The Danish Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (DIPS) is organising an international symposium on 2-3 October 2015 at Comwell Klarskovgaard, Korsør. The scientific programme, and registration form can be found at DIPS’s homepage.
Established in October 2011, DIPS is a society for Paediatricians, Physicians, Academics and other healthcare personal who have an interest in Paediatric Infectious Diseases (PID). The purpose of the society is to promote education and research related to PID.
An article at www.nature.com titled After years of second-class status in research partnerships, African scientists are calling for change by Linda Nordling, discusses the important issue of equality in research.
The Nairobi Industrial Court agreed that six Kenyan doctors in an international research partnership had been systematically passed over for promotion and training, whereas their European colleagues had flourished. It was also perhaps the first time that African researchers had so strongly — and so publicly — voiced resentment of their perceived second-class status in partnerships with foreign colleagues. African scientists say that they often feel stuck in positions such as data-collectors and laboratory technicians, with no realistic path to develop into leaders.
Read the article Africa’s fight for equality.
Join us for the Global Health Minders’ Annual Meeting Wednesday 24 June 2015 at 10.00-12.00.
The meeting will be held at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Anthropology, Meeting room 16.0.30 (Building 16, ground floor, room 30), CSS, Øster Farimagsgade 5.
Please let us know if you will attend the meeting by email to no later than Monday 22 June.
In the GHM Controversial Issue Brief titled ‘How can we collaborate with Big Pharma in global health?‘, Nicolai Lohse writes:
The combination of pharmaceutical companies and global health invariably makes one think of the huge lack of access to medicine in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Drugs are either not affordable, not available at all, only available intermittently due to frequent pharmacy stock-outs, of poor quality, ineffective, or they are counterfeit and may even be unsafe.
Making quality medicine available, affordable, and accessible to all who need them is extremely complicated and requires a coordinated effort by many global health actors – including the pharmaceutical industry. In this need for collaborative solutions lies also the key to involving drug companies as a partner in global health.
Download the brief on Big Pharma.
Photo credit: Erling Høg
A meeting Ebola and Development: The reality of causes and consequences of Ebola in West Africa takes place in Copenhagen on Wednesday May 27, at 17.00-21.00. The meeting will discuss why Ebola attracted such international attention, when the number of death after all is relatively small compared, e.g., to the about 6,500 children dying every day from vaccine preventable diseases? The meeting will also talk about the lessons learned from the outbreak and how future threats from Ebola across the complex urban and rural landscapes that now define modern Africa be managed?
Global Health Minders chairman Morten Sodemann is one of the speakers at the event. He will contextualize the recent Ebola outbreak within the overall public health picture in Africa, the international health regulations, and the social determinants of the disease
Read more at IUG’s website.
WHO’s World Immunisation Week 2015 is launched today with the message “Close the immunization gap”. It draws attention to the Global Vaccine Action Plan and the 5 of 6 targets, which the world is not on track to achieve in 2015.
The message focuses on the 21.8 million infants – equal to 1 in 5 of the world’s infants – who do not receive the third diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTP3). The message states that up to 3 million lives are being saved each year by vaccines while 1.5 million still die from vaccine preventable diseases.
But if we want to focus on child mortality, merely calculating the number of deaths caused and averted by vaccine preventable diseases and coverage of DTP3 is insufficient. Vaccines have more wide ranging effects than specific disease protection.
At WhyDev.org, Sandrine Bohan-Jacquot argues that health is an educational issue and lists six health-related issues that in her view are some of the biggest hindrances to inclusive education in developing countries.
But is education then a health issue? Read what Mette Holm writes about education and health in a GHM background article.