Healthcare

27 April 2010 Malaria Remains a Moving Target

Malaria is still the number 1 killer of children under 5 years old is the conclusion of the article found at http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/04/27/malaria-remains-a-moving-target/.

27April 2010 Sanaria Inc. and Malaria Vaccine R&D

Sanaria Inc. in Rockville, Maryland is progressing rapidly toward production a vaccine they believe will be capable of eradicating malaria globally.

27 April 2010 Global Healthcare Issues

The following global health issues are taken from the following web page http://www.globalissues.org/issue/587/health-issues.

“Despite incredible improvements in health since 1950, there are still a number of challenges, which should have been easy to solve. Consider the following:
• One billion people lack access to health care systems.
• Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number one group of conditions causing death globally. An estimated 17.5 million people died from CVDs in 2005, representing 30% of all global deaths. Over 80% of CVD deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
• Around 11 million children under the age of 5 die from malnutrition and mostly preventable diseases, each year.
• In 2002, almost 11 million people died of infectious diseases alone, far more than the number killed in the natural or man-made catastrophes that make headlines. (These are the latest figures presented by the World Health Organization.)
• AIDS/HIV has spread rapidly. UNAIDS estimates for 2008 that there are roughly:
o 33.4 million living with HIV
o 2.7 million new infections of HIV
o 2 million deaths from AIDS
• There are 8.8 million new cases of Tuberculosis (TB) and 1.75 million deaths from TB, each year.
• 1.6 million people still die from pneumococcal diseases every year, making it the number one vaccine-preventable cause of death worldwide. More than half of the victims are children. (The pneumococcus is a bacterium that causes serious infections like meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis. In developing countries, even half of those children who receive medical treatment will die. Every second surviving child will have some kind of disability.)
• Malaria causes more than 300 million acute illnesses and at least 1 million deaths, annually.
• More than half a million people, mostly children, died from measles in 2003 even though effective immunization costs just 0.30 US dollars per person, and has been available for over 40 years.
These and other diseases kill more people each year than conflict alone.”