As we have discussed several times, I would like to think of what ‘being healthy’ is. Now, I guess many students in our class would know that being healthy does not mean ‘without disease’. (From my perspective, being healthy should refer to basic human right and it is necessary for people worldwide in order to live their own lives in a direction that they wish to have). While I read several articles, I realized there are many challenges to deal with global health issues. What I mean by this is we have to time to think of its complexities and realities.
First, NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) reported at early 2002 there are over 36 million people were living with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) including more than 1.9 million children. Antiretroviral therapy, therefore, aimed to prevent for mother-to-child transmission of HIV infection. Many resource-poor or low-income countries got aid from multiple international organizations and distributed ARV drugs to HIV-positive mothers. However, the government in each country could not take care of maternal and infant health. There are any other health programs to fundamentally support gynecological care. I DO NOT mean that the program is unsuccessful at all since 45% of HIV-positive women (628,000) received treatment in low-income countries at 2008, which increase of 10% over the previous year (United Nations, 2010).
I think ‘being without HIV’ does not mean ‘being healthy’. Of course, it should be the first step to pursuing global health. As mentioned in class, The Millennium Development Goals (DMG) Project will be end at upcoming 2015. As students and future researchers, what we have to think of is that what should be the next?
Second, One of the goals in DMG project is reducing Malaria. Multiple international funds have made health-poor countries improve access to insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs). DMG projects showed in their report, 39% of children were sleeping under ITNs in sub-Saharan Africa at 2010, which portion has grown from 2 % in 2000. However, One newspaper, The Daily Nation, reported at 2009 that many people in the nations were using mosquito nets for other purposes such as making clothing, shoes or fishing rather than covering their beds.
Dr Juma, head of malaria control under the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, mentioned in the newspaper: “This is wrong and totally unacceptable. Bed-nets are supposed to play a noble role of preventing deaths that would be caused by malaria. I think there is need for further sensitization and education for the entire public to understand the importance of sleeping under insecticide treated mosquito nets,” (http://www.nation.co.ke/magazines/artandculture/-/1222/562818/-/85l4eez/-/index.html)
Is the outcome reported by DMG project reliable? The program may have been seen as a success. What is your opinion? My answer is neither No nor Yes. I think we need to have more accurate approaches to the outcome. Since global health is ongoing project and will be existing issues in the future, organizations need to set up precise evaluation metrics and efficient supply chains. Today, we are going to talk about people who run for global health and global health care system. I expect many complexities and realities will come from our topic. See you in the class all!
You raised a critical question Songyi about how real are the MDG outcomes. I have learned that when it comes to reporting numbers about how successful an initiative has been (especially when governments are involved), it is very tricky. I would not agree that the programs have been totally successful. The next question is how do you measure success? Just by numbers or by other soft measures? If we stick to just numbers, we miss a major part of the whole endeavor. However, once we introduce soft measures such as culture change etc, we seize being objective.
ReplyDeleteIn my view, There has been some considerable success but as as high as reported.
What is everyone's take?
I think there is another issue with this article other than the reporting of the numbers. People are misusing the mosquito nets because they have seen a more valuable purpose in them. It seems obvious to me that these nets are being used to make goods that can then be sold for a profit. These families and cultures are lacking enough money to afford the even more basic necessities of life, like food and water. Maybe that is why the nets are being repurposed. It sounds like being healthy to these people means being able to eat and survive through the day. There might be a lack of education , which is why the nets are being used in different ways. But these people are trying to make a living for themselves and their families. Money is the common denominator in this global world.
ReplyDeleteThanks Brittney for bringing up that point. What you just talked about is one challenge you face when working in developing countries. You face some passive resistance in the sense that people do not object to receiving services (medicine, fertilizer, supplemental nutritional food, mosquito nets etc) that can help improve their lives. They receive them and use them for other uses. In most cases, they sell them to buy beer or cigarettes. On the other hand, if the measure of success of a program is based on the number of items given out (e.g., mosquito nets) with the assumptions that availability of such goods and services results in positive change, this leads to a lot of resources being poured into a program with limited change. I remember villagers in Southern Africa who were given fertilizer to improve their yield but instead they sold it to rich farmers for a tenth of the price.
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