Science and tech for global health

According to the WHO, bad air quality was responsible for 7 million deaths in 2012. In this interview Paulo Saldiva, dean of the department of pathology at the University of São Paulo, explains that there are no measures to protect people against air pollution, and so public health policies are vital to avoid serious consequences, particularly in large cities. He says the science needed to address the risks of air pollution is in place, but that poor countries lack the resources to implement it with solutions that work locally.

http://www.scidev.net/global/pollution/multimedia/local-science-tackle-air-pollution.html

Q&A: A call for local science to tackle air pollution

Find out how community-based drug outlets in the Philippines provide cheaper medicines and boost healthcare. 

How village pharmacies are aiding the Philippines’ poor

In this audio interview, economist Rana Roy discusses new evidence of the toll of air pollution in China and India.

Q&A: Putting a price on deaths from vehicle pollution

Public health responses to the Ebola crisis neglected to build trust among affected people, and more must be done to engage with the ‘human factor’ when disease outbreaks occur, anthropologist Heidi Larson warns in this audio interview. 

Larson, director of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, says crisis response programmes must address public fears around disease. One critical lesson to emerge from the Ebola epidemic, she says, is that failing to focus on communication and trust-building with communities early on can lead to heightened fears and misinformation that jeopardises safety and helps a disease spread.

Social scientists and medical experts need to work hand-in-hand to devise responses, Larson says, because “a public health or medical expert and an anthropologist will look at the same situation and notice very different things”.

The interview was recorded at ‘Ebola – The 21st-century plague?’, a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine, United Kingdom, on 6 February. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/health/multimedia/community-trust-epidemics-ebola-audio.html


Q&A: How building community trust helps combat epidemics

Although antiretroviral drugs are not a cure, they can stop people infected with HIV from developing AIDS by keeping the amount of virus in the body low.

This audio feature explores a UK trial that used the antiretroviral drug Truvada to prevent a group of homosexual volunteers, considered at risk of contracting HIV, from doing so. Although the drug was successful in the United Kingdom, experts warn that more effort will be needed to develop targeted campaigns to administer the treatment  in regions where HIV is endemic, such as Sub-Saharan Africa.

HIV trial holds promise for preventing infection

When the media reports on the fight against tuberculosis, it’s usually the scientific innovations that get coverage — the hunt for more effective vaccines, drugs and diagnostic tools.  

But an issue that deserves attention is the creative approaches to TB care adopted by those shouldering most of the burden: nurses. In countries where health systems are poorly funded and understaffed — 95 per cent of TB deaths are in low- and middle-income countries — nurses play a vital role, often acting as the primary care givers for patients who might rarely, if ever, see a doctor. 

In this interview for World TB Day, we speak to Gini Williams, a TB nurse consultant and pioneer of nurse training programmes. “It’s no good having new diagnostics and treatments if you don’t have access to them and [don’t] have people who know how to use them,” Williams says. ”Services and systems around supporting patients are very important.”   

The “human nature” of TB — a debilitating disease that can take months or years to cure, where the effectiveness of treatment hinges on an individual’s needs, responses and circumstances  — demands treatments that take into account more than the purely medical, Williams says. Treatment requires a holistic approach factoring in in people’s social, economic, environmental situations and psychological needs. And nurses are often best-placed to address these and to provide the patient support and education so vital to controlling TB.

Yet nurses rarely get rigorous TB training — rarer still training that focuses on the breadth of approaches needed to tackle the disease. Williams and her colleagues at the International Council of Nurses TB Project have therefore created training courses  designed and run by nurses, for nurses. These have led to improvements in infection control, made diagnostic processes more robust, and have strengthened relationships between both labs and clinics, and nurses and patients. 

Nurses have also been trained to research what techniques work where and how to improve systems, Williams says. This both helps strengthen TB response, and means that nurses can take the lead in shaping interventions to improve the lives and treatment outcomes of millions of people.

The interview was recorded yesterday at King’s College London, United Kingdom, at the opening of an exhibition of photographs by TB nurses in South Africa, organised by TB researcher Uta Grosse. 

http://www.scidev.net/global/tb/multimedia/innovative-training-nurses-tb-care.html


Innovative training for nurses on front-line of TB care

SciDev.Net podcasts look at key global development issues and the ways in which science can have a positive impact on equitable and sustainable development and poverty reduction. 