This Week's Highlights - Crowdsourcing, Polio, Super Mosquitoes and More

by Lillian Gu · 2009-08-23 04:36:00 UTC
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(image credit: brain_malfunction)

Basics

This week is packed with great articles on global health. To start off, check out this post by your Global Health Guide Alanna Shaikh: Four Reasons Everyone Should Care About Global Health. On World Humanitarian Day, Alanna gives us a call to action and a list of 5 ideas for how to make a difference in the world.

Also, guest blogger Michael Keizer examines whether or not the US health system is "inequitable" based on Dahlgren and Whitehead's definition of inequity. Technical definition aside, many people in the US believe that healthcare reform is overdue, and Alanna predicts that health care reform will result in Less Research and Development from Drug Companies - which will be a good thing.

News & Analysis

This week brings some disheartening global health news. One study in Atlanta, Georgia found that "mosquitoes living in contaminated streams lay more eggs, and those eggs grow into bigger mosquitoes that fly faster and reproduce more than those in clean water." Another study in Brazil found that an intervention promoting solar water disinfection had no impact on diarrhea incidence whatsoever.

At least the water disinfection intervention did not have a negative health effect like the live, oral polio vaccine; it's reported that 124 Nigerian children have been paralyzed by the polio vaccine this year because of mutations in the live, attenuated virus. Not surprisingly, living in slums is also detrimental to your health. A recent NEJM study shows that people living in megacity slums are less healthy than people in rural areas. Also harmful are deceiving Homeopathic Treatments (i.e. water in fancy packaging) that prevent people from seeking real treatment for HIV, malaria, TB, influenza and infant diarrhea.

In light of the H1N1 flu outbreak, guest blogger Carol Dunn has been addressing the issue of pandemic flu preparedness. In this final post, she outlines both behavior and policy changes for people to avoid the worst effects of pandemic flu.

Career Advice

Looking for an internship? Alanna gives some useful tips on how to identify good internships from the job description, as well as in the interview.

Kudos

Our comment of the week is from Scot Frank on the What Can Crowdsourcing Do for Global Health? post. Scot tells us about Citizen Water who is already using crowdsourcing to magnify their impact. Remember to share your thoughts with us in the comments, so you can be the next winner, and earn a charity gift on Change.org.

Lillian Gu
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