The federal government should create and fund an umbrella organization called the United States Global Health Service (GHS) to mobilize the nation’s best health care professionals and other experts to help combat HIV/AIDS in hard-hit African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian countries, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Full-time, salaried professionals would make up the organization’s pivotal "service corps," working side by side with other colleagues already on the ground to provide medical care and drug therapy to affected populations while offering local counterparts training and assistance in clinical, technical, and managerial areas. The proposal’s goal is to build the capacity of targeted countries to fight the pandemic over the long run. The dearth of qualified health care workers in many low-income nations is often the biggest roadblock in mounting effective responses to public health needs.
In January 2003 President Bush announced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is directed at 15 countries that are home to half of the world’s HIV-infected people. PEPFAR’s "2-7-10" goals are to treat 2 million infected people with antiretroviral therapy, prevent 7 million new HIV infections, and care for 10 million people who are infected with HIV or affected by it. This comprehensive, five-year strategy is part of the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, which Congress passed in 2003. Among other measures, the legislation calls for a pilot program to test how U.S. health care professionals and others with technical expertise could help meet the "2-7-10" goals through public service abroad. The federal Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator asked the Institute of Medicine to study options for placing such workers in the 15 focus countries.
"In addition to this proposed corps of highly skilled health and management professionals, the Global Health Service would also have five other components. The individuals serving in all of these programs would constitute a critical driving force to carry out the president’s plan -- and to build the developing world’s capacity to control HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria over time," said study committee chair Fitzhugh Mullan, contributing editor of the journal HEALTH AFFAIRS, and clinical professor of pediatrics and public health, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. "They would multiply essential skills and services, offering both concrete assistance and hope. In our interconnected world, such work benefits us all."
Vanee Vines | EurekAlert!
Dengue takes low and slow approach to replication
12.01.2018 | Duke University
Fast food makes the immune system more aggressive in the long term
12.01.2018 | Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
For the first time, scientists have precisely measured the effective electrical charge of a single molecule in solution. This fundamental insight of an SNSF Professor could also pave the way for future medical diagnostics.
Electrical charge is one of the key properties that allows molecules to interact. Life itself depends on this phenomenon: many biological processes involve...
At the JEC World Composite Show in Paris in March 2018, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will be focusing on the latest trends and innovations in laser machining of composites. Among other things, researchers at the booth shared with the Aachen Center for Integrative Lightweight Production (AZL) will demonstrate how lasers can be used for joining, structuring, cutting and drilling composite materials.
No other industry has attracted as much public attention to composite materials as the automotive industry, which along with the aerospace industry is a driver...
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Tohoku University have developed high-quality GFO epitaxial films and systematically investigated their ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties. They also demonstrated the room-temperature magnetocapacitance effects of these GFO thin films.
Multiferroic materials show magnetically driven ferroelectricity. They are attracting increasing attention because of their fascinating properties such as...
The oceans are the largest global heat reservoir. As a result of man-made global warming, the temperature in the global climate system increases; around 90% of...
Scientists at Helmholtz Zentrum München have discovered a mechanism that amplifies the autoimmune reaction in an early stage of pancreatic islet autoimmunity prior to the progression to clinical type 1 diabetes. If the researchers blocked the corresponding molecules, the immune system was significantly less active. The study was conducted under the auspices of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD) and was published in the journal ‘Science Translational Medicine’.
Type 1 diabetes is the most common metabolic disease in childhood and adolescence. In this disease, the body's own immune system attacks and destroys the...
15.01.2018 | Event News
08.01.2018 | Event News
11.12.2017 | Event News
15.01.2018 | Physics and Astronomy
15.01.2018 | Life Sciences
15.01.2018 | Life Sciences