21 November 2012 – African countries must improve the ways in which they collect, organize and transmit health information to their citizens, a United Nations official said today at a regional meeting in Luanda, Angola.

In his report presented to the UN World Health Organization's (WHO) 62nd session of its Regional Committee for Africa, WHO Regional Director for the continent, Luis Sambo, also highlighted the challenges facing countries to produce good quality and timely information to their cities.

Among these are efforts and initiatives that seek to acquire health information, which are fragmented across sectors, levels, projects, disciplines and specialties. Other challenges include poor generation of evidence to implement policies and a lack of collaboration among stakeholders to analyze and share data and evidence.

To address these challenges, Dr. Sambo recommended that each country establish an online platform to archive and monitor national information on health. A clear road map and timeline should be established for this process, he added, while assuring African countries that WHO is ready to provide detailed advice and technical support on this process.

The creation of each online platform, called a National Health Observatory (NHO), should involve and coordinate all health stakeholders in each country, the WHO official said, including public health policymakers, experts, and international partners.

In addition, countries that have already established NHOs should ensure that these are meeting the specific needs of their countries and are used to share and use important information that will lead to better health for Africans.

During his presentation, Dr. Sambo also underscored that African countries should draw from resources from global health initiatives (GHIs), which target specific diseases, to strengthen their health systems.

"The dramatic increase in the number of GHIs means that countries need to improve how they work with different stakeholders in the health sector," WHO stated in a news release on Dr. Sambo's report. Pooling resources from different sources would lead to good quality, integrated health services.

Sharing information among countries is also vital to prevent the spread of diseases, Dr. Sambo said, noting that although countries are making efforts to detect and control the international spread of infectious diseases, more needs to be done to effectively respond to them.

In particular, Dr. Sambo underlined the importance of countries implementing their plans under the International Health Regulations (IHR), which were agreed to by all African countries in 2007. While 43 out of the 46 Member States of the WHO African Region have conducted capacity assessment in line with IHR requirements, none has fully implemented their national IHR plans.

IHR aim to quickly identify an outbreak or any other public health threat, including chemical and radiological hazards that could have an international impact, so that a fast and effective response can be organized.

To implement the IHR plan, Dr. Sambo recommended countries carry out needs assessments to map unmet needs, mobilize and allocate adequate human and financial resources, strengthen surveillance systems and health laboratory capacities, and empower IHR focal points with the skills and resources that will ensure timely verification and notification of public health events to governments and WHO.

He also advised that, as a first step, countries should request a two-year extension to enable full implementation of IHR core capacities by 2014.

The WHO Regional Committee for Africa is the Organization's governing body in the continent. There are currently 46 Member States in the region, and the Committee's main functions entail formulating regional policies and programmes, and supervising the activities of the regional office.

(source: www.un.org)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has come under fire for allegedly blocking the attendance of non-governmental organisations at its latest meeting on counterfeit and otherwise illegal medicines in Buenos Aires.

The complaint has been raised by a group of academics led by Professor Amir Attaran from University of Ottawa, Canada, who have called for an international treaty to tackle the trade in what the WHO currently refers to as substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit medical products.

The latest development comes against a backdrop in which efforts to coordinate an international, regulatory or legislative response to medicines counterfeiting have been routinely undermined by political and commercial in-fighting.

Attaran claims that NGOs are being kept away from the WHO meeting at the request of India, although India's Health Ministry has denied the accusations. Another NGO - the World Federation of Public Health Associations - also says it has been excluded from the meeting.

The WHO's executive board adopted a resolution earlier this year to set up a member state 'mechanism' to tackle the trade in counterfeit medicines from a public health perspective and without any consideration of intellectual property (IP) issues.

Last year, the WHO agreed to set up the intergovernmental working group to look into its handling of SSFFCs amid claims that counterfeits and legitimate generics were being conflated by those pursuing an IP rights agenda.

The Buenos Aires meeting is the first to be held since the mechanism was proposed, and has been convened to make decisions on the structure and governance of the platform. The agenda and documents from the ongoing meeting are available here.

Meanwhile, Attaran et al make the plea for an international treaty in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), in which they write that "the twin challenges of safeguarding the quality of genuine medicine and criminalising falsified ones has been held back by controversy over intellectual property rights and confusion over terms".

The international treaty should follow similar lines to those already in place to help fight counterfeiting of banknotes since the 1920s, and the recently-agreed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) that will "legally mandate global tracking and tracing for tobacco products and internationally criminalise illicit trade".

Among the measures proposed are a clear definition for the different types of illegitimate medicines - an attempt to tackle the oft-repeated claim that in some cases legislation confuses the term counterfeit with legitimate generic medicines - and the drawing up of specific crimes in international public health law on the manufacture, trafficking or sale of falsified medicines.

The academics also call for intergovernmental cooperation on the reporting, investigation and prosecution of falsification cases, including seizure of criminals' assets, and the drawing up of standards to assist in the creation of a track-and-trace system for medicines.

"WHO's member states should ask WHO staff to embark on a similar process to that which created the FCTC," write the authors of the article.

(source: www.securingindustry.com)

GENEVA (Xinhua) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said Saturday evening it is deeply concerned with the escalating situation in the Gaza Strip and Israel and its impact on the health and lives of civilians.

WHO said in a statement that before the hostilities began, health facilities had been severely over stretched mainly due to the siege of Gaza -- there has been a lack of investment in training, equipment and infrastructure, poor maintenance of medical equipment and frequent interruptions of power supplies.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza was also facing critical shortages of drugs and disposables, according to WHO.

Consequently, Gazan hospitals are now having to deal with the growing number of casualties with severely depleted medical supplies.

WHO is working with its partners and local authorities to ensure that essential medicines and medical consumables are delivered to where they are needed most.

WHO has appealed to the international and regional community for urgent financial support to provide essential medicines to cover pre-existing shortages, as well as emergency supplies for treating casualties and chronic illness.

The death toll of Palestinians has risen to 45 since Wednesday afternoon, with another 500 people injured, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said Saturday night.

(source : philstar.com)

SEOUL, South Korea - A South Korean Health Ministry official says 176 countries, including European Union members and China, have agreed on an international protocol to eliminate tobacco black markets.

If the protocol is ratified, the countries will be required to introduce systems to track tobacco products and regulate supply chains.

Illegal trade accounts for about 10 per cent of the tobacco market and results in lost tax revenue of $40.5 billion annually.

The agreement was reached at a meeting in Seoul of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The parties will also discuss guidelines on taxation.

The United States, Switzerland and Cuba are not bound by the pact since they are not parties to the convention.

(sumber: www.canadianbusiness.com)

7 November 2012 – A yellow fever outbreak in Sudan's Darfur region has killed 67 people so far, the United Nations health agency said today, adding that the number of cases has more than doubled since the start of the epidemic last month.

In a report, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the outbreak has now affected 17 localities in central, south, west and north Darfur, with 194 cases reported – a significant increase from the 84 initial cases reported at the start of the outbreak.

An estimated 200,000 cases of yellow fever, which is caused by a virus spread by mosquitoes, are recorded worldwide each year, with as many as 30,000 deaths reported, according to WHO. Patients experience jaundice, as well as other symptoms, such as fever and vomiting. There is no specific treatment for the disease and vaccination is the single most important measure for prevention.

In addition to monitoring the disease throughout Darfur, WHO said it is training more than 225 health workers in the region on disease surveillance, case management and infection prevention and control.

The health agency is also working with the Sudanese Ministry of Health to dispatch technical teams to help tame the outbreak by conducting investigations on new cases, meeting with local community leaders to raise awareness of the disease, and provide blood bank supplies as well as protective equipment to affected areas.

The report's recommendations also include strengthening disease surveillance in eastern Darfur, continuing laboratory testing of patients from newly affected localities, and finalizing a vaccination plan that identifies resources available as well as partners to implement it.

(sumber: un.org)

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia is promoting its hospitals and clinics as new tourism attractions besides tropical islands, fascinating beaches and rainforest, in an effort to brand the country as a healthcare travel destination.

Malaysian Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai said on Tuesday that high-quality and reasonable rates of the country's medical service is attracting more and more foreigner, with the number of foreign patients arrival achieved a impressive 48 percent increase to 583, 000 in 2011 compared with the previous year. The most appealing medical services is knee replacement, followed by cardiac care and cancer treatment, Liow said when opening the International Healthcare Travel Expo 2012, adding that Malaysia is "fast being recognized for the quality of its orthopedic treatment."

Malaysian government is working to position the country as a preferable healthcare destination in the region. Liow said Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council, an agency established by the government to develop and promote the healthcare travel industry, had set up a hotline for global enquiry.

The agency has opened representative offices in Dhaka, Bangladesh and in Jakarta, Indonesia, while its Hong Kong office would be operational next year, Liow said. A medical gallery would also be set up at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport and similar facilities might be put in place at other important gateways to the country.

Liow later told a press conference that his ministry was looking at the Korea, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and China as increasing health tourists influx from these countries.

Meanwhile, Malaysia would promote traditional treatments like acupuncture from China besides modern medicine, he said.

( nzweek.com)

Saudi Arabia has reported another human infection with the new coronavirus that emerged earlier this year. The case is the third confirmed infection caused by the newly identified virus, which is from the same family as SARS.

The report of the new case comes at a sensitive time. The Hajj, the annual pilgrimage made by Muslims to the holy city of Mecca, concluded last week. The Hajj brings over two million Muslims from around the world to Saudi Arabia.

Those pilgrims will now be making their way back to their home countries. The Saudi Ministry of the Hajj website says the final day for Hajj pilgrims to depart Saudi Arabia is Nov. 29.

Dr. Ziad Memish, the Saudi deputy minister of health, reported the new case Sunday via ProMED, an Internet-based infectious diseases monitoring system closely watched by public health officials around the world.

Memish said the man, who lives in the capital city, Riyadh, had no links to the two earlier cases of infection with the new virus. The first known case was a Saudi man who died in June, the second a Qatari man who is in hospital in Britain. He became ill in early September.

Memish did not reveal when the newest case was spotted, but it was clearly not in the last day or two. The man, who was admitted to hospital with pneumonia, had been in intensive care but has now recovered to the point where he has been moved to a different ward.

As well, some work have already been done to see if any people who had contact with the man have been or are sick. If there were reports of illness among people with contact with the man, it would suggest the virus might be spreading person to person. But single cases are more suggestive of transmission from an animal source to humans.

"With regard to the patient's current status, he is recovering and out of intensive care," Memish said.

"We have done preliminary investigations of family members and contacts including health-care workers. There are no apparent secondary cases at this time, however these investigations are on-going."

The man visited a farm about a week prior to becoming ill, Memish said in his dispatch. He did not say what types of animals were found on the farm.

It has been reported that the man from Qatar also had a farm where he kept camels and sheep.

Several teams of international experts, from the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University have spent time in Saudi Arabia looking for the possible source of the virus.

A study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine hypothesized that the virus probably derives from pipistrellus bats, a conclusion drawn from comparing the genetic sequence of the virus to other known coronaviruses and the species that carry them.

But that report could not say whether the virus moved directly from bats to people — perhaps through exposure to bat guano or some other contact — or from a bat to another animal and from it to people.

Memish said the World Health Organization had been alerted to the new case, as required by the International Health Regulations. That treaty requires all countries to notify the WHO of disease outbreaks that could have international significance.

(sumber: www.timescolonist.com)

20 million lives saved through TB investments in last two decades, says WHO, launching call for more progress

An estimated 20 million people are alive today due to mass TB (tuberculosis) programmes, reveals a WHO global TB report...

The health organisation is celebrating the role of leadership in endemic countries and international donor support, but appeals for increased efforts to break the disease...

"In the space of 17 years 51 million people have been successfully treated and cared for according to WHO recommendations...

"Without that treatment, 20 million people would have died..." said Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Stop TB Department, following the release of the WHO Global Tuberculosis Report 2012.

"The momentum to break this disease is in real danger. We are now at a crossroads between TB elimination within our lifetime, and millions more TB deaths..." says Dr Raviglione.

Despite progress on TB elimination the health org's report has identified a current funding gap of USD 1.4 billion for research, and a further USD 3 billion per year funding gap between 2013 and 2015, which if unmet could have severe consequences for TB control.

This gap threatens to hinder delivery of TB care to patients and weaken programmes that prevent and control TB spread, with those in low-income countries in most danger, says WHO.

While a continued decline in the number of people falling sick from TB has been reported the disease remains a major infectious killer with 8.7 million new cases identified in 2011.

WHO is calling for increased targeted international donor funding, and continued investments by countries where TB is endemic - to defend progress in recent years, and ensure continued development towards TB eradication.

90 per cent of financing for TB control is provided by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the global fundraising organisation.

To date, the non-profit organisation has dedicated USD 22.9 billion in 151 countries to support wide-scale prevention, treatment and care initiatives supporting disease eradication.

( www.xperedon.com)