Information and stories on health topics.

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Folate-Rich Rice for Malnourishment

Golden Rice grain compared to white rice
Recently, scientists at the Ghent University have successfully engineered a new folate-rich rice strain. The most notable achievement of this experiment has been the stabilization of the bio-engineered nutrition richness.

Biofortification is a relatively new venture into the field of agricultural biotechnology. It involves modifying the genetic makeup of an agricultural plant to yield a more nutrient-rich product. The results of biofortification of plants have been tested for nutritional value and bio-availability for the consumers, with promising results.

In addition to increasing the nutrition value of food products, scientists are also focusing on making the products more sustainable. New research in this area is committed to not only increasing the dietary value of the crops, but also providing for practical answers for food shortage problems globally. For instance, crops that are more resistant to droughts and natural adversities are being manufactured. Food staples such as grains are being engineered to comprise nutrients from more expensive and inaccessible vegetables.

A significant issue in the provision of sufficient food for the whole world is the problem of food wastage and storage. The world today produces more food per person than ever before; however, food insecurity continues to be an issue with the improper handling and storage of food.

Crops such as rice, wheat and other grains are generally easier to store than most foodstuffs. However, the long-term storage of food deprives them of much of their nutritional value. Micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals are likely to be degraded as a result of long-term storage, as well as the methods of storage.

Folate, or Vitamin B9 as it is popularly known, is one such nutrient. It is found in abundance in leafy green vegetables such as spinach; such vegetables are, however, difficult to store for extended periods of time. Folate is a water-soluble vitamin; consequently, it cannot be stored in the body, and needs to be replenished constantly. Folate deficiency can lead to abnormally large blood cells, and ultimately anemia, which is particularly dangerous for pregnant women.

To tackle this problem, the researchers at Ghent University took a two-pronged approach: making the rice folate-rich, as well as stabilizing the folate to ensure its availability after long periods of storage. They used a folate-binding protein- found originally in animals- to stabilize the folate molecules. The resulting molecule was found to be more resistant to degradation after storage.

The rice strain manufactured has not been introduced commercially as of yet; the public use of the strain remains subject to testing and approval by appropriate authorities. This research is, nevertheless, an innovative step in the quest for engineering more nutritious and healthier crops for ending hunger and malnourishment.

– Atifah Safi

Sources: Ugent, NIH
Photo: cbnnews

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Improving Global Health Opportunities: India’s Tremendous Progress

global health
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped save millions of lives among the world’s poor. Through their work, they are helping to find a way to stop the spread of global health diseases such as polio and malaria and support initiatives for proper sanitation.

Recently, there has been a great deal of success with projects like these in India. The country has been certified polio-free for over a year. To meet the requirements, the country had to go four years without a case of wild poliovirus. “This is a giant achievement in the global effort to eradicate polio,” according to an article on the Gates Foundation blog called Impatient Optimists. “As recently as 2009, India was home to nearly half the world’s cases and considered the hardest place on earth to stop the disease.”

To stay polio-free, India must maintain its high levels of immunity. In partnership with the government, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF conduct two nationwide, as well as three sub-national, vaccination campaigns annually.

Where malaria is concerned, India is also making progress; having halved the number of its cases from two million in 2000 to 882,000 in 2013, according to WHO. The country is working towards the eradication of malaria through powerful campaign tactics and ensuring that rapid response diagnostic tests are available and easily accessible.

India is hoping to reach a pre-elimination phase of malaria in 2017 and to then move forward to total elimination by 2030.

In addition to eradicating these infectious diseases, efforts are being made to improve sanitation conditions to reduce illness and death. For example, in some parts of the country as many as 80 percent of the population do not own a toilet, which can be expensive to purchase and install. However open defecation can lead to diarrheal disease. More than 450,000 children died from the disease in 2014. Women and girls are also put in danger of being raped when they go off to find a private place to use the restroom.

Thanks to microfinance loans through the Centre for Development Orientation and Training (CDOT), families are able to purchase a toilet and improve their living conditions.

Through organizations like WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, incredible feats for global health are being reached in India and all around the world.

– Drusilla Gibbs

Sources: Impatient Optimists 1, Impatient Optimists 2, Impatient Optimists 3, WHO
Photo: hydratelife

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More Research for ‘Neglected Malaria’

Neglected_Malaria
The World Health Organization (WHO) and Bill Gates have called for more research for neglected malaria, or malaria caused by the Plasmodium vivax parasite, given the increasing infections in Western India.

In late July, WHO reported 18.9 million cases in 2012, almost 13 million of which were in South-East Asia, specifically in India. The parasite is spreading in the Indian cities of Ahmedabad, Bikaner and Mumbai.

“The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need. But it gets virtually no funding. But if you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria,” remarked Bill Gates at the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Global Grand Challenges Summit in London, in 2014.

According to WHO South-East Asia region director, Poonam Khetrapal Singh said more needs to be done to fight vivax malaria, the cause for “a large proportion of global malaria burden.” The cost of the disease on a global scale ranges from $1.4 billion to $4 billion per year.

While vivax malaria kills less than relation P. falciparum, it’s harder to prevent and treat. P. vivax reoccurs throughout the infected person’s life causing incapacitating febrile attacks, severe anemia and respiratory distress.

As a result of these conditions, women have poor pregnancy outcomes, children experience learning impairment and it can sometimes be life-threatening. The reoccurrence and conditions that result are not only expensive long-term treatment but also makes the parasite all the more challenging from being eradicated.

The parasite can also be resistant to drug treatment and resistant to insecticides of mosquitoes that transmit it.

Despite all this, more research funding is provided for P. falciparum, according to a 2011 paper in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

According to the director of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Program, A. C. Shariwal, P. vivax is controlled through India’s Malaria Control Program and no changes will be made to it.

The need for funding is increasingly present and expensive. Research for P. vivax has to be done in collaboration with infected patients and primates, a type of research that moves slowly, is more expensive, logistically challenging, and less competitive than those that use more modern experimental research methods.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: News Ghana, PLOS Journal, Science Development Net 1, Science Development Net 2
Photo: Flickr

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Nature’s Answer to Antibiotic Resistance


Overuse of antibiotics throughout the world has led to a growing problem of antibiotic resistance that could lead to the total ineffectiveness of these often life-saving drugs. In the developing world, the problem is especially acute.

According to an article in the journal Nature, some studies have suggested that in Nigeria, as many as 88 percent of Staphylococcus aureus infections cannot be treated with methicillin — once a potent weapon against the microbe.

Antibiotic resistance is also a significant issue in the emerging economies known as the ‘BRIC’ states: Brazil, Russia, India and China, the article says, as well as in India and Pakistan.

The problem is especially worrisome to public health officials due to the lack of new antibiotic compounds introduced into medical practice.

But last January, researchers at Northeastern University and NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals announced they had developed a new potential antibiotic, called Teixobactin, that has some exciting new properties.

In addition to proving itself effective in the treatment of MRSA, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and M. Tuberculosis in animal efficacy trials, the compound has the potential to become resistance-proof.

Richard Novick, a microbiologist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center has called it “a major breakthrough because it is virtually certain to be effective for the multi-resistant strains that are now all but impossible to treat.”

Doctors are eager for new medicines to treat infectious diseases. In the past, most antibiotics were developed through screening soil samples for microorganisms. But soil samples eventually gave way to millions of dollars fruitlessly spent on synthetic attempts to produce antibiotics.

The team from Northeastern and Novobiotic decided to turn back to mining soil-based uncultured bacteria by using a new technology called Ichip. In this approach, soil samples are diluted with agar, allowing a single bacterial cell to be isolated. Researchers are able to isolate up to 96 cells in individual “chambers” in each Ichip device. Teixobactin was discovered from a soil sample from Maine.

Seventy years of antimicrobial use and overuse have given bacteria ample time to genetically fortify themselves for a new wave of infectious disease. Now, the CDC estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria will infect two million people and among those two million, 23,000 will die from those infections.

The techniques used to extract Teixobactin from the Maine soil sample have opened up millions of microorganisms for future study. Ichip allows researchers to harness this biodiversity in traditionally rich environments such as forest soil and even marsh water.

“This biodiversity is also hiding a lot of chemical diversity that may include new, other antibiotics,” wrote Gerard Wright, director of the Institute for Infectious Disease Research in Canada.

– Emma Betuel

Sources: The Scientist, Nature 1, The Lancet, Nature 2, ACS, CDC, Popsci
Photo: medicaldaily

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Addressing the Measles Outbreak in DR Congo

Measles_Outbreak
The Democratic Republic of Congo is facing the worst measles outbreak since 2011, according to Doctors Without Borders. So far this year, over 23,000 cases of measles were reported in the Katanga region of the country. The UN and Doctors Without Borders have calculated over 400 deaths.

The epidemic started in February of this year. In just one village with a population of 500, 30 children died in just 2 months. Despite the number of deaths, the central government in Kinshasa hadn’t recognized the measles epidemic and the deaths caused by it until earlier this month.

Doctors Without Borders has vaccinated over 300,000 children, despite the difficulties of having to keep the vaccine cold and requiring 2 shots, weeks apart for effectiveness.

An additional difficulty has been the lack of infrastructure with bad roads and railroads that are usually never fixed or where fuel runs low. Some villages are hardly accessible, only way to get there is by foot, motorcycle or canoe.

The UN has estimated $2.4 million to vaccinate everyone. The vaccine is effective enough it has wiped out the measles outbreak in western countries. The problem in countries such as the DR of Congo is children’s immune systems have been weakened from malnutrition, malaria and cholera.

The vaccine while effective, cannot prevent death when complications such as blindness, encephalitis, severe diarrhea and related dehydration, or severe respiratory infections.

In addition, vaccination has proved difficult in a region which has tried to become independent from the rest of the country. The ongoing fighting between local militia and Congolese army over mining areas leads to villagers fleeing for days or weeks. However, efforts are ongoing to improve the current living conditions for Congolese citizens, especially children.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: New York Times, Yahoo
Photo: CDN

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Deworming Children Across the World

Deworming_Children
An estimated 870 million children all over the world are infected with helminths and schistosomiasis which have been transmitted through contact with soil. These two afflictions are of the most prevalent in the world in areas of poverty in developing countries.

Research has shown that performing mass deworming significantly lower the chances of getting helminths and schistosomiasis. Because worms are so widespread in high poverty, low sanitation areas, they are often not even seen as an actual medical problem.

Helminths and schistosomiasis cause symptoms such as wheezing, vomiting, fever, loss of appetite, swelling of the abdomen and abdominal pain, and in children malnutrition, anemia and impaired physical growth are common side effects.

Children who experience this disease often miss a significant amount of school, which stunts their growth mentally as well as physically.

Chronic worm infections were shown to have a negative correlation on adult wages. A 43 percent reduction in adult wages was shown in those who had had and continued to deal with chronic hookworm infection from childhood to adulthood.

Kenya, as well as many other countries facing this problem, have adopted the practice of conducting mass deworming in schools.

This is an ingenious idea as there are more schools and teachers than there are clinics and health care providers. The pill used for deworming cost less than 10 cents and is safe, with no detrimental side effects as well as being simple to administer and take.

The World Health Organization recommends that mass deworming be conducted in areas where there is a high risk for infection.

However, some people are against mass deworming, believing that treatment should be given on when there is a clear presence of infection. They argue against treating a child for worms who has no symptoms.

But there is proof that mass deworming is a safe activity that has a significant impact. The presence of the parasitic worms responsible for the infection has declined from 35 percent to 17 percent.

The prevalence of the worms has been shown to reach as low as 6 percent after a round of deworming. Deworming children in schools have also been shown to reduce school absences by 25 percent.

It was also shown that young, non-school age children with siblings who were dewormed and in school more often, also had higher cognitive development as well.

It is important not only to address the presence of worms but the lack of proper sanitation as well as clean water. Working on prevention and intervention as well as the deworming program, will give children a chance at a better, more conducive education and a better life overall as a result.

– Drusilla Gibbs

Sources: Impatient Optimists, Poverty Action Lab, Poverty Action
Photo: Pixabay

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The Magic of ORS

ors
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has expressed a strong belief that providing access to known health interventions will go a long way toward saving lives, specifically the lives of children.

Because global health has been such a priority over the last 25 years, preventable child deaths have been reduced to half since 1990. That still leaves many children dying from diseases that are entirely preventable. One of the leading causes of death in children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia is diarrheal disease.

Diarrheal disease causes a child to lose enormous amounts of fluids which then causes them to become extremely dehydrated. This disease can have a long-term effect on a child’s overall health and development.

Fortunately, there is a low-cost solution that will help to re-hydrate children who have lost a dangerous amount of fluids quickly and effectively. The Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) is a simple, yet highly effective sugar and salt mixture. There are many benefits to this relatively new solution, which include:

  1. Helping to combat other diseases that cause dehydration such as Cholera and Ebola.
  2. It can cost as little as 10 cents a packet (Although it is most often given out for free in developing and/or impoverished countries).
  3. Not only hydrates but provides the body with natural, essential salts.
  4. ORS was first introduced in 1979 and has a proven, growing track record.
  5. Easy to administer; parents with limited instructions can do it themselves.
  6. ORS is improved upon not just by one country but many, which expedites its improvement as well as allowing countries to personalize their solution, tailoring it to their specific needs.

Unfortunately, this life-saving solution is not being used in many countries that could benefit from it. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is dedicated to making sure preventative treatments such as ORS are available where they are needed most.

– Drusilla Gibbs

Sources: Impatient Optimists, Rehydrate, WHO
Photo: defeatdd

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Fighting the TPP’s Bad Medicine

pills
After months of negotiation, the public has spoken. Public health outcry surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) resounds online, in print and on television.

“We have raised our voice as loudly as we can,” said Manica Balasegaram, executive director of Doctors Without Borders’ (DWB) access campaign. “This is a terrible deal for access to affordable medicines.”

The idea behind campaigns like the one headed by DWB is to remove the intellectual property laws (many pertaining to pharmaceuticals that treat life-threatening conditions) from the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP).

As it stands, according to a November 13 Wikileak, the TPP would seek to extend the patent on brand-name pharmaceuticals an additional five years (delaying the onset of cheaper generic drugs that compete with brand-names), as well as 12 years of “data exclusivity” for biologic drugs, of which include many cancer and multiple sclerosis therapies.

While these intellectual property rights are sure-fire ways to keep pharmaceutical prices high—even unreachable for many in developing countries—defenders of the TPP laud them as ways to improve health, not hamper it.

The first line of the secret TPP document that was leaked by Julian Assange in 2013 decries that the thought process behind these intellectual property laws is to “enhance the role of intellectual property in promoting economic and social development in relation to the new digital economy, technological innovation, and transfer the dissemination of technology and trade.”

As increases in antibiotic resistance demands more innovation in pharmaceuticals, they remove incentives for Big Pharma to pursue antibiotic options (data shows that the more times you use these antibiotics, the less effective they are, so profits are capped).

Beneath this intellectual property clause that is a roadblock to doctors and patients everywhere, lies a real problem–how can we incentivize further development of life-saving antibiotic therapies?

The best way our society knows how to incentivize something is to monetize it. The idea of writing hours of code at a computer was abhorrent, for many, until Bill Gates and Steve Jobs turned personal computers into million-dollar industries.

The intellectual property laws surrounding pharmaceuticals (especially, antibiotics) exist to serve this purpose—to create an industry that is robust, profitable and differentiated.

It is even present in the existing TRIPS free trade agreement which guarantees some intellectual property laws in free trade agreements, even providing special waivers to certain developing countries that exempt them having to abide by pharmaceutical patents until at least January 2016.

“The LDC waivers [exemption from TRIPS-sponsored patent law for drugs] are among the important flexibilities available in the TRIPs agreement,” wrote a UNAID 2012 report.

“Retaining the flexibility to adapt intellectual property law and policy to meet national development objected has facilitated the development of robust generic industries such as India and Brazil. Generic competition, primarily from Indian pharmaceutical manufacturers, has been one of the key factors in the dramatic decrease in prices of…medicines for HIV treatment.”

If the TPP must go through, which according to some reports will happen before the dawn of the 2016 election year, the TRIP waiver program has already given us the skeleton of a tool to combat it.

If intellectual property rights for biologic therapies and drugs in the US are to be tightened, the extension of the waivers for generic development elsewhere may be necessary.

Diversify the market–let the developing nations step in with their own budding pharmaceutical industries and mollify the situation that the TPP has the power to create.

– Emma Betuel

Sources: UNITAID, UNAIDS, About News, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), WikiLeaks, Health Affairs, Center for American Progress
Photo: Pixabay

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Rebuilding the Healthcare System in Kenya

kenyas health care system
In many developing countries around the world, preventable, life-threatening diseases still ravage communities and affect significant numbers of people.

For countries like Kenya, diseases such as HIV/AIDS take precedence when it comes to allocating annual health budgets due to the vast majority of sufferers. According to the Thomas Reuters Foundation’s calculations, around 60% of Kenya’s annual $1.25 billion health budget goes towards the treatment of HIV/AIDS alone.

Despite generous funding from donors like the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the fact that HIV prevalence among adults has almost halved to 5.3% since the mid-1990s, HIV/AIDS remains the leading cause of death in Kenya.

With little to no symptoms experienced by HIV/AIDS victims, the progression of this incurable disease remains responsible for every 3 out of 10 deaths in this east African country. The government’s 2014 data reports that 1.6 million Kenyans are infected.

Although an alarming number of Kenyans suffer from HIV/AIDS, the government has recognized a disproportionate amount of aid and energy being focused on this one disease, which unfortunately means that those ailing from other diseases are being ignored.

This unequal distribution of funding and support means the current healthcare system in Kenya is unable to reach those living in slums and arid regions.

Now, Kenyan workers believe that reproductive illnesses should have been addressed alongside HIV/AIDS. Although the past cannot be altered, fortunately, change is in motion for the healthcare system in Kenya, which plans to eventually provide universal health coverage that is high quality and affordable.

“The new U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), due to be agreed by world leaders later this month, seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals by reducing maternal mortality and ending the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics by 2030,” states an article by the Thomas Reuters Foundation.

To reach these goals, a shift from investing in solely HIV/AIDS treatment must begin in order to benefit and strengthen the health system as a whole.

According to Peter Kimuu, head of the health ministry’s Directorate of Policy, Planning and Health Care Financing, complications such as corruption and inefficiency affect nearly half of Kenya’s health budget.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also estimates that 20% to 40% of global health budgets are wasted, which impacts the level of trust, making donors less likely to support the health sector.

These disparaging numbers reflect the need for leaders to change from a “revenue-agenda” focus to an “efficiency agenda” one.

The Thomas Reuters Foundation states that “Although maternity, under-five and emergency services are nominally free in Kenya, cash-strapped government facilities are overstretched, forcing patients to buy their own medicines.”

Consequently, the behavior of dissatisfied healthcare workers has resulted in the deaths of patients due to ongoing strikes by nurses not receiving their salary pay, which creates an environment of low morale and abuse within hospitals.

Plans to invest in Kenya’s healthcare system would require compulsory health insurance, “entitling Kenyans to a package of services from 4,000 public or 6,000 private health facilities,” Kimuu said.

This investment would benefit those seeking treatment and encourage better service because government medical centers would be paid by the number of patients treated.

At last, it is only through a shift in focus that the healthcare system can start its transformation, which will further the lives of many and ultimately enable Kenya to achieve the U.N.’s SDGs.

– Nikki Schaffer

Sources: Reuters, AIDS.gov
Photo: Rand

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Fighting Malaria by 2030


An individual wakes up to a fever, chills, headache, sweats, fatigue, nausea, and vomiting: all of these symptoms appearing in cycles every 48 or 72 hours, depending on the exact parasite ailing the individual.

In more serious cases, add dry coughs, muscle or back pain, or even both, and an enlarged spleen. Some individuals may even suffer from impaired brain function, seizures, or loss of consciousness.

This is the reality of malaria.

In the year 2000, the infection rate of malaria was so severe that professionals estimated a total of 262 million individuals were infected with this illness. On top of that large number, it is estimated that malaria was responsible for approximately 839,000 deaths.

With numbers that high, it quickly became a global priority. Within the Millennial Development Goals (MDG), the UN targeted to have “halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.”

While the population at risk of malaria continued to grow, the rate of incidence decreased by 37 percent and the death rate by 60 percent since 2000.

To these statistics, the UN malaria progress report stated that, “it is evident that MDG Target 6C (to have halted and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria) has been met convincingly.”

With such a high level of success taking place, it is clear that prevention and treatment methods are working effectively. This being the case, the fight for continued reduction and eradication of the illness is necessary.

The UN News Centre has shared that, “some countries carry a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. Fifteen countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, accounted for 80 percent of malaria cases and 78 percent of deaths globally in 2015.”

With these countries in mind, two new documents have been developed to further combat malaria by 2030: the Global Technical Strategy for Malaria 2016-2030 and the action and Investment to Defeat Malaria 2016-2030.

The targets and goals outlined in these two documents are to provide malaria prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, accelerate elimination efforts, and to transform “surveillance into a core intervention.”

With these plans mapped out, the UN has also estimated the total amount of funds necessary to accomplish this goal. This number comes out to $6.4 billion by 2020, $7.7 billion by 2025, and $8.7 USD billion by 2030.

While the numbers are high, the UN has declared that, “If these resources can be secured…malaria will become a thing of the past for many populations in the world.”

With all of the progress that has been made up to this point, 3.2 billion people within 97 different countries and territories are still at risk of the malaria infection.

If malaria could be completely eliminated by 2030, why stop now?

– Katherine Martin

Sources: UN, UNICEF, WebMD, WHO
Photo: The Oslo Times