Malaria in the Making

Owen has some thoughts on the global fight against malaria. “Here, here!”

There is an interesting question here about incentives within the aid agencies. Our incentives are to make our reputation by developing new ideas, introducing new programs or leading change. There is a much smaller incentive to adopt a good idea that has been proven to work and to take it to scale. Because we have few effective measures of output of individual activities, we have no incentive to be completer-finishers. As a result, we are constantly analyzing and criticizing, having conferences and evaluating. We spend huge sums on very expensive ex-patriate technical assistance – part of that Amir Attaran calls “the foreign aid industrial complex”. Of course it is always important to evaluate progress, and to try to do better with the resources we have got, but sometimes we should just get on and do what we know is effective.

Click here for the post: Global Health Policy

The Buffett-Gates Collaboration: Views from the Health Mongers

In case you have been living under a rock these past few weeks…Some useful links and one of the health mongers weighs in…

That said, I’d like to stake out a position more nuanced than what might be called hyper-pharmo-scientism and its exact opposite, knee-jerk dismissal of these programs as nothing more than more extension of neoliberalism. In the past year, I’ve run across two thoughtful pieces: Anne-Emmanuelle Birn in The Lancet on the Gates Foundation’s health programs and Doug Henwood in the International Journal of Health Services on Jeffrey Sachs’s recent The End of Poverty.

Click here for the original piece: Healthmongers

Hesperian Foundation: Free Global Health Books

This certainly sounds too good to be true, but apparently isn’t. The wonders of the the techie world!

…sent an email letting me know about Hesperian Publishers, a nonprofit organization that publishes health care manuals aimed at rural developing communities. The books (available in English, Spanish, and other languages) can be purchased onlinedownloaded free of charge.

Click here for the post: AIDS Combat Zone

Click here for the publishing company: Hesperian Foundation

Free HIV Drugs in India

Sepia Mutiny’s Neha is yelping with joy over some good news.

Armed with a budget of about $200 million U.S., availiability of free ARV drugs is going to expand from 52 clinics supplying 35, 000 people to a whole 100 clinics

Click here to read more: Sepia Mutiny

Global Health Fellowship at Harvard

The Harvard JD Admissions strangely enough has a blog. Here’s a post on a new initiative with Global Health and Human Rights. Click Here for more: Harvard JD Admissions

“The Joseph H. Flom Global Health and Human Rights Initiative is a new partnership between Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. Its mission is to promote academic research as well as engagement in practical measures to develop and apply global public health and human rights norms.”

Doc-in-a-Box

Thomas Barnett describes Doc-in-a-Box…

Yet another good stab at making more portable a good set of best practices and creating leave-behind connectivity assets.

Click here for more information: Thomas P.M. Barnett Weblog

Gates Foundation Changes

Gates Foundation money has gone a long way towards countering this trend. For example, the foundation currently accounts for 1/6th of world spending to eradicate polio. And it has just gotten bigger, roughly doubling in size. Today Warren Buffet announced a planned donation of roughly $30 Billion additional dollars, making the Gates Foundation the largest charitable foundation in history. It will be spending somewhere between 2-3 Billion dollars a year, with a very large percentage of it going towards global health.

Check out the link here…Sepia Mutiny

Global AIDS: Triumphs and Failures

Robert Weissman pens an interesting account of the failures and triumps of our fight against the meddling virus. 

There has been amazing progress in addressing global AIDS over the past five years. Activist pressure and generic competition has driven the price of AIDS drugs down by more than 98 percent, making it possible for donors to invest money in treatment to keep people alive. An HIV-positive diagnosis is no longer an automatic death sentence.
Check it out here: The Huffington Post 

A Mithi River Development Project Story

An estimated 4,055 settlements have been displaced as a result of the Mithi River Development and Protection Authority's (MRDPA) plan to clean-up and rejuvenate the Mithi river. Along with open plots in Mandala in Mankhurd, and buildings constructed by the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) and the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP), Tunga Village is one of the sites where the displaced Project Affected Persons (PAPs) have been relocated.

An incredibly well-written, and informative account about a development project in Mumbai gone awry. Sonia Faleiro

Women Entrepreneurs

Stories about women starting their own buisnesses are classically rare. We only hear about them within the context of microfinancing schemes, if ever. So here's a change.

Lately a topic that has been getting a lot of my interest has been women entrepreneurs in India. You would be amazed at the dearth of material there is out there on women who run their own enterprises. This is illustrated by the fact that most of the information is about Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the founder of Biocon. The other category of information is about women who have inherited their family run business or parts of it. What is really lacking is stories of first generation women entrepreneurs, or even those who broke out of the mould of their fathers' businesses and did something on their own.

Check it out here: Everday Entrepreneurs