UN head urges 5-year stamping out of world's deadliest IDs and cholera in Haiti
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told private sector representatives and philanthropists yesterday that they should "make a smart investment in the world's future" by joining the United Nations in helping wipe out the world's deadliest infectious diseases—malaria, polio, tetanus, measles, and HIV—in the next 5 years.
He spoke at the Second Annual Forbes 400 Summit in New York. Large advances have been made, he said, particularly in reducing malaria deaths by 40% in the past 7 years, cutting new HIV infections by 25% in the past 2 years, and eliminating polio in India more than a year ago. But attention should be paid to stopping mother-to-child HIV transmission and preventing tetanus and measles, which get limited international press, he said.
Ban also called for eliminating cholera in Haiti, which has seen 670,000 cases and more than 7,750 deaths since the 2010 outbreak. Providing oral cholera vaccine, which needs to be underwritten to the tune of $1 million per year for 3 to 5 years, is the most immediate need, he said, with longer-term goals of clean drinking water and better sanitation.
Jun 5 UN news story
Islamic scholars push for polio-free Pakistan
Concrete actions to meet the social and political challenges to the ongoing polio vaccination program in Pakistan were suggested at a conference at International Islamic University in Islamabad yesterday, according to an article in The Express Tribune. The conference is a follow-up to a regional meeting in Cairo in March.
Scholars at the conference declared immunization of children as a religious obligation for families and the wider community, vowing to make the Islamic world polio-free by the end of 2014.
The ongoing Polio Eradication Initiative in Pakistan has suffered serious setbacks because of security incidents including the murder in 2012 of 14 polio workers and 2 security guards.
Among the efforts needed to restore the program, said conference scholars, are talks with the Taliban and grassroots advocacy by religious scholars to correct misinformation about the campaign.
Jun 6 Express Tribune article
Medical groups support reintroduced bill to fight antimicrobial resistance
With support from many medical groups, Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, today reintroduced a bill to strengthen the federal government's role in fighting antimicrobial resistance. The legislation is called the Strategies to Address Antimicrobial Resistance (STAAR) Act, according to a press release from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
The bill would boost antimicrobial resistance activities at several federal agencies.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, the legislation would reauthorize the Antimicrobial Resistance Task Force and establish an advisory board of outside experts and an Antimicrobial Resistance Office. For the National Institutes of Health, the bill would create an antimicrobial resistance strategic research plan and authorize a clinical trials network. And at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the bill would authorize an antimicrobial-resistance surveillance and laboratory network and other efforts.
The legislation also would expand current efforts to collect data on antimicrobial use and resistance.
More than 20 organizations representing healthcare and public health professionals and patients voiced support for the STAAR Act in a letter to Matheson today, according to the IDSA. An IDSA spokesman said the bill was introduced in 2009 but died in committee.
Jun 6 IDSA press release