A Global Health Challenge
by Amy Pisani (amyp@ecbt.org)

One precious child dies of malaria every 29 seconds.  Up to 3 MILLION people each year will be killed by this disease.  Most of the deaths will occur in Africa.  Chemically treated bed nets, which sleep two people and last five years, cost only $7.00, or 70 cents per person per year.  With forty percent of the world at risk of contracting malaria, one might question why vaccine research has been so sparse.  According to a recent TIME magazine report, part of the problem is that the parasite is so complex that it is extremely difficult to create a vaccine that will allow the immune system to fight it off.   Many skeptics believe that it is also because most of the victims are so poor that drug companies are reluctant to take experimental vaccines out of their labs and into the field for human trials because they will not recoup the costs by bringing the vaccine to market. Fortunately, the Malaria Initiative, started by the Gates Foundation in 1999, supports these vaccine trials.

One such trial is being conducted by Dr. Pedro Alonso, who has been studying malaria in Mozambique for nearly 20 years and began testing a promising vaccine nearly four years ago.  In many parts of Mozambique, 9 out of 10 kids younger than age five are infected with the mosquito-born parasite that causes malaria.  Dr. Alonso founded the Manhica Health Research Centre in 1996 with funds from the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation.  Pedro and his team created a vaccine that may save millions of lives, even though it is considered only partly effective at this time.  His vaccine is based on one that was originally developed by GlaxoSmithKline and is currently being tested in 2,000 one to four-year-old children.  According to the TIME magazine report, the vaccine reduced the risk of symptomatic malaria by 30%, new infections by 45% and new episodes of severe, life-threatening malaria in those already infected by 58%.  In children less than 2 years of age, it cut the risk of severe malaria by 77%.  Trials on children younger than one year old will soon take place, followed by trials in other countries and a vaccine may be approved by the year 2010.

Last November, TIME magazine teamed up with ABC News to highlight the health care crisis taking place in the developing world.  TIME invited policy makers, religious, civic and business leaders, thinkers and doers, visionaries and virologists, scientists, artists, journalists and public health officials to join their effort.  Every Child By Two (ECBT) cofounder Betty Bumpers and I were honored to attend this three-day long Global Health Summit to celebrate the many achievements that have already been made and to deliberate courses of action to treat and reduce the incidence of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, vitamin deficiency and so forth.  The Summit brought together an impressive group of advocates including President Bill Clinton, Co-Founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation --Bill Gates, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, UN Foundation Chairman -- Ted Turner, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and many celebrated ABC and PBS newscasters.  More impressive however were the global health heroes, who came to tell their stories and were recognized for dedicating their lives to the mission of improving the health of the world’s most vulnerable citizens.  Speaking to the audience via satellite from Los Angeles, singer/songwriter/health advocate Bono lamented that he could not be in New York for this awesome event. He declared it to be the “Woodstock of Global Health” and declared that “a world without malaria and TB is no longer unthinkable,” Bono continued. “A world without AIDS or extreme poverty is no longer unimaginable. Now more than ever we in the West need to show the rest of the world what we stand for as well as what we stand against. We are the first generation that can look extreme poverty and disease in the eye and change it.”

Concurrent with the Summit, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired Rx for Survival, A Global Health Challenge,  a six-part series that “shines a light on the most critical health threats in the world today, presenting dramatic stories demonstrating that solutions are indeed possible, and lives can be saved right now.”

TIME magazine dedicated most of their November 7, 2005 issue to providing details regarding the successful strategies that have been implemented at the grassroots level in the developing world to tackle a myriad of issues related to healthcare delivery. 

Throughout 2006, ECBT will include a special section in our newsletter highlighting TIME magazine’s “health heroes”.   We will provide details regarding the 18 exceptional individuals whose actions have significantly reduced the incidence of diseases and changed the lives of millions of people around the globe.  We hope that you will consider sharing details about the good works being conducted by these dedicated individuals and organizations with your colleagues throughout the healthcare and public advocacy fields.  We also hope that reading about these individuals will inspire you to take action at home by urging your legislators to support increased appropriations to global health.

For many, the year 2005 was the year that the world became a much smaller place and the citizens of nations on the opposite side of the globe became our neighbors.  Everyone was deeply affected by the devastating tsunami that struck Thailand at the onset of the year.  The flooding and mudslides that killed thousands in Guatemala followed by the earthquake that killed 80,000 people in Pakistan and hurricanes that decimated the southern region of the U.S. resulted in unprecedented outpourings of aid. Although U.S. donations for the tsunami were recorded at 1.3 billion dollars, our nation continues to rank last in foreign aid development given as a percentage of national income - 98% of personal U.S. donations are given for U.S.-based initiatives.  Only 2% of the federal budget is allocated for foreign aid and, according to President Clinton, of that amount, 60% never leaves U.S. soil, it is given to U.S.-based consultants. 

The ECBT Newsletter’s approximately 2,500 readers are some of the most caring and proactive public health advocates in this nation.  Working together, we can help legislators realize that we will no longer sit back and ignore the fact that nearly 10 MILLION children will die this year simply because they were born in a place on our globe that does not have adequate healthcare, sanitation and resources.  These children could be saved with basic, low-cost measures.