tuberculosis in central Ethiopia.

Evaluation of Toluidine Blue O Staining for the Diagnosis of Pneumocystis jiroveci in Expectorated Sputum Sample and Bronchoalveolar Lavage from HIV-infected Patients in a Tertiary Care Referral Center in Ethiopia.

National HIV treatment guidelines in Tanzania and Ethiopia: are they legitimate rationing tools?

Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome among HIV/AIDS Patients during Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Invisibility of Children's Paid and Unpaid Work: Implications for Ethiopia's national poverty reduction policy

Determinants of Agricultural and Land Management Practices and Impacts on Crop Production and Household Income in the Highlands of Tigray, Ethiopia

The impact of community level treatment and preventative interventions on trachoma prevalence in rural Ethiopia

Review of incorporation of essential nutrition actions into public health programmes in Ethiopia

Uganda interest

Delayed care seeking for fatal pneumonia in children aged under five years in Uganda: a case-series study

Uganda edges closer to AIDS treatment for all

Tanzania interest

Differences in Human Antibody Reactivity to Plasmodium falciparum Variant Surface Antigens Are Dependent on Age and Malaria Transmission Intensity in Northeastern Tanzania

Who Gains From Community Conservation? Intended and Unintended Costs and Benefits of Participative Approaches in Peru and Tanzania

A Trial of the Effect of Micronutrient Supplementation on Treatment Outcome, T Cell Counts, Morbidity, and Mortality in Adults with Pulmonary Tuberculosis.

Timing of intermittent preventive treatment for malaria during pregnancy and the implications of current policy on early uptake in north-east Tanzania.

Reconsidering the allure of the culturally distant in therapy seeking: a case study from coastal Tanzania.
Malaria treatment in the retail sector: knowledge and practices of drug sellers in rural Tanzania.

Sexually transmitted infections knowledge and its impact in the practice of risky sexual behaviours and HIV serostatus: results from rural Kilimanjaro, Tanzania

Comparative efficacies of permethrin-, deltamethrin- and alpha-cypermethrin-treated nets, against Anopheles arabiensis and Culex quinquefasciatus in northern Tanzania.

Chikungunya: a review.

Reduced risk of uncomplicated malaria episodes in children with alpha+-thalassemia in northeastern Tanzania.

Proposed treatment program for acute renal failure (ARF) in the United Republic of Tanzania as a model for sub-Saharan Africa.

A two-level ultrasonographic service in a maternity care unit of a rural district hospital in Tanzania.

Children and vulnerability in Tanzania: a brief synthesis

Out-of-school and ‘at risk’? Socio-demographic characteristics, AIDS knowledge and risk perception among young people in Northern Tanzania

Two Doses of Azithromycin to Eliminate Trachoma in a Tanzanian Community

Evaluation of knowledge, attitudes, and practices of health care providerstoward HIV-positive patients in Tanzania shows that discriminatory behavior and stigma toward HIV/AIDS patients do exist and may be attributable to poor HIV/AIDS-related knowledge and high erceived risk of infection.

Kenya interest

Rapid Identification of Infants for Antiretroviral Therapy in a Resource Poor Setting: The Kenya Experience

Cost effectiveness of couple counselling to enhance infant HIV-1 prevention

Predictors of serum ferritin and haemoglobin during pregnancy, in a malaria-endemic area of western Kenya.

Prevalence of malnutrition in human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome orphans in the nyanza province of kenya: a comparison of conventional indexes with a composite index of anthropometric failure.

Ethnopharmacological survey of Samburu District, Kenya.

The prevalence of gastrointestinal helminth infections in pigs in Kenya.

An occasion for pause and reflection--challenges to public health during times of instability: a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kenya Medical Research Institute on the post-election violence in Kenya.

Child maltreatment at a violence recovery centre in Kenya.

Intimate partner violence and reproductive health of women in Kenya

The impact of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) on HIV epidemics in Africa and India: a simulation study.

Impact of HIV on novel therapies for tuberculosis control.

Documenting human rights violations against sex workers in Kenya.

Impact of five years of peer-mediated interventions on sexual behavior and sexually transmitted infections among female sex workers in Mombasa, Kenya.

The Epidemiology of Human Rotavirus Associated with Diarrhoea in Kenyan Children: A Review

Effects of revised diagnostic recommendations on malaria treatment practices across age groups in Kenya.

Nutrition management in comprehensive care centres in Kenya: a trainer's manual

Reasons for unsatisfactory acceptance of antiretroviral treatment in the urban Kibera slum, Kenya

Papua New Guinea interest

Early Introduction of Solids and Pneumonia in Young Infants in Papua New Guinea: A Case Control Study

And then this:

A Guide to Electronic Health Care/Medical Libraries on the Internet

Best,

Ton