Category: Commentary

May 13, 2013

HIV: Let’s Finish The Job

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , , , , ,

By Beth Skorochod, Senior Technical Advisor, Sexual Reproductive Health and TB Department, Population Services International

Pililani Julius is twenty-three years old, from Mtambalika village in the Mulanje district of Malawi. Already the mother of two children, Pililani recently lost her third child, a death likely due to pediatric HIV complications. At the time, Pililani did not know that she was HIV positive — meaning that she was unable to take life-saving treatment that could have prevented transmission to her baby.

Today, Pililani is pregnant with her fourth child — and, this time, she is armed with knowledge. Prior to becoming pregnant, Pililani and her husband had watched an open-air drama performance run by PSI/Malawi, which explained the importance of knowing one’s HIV status and of taking treatment to prevent transmission during pregnancy. Pililani and her husband are now on treatment, protecting their own health and future as well as that of the new baby on the way.

Pililani’s story is an important and hopeful reminder of one of the global health community’s greatest success stories: the prevention, and hopefully, soon-to-be elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Today, thanks to the combined efforts of governments, companies, NGOs, health professionals, researchers and everyday volunteers, more children are born free of HIV than ever before.

May 6, 2013

The Post 2015 Agenda Needs to be Different from its Predecessor

Categories: Commentary, Partner Insight
Tags: , , , ,

By Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever

There are few more inspiring thoughts that the one set out in the vision of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel, namely that extreme poverty can be eradicated in our time. It is a vision and a belief which compels us all to take action.

There are many technical and academic definitions of poverty. But I take the view that if you are hungry, don’t have access to clean drinking water, live in conditions where hygiene and sanitation are nonexistent, are unable to access health care, where your children can’t go to school, where you have no prospect of getting a job and where there is no energy to cook your food or warm your home then you are poor.

For these reasons I believe that the post 2015 Agenda should be built upon the big social targets of hunger, water, health, education and so on which were set out in the original Millennium Development Goals. We should of course do everything in our power to ensure that as many of those goals can be met by the original deadline of 2015 – we still have some 1000 days to make a difference – but in the event that we don’t quite make it then a new framework should in my view commit the nations of the world to deliver in full the goals that were agreed by the UN General Assembly in 2000.

In four important respects however the post 2015 agenda needs to be different from its predecessor.

May 3, 2013

What Every Mom Deserves on Mother’s Day

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , ,

Mother’s Day is coming up soon and there is no better time than now to recognize the mothers in your life. There’s a reason those coupons you made for Mother’s Day when you were little were such a big hit. No matter what her challenges, every mom deserves a little extra love.

We have some cards that you can send out today and a few stories that we want to share with you. Give them a read and send out a card!

Giving moms a whine-free day:

Jeanine’s kids would have severe stomach aches a couple of times a month. The water from her village’s contaminated well made them so sick, going to school was impossible. PSI showed the mothers in her village how easy it was to use an inexpensive water purification product. Now the kids are dressed and ready for school before sunrise without complaint.

April 19, 2013

Global Fund Beat: One Month Into the Launch of the New Funding Model

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , , , , ,

By Hsin-yi Lee with input from Kate Hencher, Senior Manager & Cedric Mingat, SPU Technical Advisor from the Strategic Partnerships Unit

As the New Funding Model hit the ground, countries that were invited to participate in the transition phase have started to engage with preparatory work. Since the New Funding Model discarded the old rounds-based system and moved towards a more iterative grant making process,  PSI platforms are reviewing national strategies and actively engaging in dialogue with relevant stakeholders at country-level.

As described by Global Fund’s Executive Director, Mark Dybul, in a blog post on the Global Fund website “The cornerstone of our new approach is continuous communication. It starts with dialogue among partners who are working together in each country. The partners and the approach will be tailored to each country because no one size fits all.”

April 18, 2013

For Parents Around the World, Nutrition Scale-Up Can’t Come Soon Enough

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , , , , , ,

By Results for Development President David de Ferranti and Managing Director Kanika Bahl

The challenge many parents in low and middle income countries continue to face in preparing adequate, nutrient-rich food for their children is striking.  In South Africa, Linah Mtotoba, a 32-year old mother who packed food shelves at a large supermarket chain in Johannesburg, wished she could buy the fresh fruits and vegetables that she stocked. She spent roughly half of her monthly paycheck on food, doing what she could to provide sufficient meals for her four children, 14-year old Busisiwe, 11-year old Daniel, six-year old Nyoko, and seven-month old Bokang.

To feed her family, she cooked ‘pap’, a dish made from boiling maize meal in water and stirring it until it becomes thick; pap is consumed widely by South Africans. Although she tried her best to feed her children well, she knew that pap was not enough and that she could not afford to add vegetables and meat as often as she would like. Key nutrients were therefore often missing in her children’s daily diets.

Unfortunately, the story of Linah and her children is not uncommon. In many developing countries, hundreds of millions of children remain chronically and critically deficient in essential micronutrients such as iodine, iron, and Vitamin A.  If left unaddressed, these widespread deficiencies can undermine a child’s lifelong cognitive development, which in turn translates to enormous costs to a country’s economy.  In fact, pervasive iron deficiency anemia (IDA) — the most common form of micronutrient deficiency — can shave up to two percentage points off potential GDP due to cognitive and physical productivity losses.

April 16, 2013

Global Fund Beat: Funding the Fund – Recent Developments

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , ,

By Hsin-yi Lee

Aidspan has released an article with a tidy summary of all the recent developments in Global Fund’s resource mobilization. According to Global Fund’s analysis, the public sector remains the largest contributor to the Fund. At $28.8 billion, pledges from donor governments make up 95% of the Global Fund’s revenues since 2002. The private sector, foundations and other innovating financing initiatives contributed to the remaining 5% ($1.7 billion).

The US government remains the largest donor to the Global Fund since its inception in 2001, thus US pledges play a significant role in ensuring a fully funded Global Fund. The US congress recently approved US $1.65 billion of funding for the Global Fund in 2013 (this amount was subsequently reduced to US $1.56 bilion due to sequestration). In President Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget request submitted to congress on April 10th, the US shows continued support tot he Global Fund with a US $1.65 request.

April 10, 2013

Global Fund Beat: How Much Money is out there for the New Global Fund?

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , ,

This is the first post in what we hope to be a series from our Global Fund intern Hsin-yi Lee on the Global Fund to Fight TB, Malaria and AIDS.

The Global Fund’s new funding model was launched last month after amounting anticipation. Six countries and three regional programs were invited as early applicants to go through the entire grant making process. An additional 47 interim applicants were named to access funding through grant renewals, extensions or reprogramming. Together, the named applicants will be able to access up to US $1.9 billion of funding available for the transition period of 2013- 2014.

A distinction of the new funding model from the old is that countries are now given the information of how much money is available for them to apply for in each disease component. The Global Fund has devised their funding allocation formulas based on burden of disease burden, ability to pay and other contextual factors.

The six early applicant countries – Zimbabwe, El Salvador, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kazakhstan and the Philippines – will be able to access a total of US$364 million of new funding.

Emergency Contraception Remains Inaccessible for Women in Many Countries

Categories: Commentary
Tags:

By Christine Bixiones, Technical Advisor, Sexual, Reproductive Health & TB Department, PSI

Despite the fact that a safe and effective product that would give women a second chance to prevent unwanted pregnancy has existed for over fourteen years, restrictions have kept it from being easily accessible in the United States. This changed last Friday when a federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to lift long-standing restrictions on emergency contraception, or the morning-after-pill as it is commonly called, mandating that emergency contraception be made available in pharmacies to women and men of any age, instead of requiring a prescription for girls age 16 and under.

This decision comes twelve years after a group of over 70 medical and public health organizations came together to file a Citizen Petition with the FDA to make EC available over the counter. Because EC is most effective the sooner it is taken after unprotected intercourse, quick and easy access is key to preventing an unwanted pregnancy – and over the counter access without restrictions in pharmacies ensures that hurdles and delays are minimized.

“This landmark court decision has struck a huge blow to the deep-seated discrimination that has for too long denied women access to a full range of safe and effective birth control methods,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO for the Center for Reproductive Rights stated in response to the judge’s decision.

April 9, 2013

Quacks, traditional healers and village doctors: Informal providers emerge as force in health care

Categories: Commentary
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By David J Olson, International Development Communications and Advocacy Consultant at Olson Global Communications

In my nine years managing social marketing programs for PSI in Africa, Asia and Latin America, I had two significant encounters with the category of health workers now known as “informal providers,” in Zambia and Bangladesh. In both cases, my PSI staffs and I decided to try to work with them because it seemed like folly not to work with them, given their numbers and their influence.

In Zambia, where I founded and managed PSI’s social marketing program, I became aware of the large and prominent role of traditional healers in the health system. They were everywhere – including where there were few or no formal providers – and were a respected part of the health landscape. Eventually, I became convinced that we should engage them in our HIV prevention condom social marketing program.

Realizing that traditional healers, like most players in the private sector, are motivated by financial gain, we recruited them as condom vendors, just as we had recruited wholesalers and retailers like pharmacies and grocery stores. Traditional healers saw condoms as a business opportunity and started out as good sales agents. Unfortunately, they were not always trustworthy business people: They insisted on buying on credit, but would not settle their accounts after making sales, so we had to terminate our relationship with them. Nonetheless, it was my first lesson in the importance of trying to engage traditional healers and other types of “informal providers” outside the formal health system, challenging though they could be.

April 8, 2013

30 Important Terms about HIV Treatment and Prevention

Categories: Commentary

Friday marked the 1,000th day milestone leading to 2015. Several international NGOs mounted 1,000-minute social media rally to raise awareness and inspire positive action around the MDGs. PSI took part by sharing 30 important terms about HIV on Twitter. Check out the terms and the discussion around them: