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

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

Peace Corps

For many who are about to embark on a career in international health, the Peace Corps is almost a rite of passage. Here's a community blog that gathers corps volunteers stories and photoes.

In a matter of weeks, my life, as I have known it for 61 years, will drastically change. On July 24th, I will begin my 27-months with the Peace Corps serving in South Africa. This realization came to me for the first time 2 days ago – I began to cry. At first, I didn’t know what I was crying about. But then, the fear made itself known. I would be leaving behind everything that I had become familiar with: my house, my work, my friends, my cats, my . . .probably things I have yet to imagine. And I felt SCARED. Perhaps this is the first of several emotional reactions that will jump out at me as I prepare to leave.

Check it out here The Third Goal

Sleepless in Sudan

A fascinating blog on one aid worker's experiences in Sudan. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the blog is now closed.

An aid worker diary from Darfur, Sudan: real stories, random observations and occasional rants on the lives of Darfur’s two million displaced people and the somewhat bewildered humanitarian agencies who are trying to help them. Sleepless in Sudan is just another website on just another violent conflict in Africa – but uncensored, direct and without the sugar-coating that the tightly controlled and highly politicized environment demands from the official sources. Sleepless in Sudan