Ministers of health, donor agencies, philanthropists, and international agencies will meet at Bamako, Mali, in November, 2008, to review global priorities for health research. These individuals and organisations previously set health priorities for WHO, either through its regular budget or extra-budgetary funds. We asked what insights can be gained as to their priorities from previous decisions within the context of WHO.
In rural India, most births take place in the home, where high-risk care practices are common. The researchers developed an intervention of behaviour change management, with a focus on prevention of hypothermia, aimed at modifying practices and reducing neonatal mortality.
The Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI) strategy and associated clinical care guidelines were developed in the mid-1990s to reduce mortality from major diseases in children younger than 5 years. Countries have been encouraged to follow a structured process to adapt the IMCI guidelines to their own
The explosion of cardiovascular disease in India may not only be bad for the country's health, it could also be bad for its economy. If the surge continues, it could decrease India's productivity and overwhelm its already struggling public-health system, say experts.
The World Bank's press release on May 20 on the launch of the Commission on Growth and Development's report quoted the Commission's chairperson, Mike Spence as saying that the report "kills off once and for all the misguided notion that you can lift people out of poverty in the absence of growth". One might suppose that the report analyses the links between growth and poverty. It does not. (Comment)
The problem of easy availability and increasing use of smokeless tobacco products by young people of South Asian origin in the UK needs to be urgently addressed. Legislation exists, but is often flouted.
Malaria is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in early childhood, yet its consequences for health and education during the school-age years remain poorly understood. The researchers examined the effect of intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) in reducing anaemia and improving classroom attention and educational achievement in semi-immune schoolchildren in an area of high perennial transmission.
Children living in areas of high malaria transmission rapidly acquire immunity to malaria in early childhood; by the time they reach school age, the risk of clinical attacks and death has reduced.However, many school-aged children continue to harbour asymptomatic parasitaemia, which can cause anaemia.4 Although
malaria might have an adverse eff ect on cognition and education outcomes, evidence for this has so far been lacking, and the case for school-based malaria control has not been established.
The past 4 years has seen several legislative developments to tackle Europe's growing obesity problem including food labelling, controls on junk-food advertising to children, and bans on fizzy drinks in school vending machines. But critics say they are not enough.
