- Cross-Country Study of Health and Well-Being of the Older Populations http://t.co/OdLNVzxb
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“The world’s population is aging, primarily as a function of declining fertility, coupled with increasing life expectancy. Aging is occurring not only in high-income countries but in middle- and low-income countries as well. Moreover, the speed of aging in middle- and low-income countries will outpace that of the high-income countries (Kinsella and He, 2009). Although considerable attention has been paid to the aging of populations around the world, the vast majority of this attention and related research has focused on higher-income countries. Yet about 65 percent of the world’s population 60 years and older lived in less developed countries in 2010, and this proportion is projected to be 80 percent by the year 2050 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).”
“As part of this greater effort, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Study on global AGEing and adult health (SAGE) is working to improve measurement strategies across countries, while recognizing the need for further exploration to understand what underpins cross-country health differences (Kowal, et al., 2010). SAGE was conducted in six countries—China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa—across four different world regions (Figure 1). In addition to the consideration of geographic range and population size, these countries were representative of low- to upper-middle income countries and were at different stages of the demographic and epidemiological transitions (see Appendix C for more information on selection of SAGE countries).”
p95-12-01.pdf
Call for Expressions of Interest
“This call aims to explore the connections between medicines and three other functions of health systems: health financing, governance and health information. ”
Priority-research questions include the following:
- In risk protection schemes, which innovations and policies improve equitable access to and appropriate use of quality medicines, sustainability of the scheme, and financial impact on beneficiaries?
- How do policies and other interventions into private markets impact on access to and appropriate use of quality medicines?
- How can stakeholders use information and data routinely collected and available in the system in a transparent way towards improving access to and use of quality medicines?
Download Call for Expression of Interest
The Wits University Fund appears to have lost the plot in their recent “Awards Dinner Invitation” (link below). Who in their right mind is willing to pay $300 for an individual ticket to attend this event. If you want a Patron table, you need $25,000. Come on Wits, what’s with this old, elitist model of fundraising? Wits, you have to make these things more accessible to all your graduates! For example, $30 dollars from 10 people is surely better than $300 from one person.
A link to the online Registration Form
Update 3 May 2012
Both Peter Maher (Director: Alumni Relations, Wits University) and Bill Newton (Volunteer Executive Director, Wits Fund) replied to the above post. I do not have their permission to post their replies, but below follows my response to their emails.
Dear Peter and Bill,
Let me start by thanking you for your reply but more importantly for managing, as a volunteer, the Wits Fund (Bill). It’s a thankless task for which very few benefits accrue to you, other than being associated with Wits University and having at your disposal a conduit for tax-exempt donations. It’s an unfortunate reality that running and managing such institutions is usually left to a handful of very passionate and dedicated individuals, such as yourselves.
Bill, your email suggests that individuals pay $300 to celebrate four individuals that have contributed significant time and financial support to Wits University. This just does not seem to be the right people to award or congratulate. What of the many hundreds of Wits graduates across North America and the World that are contributing in their chosen professional fields – academically, professionally, and in various humanitarian initiatives. It is these hundreds that Wits should be celebrating and not a handful of individuals. Some are fantastic innovators, others are on the cutting edge of policy reform, and others are changing the World in the best way they see fit. I completely understand your point that this is a fundraising event, and if it’s not a alumni cultivation event then the initiative should not, in my opinion, carry the name of Wits University. It should simply be a fundraising event for a select group of individuals irrespective of their affiliation with Wits University. However, it appears that your fundraising model depends entirely on your association with Wits. If the Wits Fund depends on Wits University for much of its activities, then it should be more transparent in how it runs its activities. For instance, in the interest of good governance, do you make available financial statements and annual reports on your activities? Surely, for a Fund associated with WIts University, this should be the minimum requirement, don’t you think?
Peter and Bill, let me be clear. My criticism of the fundraising model is exactly that, a focused message questioning the relevance and appropriateness of the fundraising strategy employed for the award dinner. The model suggests that individuals unable to pay for an individual ticket (the majority) are unwelcome. Like I said in my message posted online, it is an old and elitist model of fundraising. On this topic I could comment extensively, however, to be brief, I’d like to highlight that there are lessons to be learnt from the fundraising modernization associated with US President electoral campaigns. So, my comments were not aimed at soliciting an invitation to become a Wits ambassador, or to be associated with the Wits Fund, or to participate in alumni cultivation activities Peter suggests. On all these fronts, I wish you the best of luck in your work.
Like I suggested in my initial message, collecting $30 from 10 people is in my opinion a far more inclusive process than collecting $300 from one person. Thank you again for all the work that you have put into establishing and running the WIts Fund. If the Fund is a private initiative unwilling or unable to reform its fundraising model, then alternative approaches should be developed that are inclusive and that celebrate the majority and not only a handful of individuals.
Many thanks and all the best,
João L. Carapinha
The commonly held hypothesis that antibiotic resistance arises through (over)exposure to antibiotics is questioned in this new research. It weakens the link between resistance and antibiotic use and suggests that ”… antibiotic resistance is natural, ancient, and hard wired in the microbial pangenome.” This has implications for how we think about R&D around antibiotics and how public and private resources are spent to combat antibiotic resistance.
The abstract and link to the paper follows below, and here is a link to news coverage on the topic.
Antibiotic resistance is a global challenge that impacts all pharmaceutically used antibiotics. The origin of the genes associated with this resistance is of significant importance to our understanding of the evolution and dissemination of antibiotic resistance in pathogens. A growing body of evidence implicates environmental organisms as reservoirs of these resistance genes; however, the role of anthropogenic use of antibiotics in the emergence of these genes is controversial. We report a screen of a sample of the culturable microbiome of Lechuguilla Cave, New Mexico, in a region of the cave that has been isolated for over 4 million years. We report that, like surface microbes, these bacteria were highly resistant to antibiotics; some strains were resistant to 14 different commercially available antibiotics. Resistance was detected to a wide range of structurally different antibiotics including daptomycin, an antibiotic of last resort in the treatment of drug resistant Gram-positive pathogens. Enzyme-mediated mechanisms of resistance were also discovered for natural and semi-synthetic macrolide antibiotics via glycosylation and through a kinase-mediated phosphorylation mechanism. Sequencing of the genome of one of the resistant bacteria identified a macrolide kinase encoding gene and characterization of its product revealed it to be related to a known family of kinases circulating in modern drug resistant pathogens. The implications of this study are significant to our understanding of the prevalence of resistance, even in microbiomes isolated from human use of antibiotics. This supports a growing understanding that antibiotic resistance is natural, ancient, and hard wired in the microbial pangenome.
OPEN LETTER TO THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE WORLD BANK IN SUPPORT OF DR. NGOZI OKONJO-IWEALA’S CANDIDACY FOR PRESIDENT
Dear Honourable Board of Directors,
As the Graduates of the NEPAD Business Foundation African Leadership Programme (NBF-ALP) we proactively contribute towards changes that support good governance. We collaborate in ways that aim at ensuring inclusiveness and improving institutions to support growth in developing nations. As future leaders we are conscious that identifying and supporting competent and deserving candidates is an important element in our work.
We are concerned with the historical practice among European and American representatives to preserve the Presidency of the World Bank among candidates from these regions. This practice erodes global inclusiveness, ignores emerging regions such as Africa, and overlooks formidable and competent leaders. As a consequence, the tacit arrangement threatens and weakens the World Bank’s credibility in low and middle-income countries, the current and future drivers of global economic development. There are candidates that are as good if not better than those appointed by tradition, such as Dr. Okonjo-Iweala.
Unlike other candidates, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has a long history with the Bank starting as a development economist and more recently serving as its Managing Director. She was instrumental in various reform initiatives on economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle-East, and East Asia. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has the respect of many leaders of low and middle-income countries, and the international community. She is embedded in relevant social networks that will facilitate the implementation of real-world policies. Moreover, if the Bank is serious about gender equity, as it professes in many of its activities, then appointing Dr. Okonjo-Iweala will be a reaffirmation of your commitment to these ideals. To this end, we resolutely support Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s candidacy for President of the World Bank. It’s an opportunity to implement the World Bank’s international strategy through a new brand of African leadership.
In many ways the Bank’s main challenge in low and middle-income countries is to root-out corruption at the level of governments and the private sector. Your credibility to do so depends on your willingness to acknowledge and build relationships with these very countries and acknowledge the rich human capital and capability of these nations. If the Bank looks beyond its outdated arrangement among European and American representatives, and seeks beyond your own confines for competent, alternative candidates, you will find that you will be lead to Dr. Okonjo-Iweala.
Yours sincerely
| João Carapinha | Layla Gibbons | Desyree Lotter |
| Anisa Mills | Aaron Shamu | Egideo Leite |
| Boma Anga | Ama Ayivor | Lungelwa Tyali |
| Oyesola Oyebanji |
Graduates of the NBF-ALP
______________________________________________________________________________
About the NEPAD Business Foundation (NBF) African Leadership Programme (ALP)
The NBF ALP concentrates on enhancing capacity and leadership potential of African top managers from the public and private sectors s well as NGOs.
About the NEPAD Business Foundation
The NBF operates in South Africa with extensive business networks in the Southern African sub-region and the Continent as a whole, driven by the vision to contribute to a vibrant African economy through private sector development, thus positioning the continent as competitive global player. The mission of the NBF is to support the delivery of the NEPAD objectives through the active participation of Africa’s private sector.
