By Glenna Crooks. Rittenhouse Square in Philly, a holiday weekend and great weather made for the perfect place for light reading this weekend. I got magazines with the intention of doing just that – and did. It was great to be outside on warm, breezy days.

However, my mood soured about half way into Spirituality&Health, reading an article about a possible new cancer therapy.

It describes the observations of Mamdooh Ghoneum, PhD: cancer cells are attracted to, ‘eat’ heat-killed baker’s yeast and then die. That’s good news. It happens in labs and in mice, who apparently suffer no side effects. That’s good news, too. Approval for testing in other animals is pending. I hope he gets it. We need progress in the healing of people with cancer.

Why the sour mood? Dr. Ghoneum is hero enough for making the observation and following through with studies. He’ll be all the more heroic if he continues and learns from whatever comes next.

The article does not stop with the ‘scientist vs disease’ heroic tale, however. It goes further to paint an unfortunate and ill-informed, biased contrast – between an altruistic pioneer using his personal savings and fund raising efforts to find a cure vs a greedy, patent-dependent industry hungry to return to shareholders the $800M – $2B quoted as the cost of developing a medicine. It asserts that industry would never develop a ‘natural’ product, saying: “Nowadays, a cancer cure that is all natural, non-toxic, simple to administer and inexpensive to produce has become an economic non-starter.”

Drug Development and Approval. Dr. Ghoneum is currently at the drug ‘research’ phase. This is the easy part. Get past animal research and the ‘development’ phase begins. Move into humans and the costs pile up fast – so do the failures. He’ll face institutional review boards, numerous negotiations with FDA over appropriate surrogate markers and end points, challenges of getting patients into clinical trials, careful management of clinical research sites and exquisite documentation at every stage. This is the phase that washes out all but 1-2 of every 10,000 drugs discovered.

Add to that, this is a yeast product – a biological – which means he’ll have to satisfy FDA that there is ‘batch to batch’ consistency in the product as he scales up for clinical studies and, if the product succeeds, eventual market use.

Since he intends to develop a treatment safe, effective and affordable enough for poor people around the world, he will also face regulatory requirements, and perhaps clinical trials, in those nations as well.   (more…)

By Robin Strongin. This was a busy week in women’s health—an issue of global importance. On June 7th, Women Deliver 2010, the largest meeting on global maternal health in the last ten years, kicked off in Washington, DC. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered opening remarks and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed participants via video. The conference offered an opportunity to take stock of progress that has been made in improving global maternal health while assessing the challenges that remain.

Women Deliver 2010 highlighted achievements in reducing maternal mortality, breakthroughs in reproductive technology, the role of women’s health in development, and remaining obstacles to improving maternal health around the world. The conference’s 3,000 participants, including heads of state, ministers of health and leading maternal health advocates, called on governments, donors, and multi-lateral organizations to increase their financial commitments to women and girls. For more information on Women Deliver, visit: www.womendeliver.org and to watch replays of the presentations, click here: www.womendeliver.org/webcast.

During the conference, Population Action International launched a new documentary, Empty Handed: Responding to the Demand for Contraceptives. WATCH THE TRAILER

Empty Handed Advocacy Short from Population Action International on Vimeo.

Around the world, more than 215 million women lack access to basic contraception. Empty Handed tells the story of women’s lack of access to reproductive health supplies (contraceptives and condoms) in sub-Saharan Africa, and its impact on their lives. The film documents the challenges at each level of the reproductive health supply chain and identifies key areas of improvement.

Empty Handed was shot in Uganda in March 2010 by PAI filmmaker Nathan Golon with support from the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.

After watching his parents and six siblings die from undiagnosed, untreated diseases, Peter Kithene vowed not to let that happen to other families. “I want to give kids their parents and give kids their lives,” he tells Disruptive Women.

While a college student at the University of Washington, Peter opened the first Mama Maria clinic in his home village in Kenya. He now has two clinics, three small out posts and just finished a business plan to open a third.

He wants all people in Kenya to have accessible health care.

Disruptive Women is proud to name Peter our April man-of-the-month.

He took a few minutes to speak with Disruptive Women’s Wendy Grossman.

Q: I read that by the time you were 12 — both your parents and six of your siblings had died from undiagnosed diseases? Is that correct?
A: Yes.

Q: What happened?
A: They got sick. At that time I didn’t know a lot. I was a kid myself. The kids got sick and died when they were young.

What I saw, what stayed with me until today, was my brother (who is still alive) almost died. He got very sick and had meningitis. Nobody knew what was going on. There were no laboratories to take him. When his illness got very serious, we traveled very far with him. And they said, ‘This kid has two hours to live. If we don’t get him to the hospital now, he’ll die.” They had an ambulance 15 miles away, and they drove across the border into Tanzania to a hospital there. And they treated him and treated the meningitis. Then he ended up losing his hearing and speech — he became deaf. This was a really talkative kid.

I just saw that, he could have died. If there wasn’t an ambulance and a reliable place to take him, and a hospital, he wouldn’t have lived. He lived. And after I opened the clinic, I saw kids coming in with the same illness, the meningitis. But we are able to treat it, and they got to go home and they don’t become deaf like my brother.

And lives are saved.

The other ones who died I don’t know what they died from. And then my parents also died. They really wanted to go to hospital. They needed the care, but there was no place to take them. Or the places they could go were just too expensive. Nobody could afford that.

Q: Is it just you and your brother now? Or do you have other siblings?
A: Me and my two brothers and one sister.

Q: Wow that’s a lot of kids your parents had. Tell me, why did you start the clinic Mama Maria? I read that your work is, in a way, avenging their deaths.
A: Avenging their death. No, I don’t think it’s avenging. It’s just giving life opportunities to people. I got a chance. I had the dream after my parents passed on — my dream as a kid was to get a place people could go to when they’re sick and get treated.

With that dream in mind, I worked so hard. Every step I made along my way from the village and everywhere I went was in doing that. I was volunteering as a kid in clinics and visiting with the sick in their homes.

It’s a dream I had at a very early age.

Q: Did you want to be a doctor?
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Editor’s note: This past December, the Disruptive Women in Health Care blog launched a series on The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World. In addition to Disruptive Women’s own pool of experts, a number of guests were invited to post on this critically important topic. We invite you to download the ebook or read the original posts.

By Lois Privor-Dumm. It’s really simple.  8.8 million children die every year.  Not here in the US, but in developing countries where they don’t have access to the same care that we do here.  How much of our global health budget goes to address these basic needs?  Less than $1 of every $10.

Children are the future of every country.  Providing them with basic care to ensure they survive until their fifth birthday doesn’t seem to be that much to ask.  And, it’s a good investment.  Simple antibiotics or oral rehydration solutions along with the basic vaccines that children receive in the US every year are available at a cost that is around many people’s co-pay for a single prescription.

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By Robin Strongin. What does it mean to be healthy? Beyond that, what does it mean to be a healthy woman? What does it mean to be a healthy woman in the developing world?

Here’s what the United Nations WomenWatch Directory of U.N. Resources on Gender and Women’s Issues says:

“Women have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The enjoyment of this right is vital to their life and well-being, their ability to participate in all areas of public and private life.”

Unfortunately, many women around the world do not enjoy this right.

2009 World Health Organization (WHO) report

Consider this information from the report, “Women and Health: Today’s Evidence Tomorrow’s Agenda:”

Despite considerable progress in the past decades, societies continue to fail to meet the health-care needs of women at key moments of their lives, particularly in their adolescent years and in older age… Women provide the bulk of health care, but rarely receive the care they need—up to 80 percent of all health care and 90 percent of care for HIV/AIDS-related illness is provided in the home—almost always by women. Yet more often than not, women go unsupported, unrecognized and unremunerated in this essential role, and health care continues to fail to address their specific needs and challenges throughout their lives.

International Women’s Year

In 1975, during International Women’s Year, the United Nations began celebrating March 8th as International Women’s Day. WomenWatch, an initiative of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality, explained on their Web site that the day’s symbolism has a wider meaning: “It is an occasion to review how far they have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development. It is also an opportunity to unite, network and mobilize for meaningful change.”

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Year is “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress for All.” How can we make real progress when women all over the world do not have the right or the ability to attain the highest standard of physical and mental health?

By Tamar Abrams. Ninety-nine years ago, International Women’s Day was founded to honor the accomplishments of women and to press for equality between men and women. All these years later, there is still so much to do. Rather than tackling the overwhelming global needs of women, one organization – Women Deliver – is focusing on maternal health. The statistics are startling: Every minute of every day, a woman dies needlessly of pregnancy-related causes. That means that more than 560,000 women and girls die every year. Almost all of these deaths occur in the developing world, and ten million women are lost in every generation!

What a tragic loss for our planet when at the same time we in the developed world have turned our attention to new ways of obtaining and sharing information, the latest methods to prolong our lives and even how to conceive and deliver babies well into middle-age. I’m guessing that the founders of International Women’s Day probably hoped that 99 years later, the chances of women dying of pregnancy-related causes would be slim to none.

A new study out of California shows that maternal mortality is hardly something we have conquered in our own country; in fact women die after childbirth at a greater rate in our country than in 33 others! Over the past decade, those statistics have grown increasingly grim in California — rising from 5.6 deaths per 100,000 to nearly 17 deaths per 100,000. The reasons for maternal mortality in the U.S. and around the world are complex and varied, but the fact remains that most of the deaths are preventable. Women simply don’t have to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after.

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The following interview with Dr. Jan Gurley, a board-certified internist physician, was recently featured on the Better Health blog.

Dr. Jan Gurley just returned from a mission trip to Haiti, 5 weeks after the earthquake hit. In this audio clip, she relays a horrific first-hand account of the current realities of life in Port Au Prince. With no running water, bathrooms, or place to shelter – and packed into a field with 100,000 people – some young women are choosing to stop drinking water in an effort to commit suicide.

Dr. Gurley describes the loss of human dignity associated with the crisis in Haiti, including a near stampede when sanitary napkins were offered in a crowd of women. She explains that the place is becoming dangerous – and the screams of women being raped in the night fill the dark air. In the day time, people huddle together for safety while the stench of rotting corpses surrounds them. With the rainy season approaching, and tent cities perched precariously on land-slide prone hills, Dr. Gurley predicts a second wave of disease, violence, despair, and death in Haiti.

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On December 2nd, 2009 Disruptive Women in Health Care launched a new series on The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World at the Women in the Arts Museum in Washington DC.

As part of the evening, we talked about the book, HALF THE SKY.  Now they’ve made it a movie.

Let’s help fill the theaters for this very special event!

At HALF THE SKY Live, a one-night-only event inspired by stories from the New York Times best seller “Half the Sky” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The evening will be hosted by Andrea Mitchell and feature musical performances, celebrity commentary and the world premiere of “Woineshet,” a short film by Academy Award®-winner Marisa Tomei and Lisa Leone. You’ll also enjoy appearances from India.Arie, Maria Bello, Diane Birch, Michael Franti, Dr. Helene Gayle, Angelique Kidjo, Nicholas Kristof, Marisa Tomei, Melanne Verveer, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and others.

 Experience HALF THE SKY Live on Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. (local time) in select movie theaters across the country.

http://www.ncm.com/Fathom/OriginalPrograms/event/Half_The_Sky.aspx

According to the non-profit organization Vitamin Angels, one in three children across the globe are malnourished. Just think of how much that percentage has increased by the Haitian crisis Indeed, Vitamin Angels has already shipped one million childrens’ multivitamins to Haiti since the earthquake.

A viable and invaluable solution to malnourishment is to provide these children with essential nutrients both here at home and abroad.  According to research, one, high-dose Vitamin A capsule can reduce the risk of mortality among children under age five by 23%. Moreover, it can provide a sufficient dose to boost immunity for as long as six months, at a cost of only $.02 per capsule.

Multivitamins too, can help combat severe vitamin deficiencies and related diseases among the under five set, while also boosting cognitive and physical performance. In fact, according to a UNICEF Global progress report, almost 600,00 deaths from iron and zinc deficiencies could be prevented with proper supplementation coupled with food fortification. Another 18 million lives impaired by iodine deficiency could also be prevented.

These data are dire and the needs great. Supplements aren’t the only answer and better government coordination, food fortification, awareness and education are needed.

When most people think “global,” they don’t think “home.” But in order to be most effective globally, we also need to consider our own and our children’s wellness needs. I’ve been fortunate to become part of an Advisory Board for the Council for Responsible Nutrition Foundation’s Life Supplemented initiative.  Late December 2009, they launched America’s Wellness Campaign, which is a three-tiered program aimed at helping individuals here at home take charge and monitor their health through diet, exercise and supplements. By offering people an opportunity to gauge and monitor the areas in which they need improvement and in turn, providing research-based informational strategies, Life Supplemented aims to help improve the nation’s health.  But the effort extends beyond our borders as well; Life Supplemented has recently teamed up with Vitamin Angels to provide much needed funding for the programs by offering to donate one dollar for every individual who completes a Wellness Scorecard. Pretty simple; improve your own health and help improve others’ at the same time.

In 2009 alone, Vitamin Angels’ efforts reached approximately 11,000,000 infants and children in 40 countries  (including the United States) by providing them with  vital nutrients needed as a foundation for good health.  I’d like to think that we help them exceed this milestone in 2010 and perhaps even reach some of our own.

AIDS is here to stay. At least for now…. It didn’t seem that way during the 1980s. As we learned more about HIV and its manifestations, the predominantly male and intervention-driven scientific world organized itself to find a solution within a decade or two. After all, the war against smallpox, polio and other infectious diseases had been won with medicines, vaccines and public health efforts. Well, here we are, way into the third decade, and despite the achievements, the pandemic continuous to grow. What lessons can we draw from the cumulative knowledge, organizational responses and manifestations of solidarity?

The first decade of AIDS was marked by fear, death and loss. AIDS was visible in the faces with Kaposi sarcoma and the wasting of the bodies. We feared the contagion, death, the loss of loved ones, the unknown. And among so much fear, we blamed others: the “4 Hs” (Haitians, hemophiliacs, homosexuals, heroin addicts), sex workers, … even monkeys. Conspiracy theories flourished to explain the origin of the virus: a biological weapon, a laboratory experiment gone wrong. But the first decade of AIDS gave birth to the very essence that made it a disease like no other. A powerful medical model was challenged by participation. A movement was created. Never again would patients be patient. AIDS forever changed the way health would be delivered.

The second decade of AIDS was marked by hope; hope for a treatment, a vaccine, a cure. Science took enormous strides. Antiretroviral therapies created miracles: the Lazarus effect, they called it. HIV became a chronic condition, not a death sentence. While a cure and a vaccine were still to be found, the benefits of the quest advanced all aspects of clinical care. The breath of fresh air that came with so many developments also fueled a stronger coalition. Communities began to take control and demand action. People living with HIV and AIDS showed their faces, let their voices be heard, and influenced program design and policy. Access to treatment became a unified call.

The ongoing third decade of AIDS has been marked by money. The unknown, stigmatized disease that nobody wanted to touch in the beginning of the pandemic came of age drawing the attention of global leaders. New public-private-partnerships such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria were created to unleash extraordinary levels of funding. The movement peaked with this expanded response but money did not buy a solution.

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On December 2nd, 2009 Disruptive Women in Health Care launched our new series on The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World at the Women in the Arts Museum in Washington DC. I had the privilege of speaking at the launch program along with World Bank economist Dr. Maureen Lewis and Creative Women founder Ellen Dorsch, both of whom contributed to the series.

I would like to call attention to and thank our generous sponsors:

• Strategic Health Policy International
• Medco
• Global Health Strategies
• Amplify Public Affairs
• VirtuArte
• CreativeWomen
• Multilateral Consulting

Their support contributed to the success of both the program and the e-book. And a huge shout-out to Disruptive Women Dr. Glenna Crooks and Debbie Myers for their assistance, wisdom and vision in framing both the event and the series.

As is our custom, we have compiled this incredible series of posts into a free e-book for you to read and share. In addition to our own pool of experts, Disruptive Women invited a number of guests to post on this critically important topic.

Please feel free to share, cross post and distribute with others who would find this of interest.
As always, we welcome your feedback and comments. All the posts remain on the blog and it’s not too late to comment on specific posts.

Download a free copy of the “Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” e-book.

The following guest post by Malvise A. Scott, Senior Vice President, Partnership and Resource Development at National Association of Community Health Centers (and Former Community Health Center CEO), is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Health is an important part of economic security – not only in the developing world, but in the US. No one knows that better than those who, for over 40 years, have worked within Community Health Centers (CHCs) providing primary and preventive care to the medically underserved.

These private, not-for-profit corporations are so keenly aware because:

• Boards of Directors are made up of at least 51% patients,
• They are located in medically underserved neighborhoods,
• Their hours of operation reflect patient needs/preferences,
• Their sliding-fee scales accommodate the patient’s ability to pay and
• They provide “enabling services” such as transportation, translation, outreach and health education designed to meet the needs of their patients.

Are CHCs needed in the US? Yes, and by many people. During 2008, CHCs operating over 7,500 sites, provided care for over 20 million patients, of whom:

• 38.3% were uninsured
• 70% were below poverty, and
• 59% were women and among women, 40% were in the traditional working-year ages of 20-64.

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The following post by Liz Scherer, Principal of Digital Copy, LLC, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Liz Scherer is a digital copywriter, health reporter, medical writer, marketing and social media consultant, blogger and women’s health advocate. With over 25 years experience in the healthcare arena, Liz has worked in the private and public sectors on behalf of web-based and traditional science publishers, public relations and advertising agencies and non-profits.

There’s an elephant in the room: band-aids.

Poverty and its relationship to the provision of and access to healthcare is a global problem. This month, esteemed Disruptive Women in Healthcare bloggers and guest posters are writing on this critical issue with a unique look at the problems abroad. Yet, this has prompted me to look within, for if we can’t address our own problems, how can we possibly be successful at addressing problems outside our immediate borders?

It’s no secret that the divide in the U.S. comes down to socioeconomic status. And while our representatives in Washington continue to battle it out to devise a healthcare reform bill that, for all intents and purposes, may ultimately serve the power lobbies more than the public, a significant proportion of our population is being pummeled into submission with powerful drugs.

According to an article in the New York Times, children from poor families receive antipsychotic medications four times as often as those from wealthier families. What’s more, it appears that these children are likely to receive a prescription for less serious conditions than would commonly prompt a prescription for a wealthier child. The divide: Medicaid versus private insurance.
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The following guest post by Rachel Hampton, Research Associate at the Global Health Council, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Rachel’s areas of focus include maternal, newborn and child health and reproductive health. She has authored research briefs on private sector involvement in health systems, commercial sexual exploitation, the integration of maternal, newborn and child health and family planning, in addition to a variety of other publications from the GHC.

Women’s economic autonomy and employment opportunities are crucial to their health, particularly their reproductive health. Each year, 536,000 women die, nearly 10 million are disabled, and 250 million years of reproductive life are lost because of poor reproductive health. Enabling women’s economic sovereignty has the potential to allow women to take control of their fertility – they would have the resources to access family planning services, effectively space wanted pregnancies and limit unsafe abortions – all of which are leading factors to poor maternal health.

Limited economic security, limited access to education and poor employment opportunities contribute to lack of access to health services, education and employment, and lead to high fertility rates and increased maternal mortality and morbidity. In many countries, women are not allowed to own property and are limited in their economic opportunities, restricting their economic security and limiting access to reproductive health services. Lack of finances is particularly problematic for women who are heads of households or married women who have little say in family finances.

Limited financial autonomy for women also has a profound impact on their children, resulting in generations of young people who have limited opportunities for education and employment. Young girls are particularly vulnerable, as they often miss out on educational or employment opportunities because they have to provide care for sick relatives or have children at a young age. Economic empowerment could break this circle of poverty and ensure economic security and improved health for generations to come.
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The following guest post by Dr. Gunther L. Faber, CEO of The HealthStore Foundation^®, is part of Disruptive Women’s “The Value of Health: Creating Economic Security in the Developing World” series.

Context: Lack of Access to Quality Basic Healthcare:  The market for drugs and basic healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa is large and fragmented, with millions lacking adequate access to basic healthcare and low quality standards prevailing in many existing private and public facilities.  This leads to unacceptable statistics, including 2007 under-5 mortality rates of 12.1% in Kenya^[1] and of 18.1% in Rwanda.^[2] Furthermore, throughout the world 10 million children die each year, almost two out of three from a short list of easily preventable or treatable diseases and illnesses.^[3]

Approach:  Business Format Franchising: From SUBWAY, to ExxonMobil, to Marriott Hotels, the franchise business model has proven to be the most effective way to mass distribute goods and services where standards matter most.  The HealthStore Foundation^®–founded by an American entrepreneur and a Tanzanian pharmaceutical microbiologist—applies lessons learned from the franchise industry to increase access to high-quality essential drugs and basic healthcare through its Child and Family Wellness (“CFW”) franchise network.

CFW Franchisee Mrs. Credence Maina serving a Patient

A typical setting of a CFWclinic in rural Kenya

Empowering Female Nurses in Africa to Own Their Own Clinics: Since opening its first outlets in 2000, The HealthStore Foundation^® has developed a network of franchised medical clinics and drug shops now totaling 85 locations serving approximately 45,000 patients and customers per month in Kenya and Rwanda.  CFW franchisees are in business for themselves.  They create wealth for themselves and their families, and they create other jobs as well, such as by hiring local women to clean their clinics.  As the CFW network grows, hundreds more nurses will own their own clinics, building wealth for themselves and jobs in their communities, all the while improving conditions for economic development by reducing illness and death.

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