Credit: Jonathan Stillo
You may remember last year when RESULTS UK came out with a report called “Tuberculosis: Voices in the Fight Against the European Epidemic“. The report featured the voices and stories of the individuals and communities who have been fighting TB on the ground. One of the stories we featured was that of Iulian, a Romanian who had contracted multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and had been forced to break off his TB treatment in order to go back to work to support his family.
This week we received they terribly sad news that Iulian developed extensively-drug resistant TB (XDR-TB) and passed away a few weeks ago. Jonathan Stillo, who interviewed Iulian for our TB Voices report, has written an incredibly powerful and inspiring obituary titled “An Obituary for Iulian, a Romanian XDR-TB Patient, Husband, Father, and my Friend“. We have included an excerpt here telling of Jonathan’s return to the sanatorium and seeing Iulian the last time before he died:
We went room by room accompanied by the Romanian National TB Manager and handed out little care packages to the patients. It was a bittersweet return for me because so many of the patients I had grown close with were already dead. About halfway down one hall, our procession came to a halt and a nurse told me there was someone who wanted to see me inside. As I got closer I saw it was Iulian. She whispered in my ear that he was much worse and now had XDR. She started to cry. As I entered the room he had a huge smile on his face and said “Hey Jon!” He was smiling ear to ear, but looked terrible. His cheeks were sunken and his skin was hot with fever. He looked so frail. My heart sank. He told me that he was much worse, but that he was still fighting. He died two months later in his home with the people he loved so dearly. He once told me: “Here in Romania, if you don’t work, you starve to death. There are two options: you take the TB pills and get better but starve, or you work and have to come back to the sanatorium. So it’s a lose-lose situation.” These words couldn’t be truer. In Romania, every day, TB patients are forced to make impossible choices between their own well-being and that of their family. Iulian chose his family. I’m sure he doesn’t regret it.
Iulian’s death may not have been caused by, but was certainly hastened by a shortage of one of the drugs he needed. Nine months before he died, his local dispensary, as well as the sanatorium, were out of ciprofloxacin. This drug is inexpensive and since 2008 has been replaced in World Health Organization treatment protocols by a more effective but expensive one (ofloxacin). Romanians are guaranteed free TB treatment, but drug stock-outs are common. This stock-out and subsequent treatment interruption probably caused Iulian to develop XDR-TB.
The full obituary can be read by clicking here.
Iulian’s story was the most powerful story we received for the TB Voices report, and it reminds us why the work we do matters. Iulian’s death was preventable, which is why it is so important that we continue to call on decision makers to listen and to take genuine political action to tackle this disease.
Our thoughts are with Iulian’s family during this difficult time.
The Home office has announced that those travelling to the UK could be screened for tuberculosis (TB) before being granted a visa. The new rules will apply to those who wish to spend over six months in the UK and come from a country deemed to have a high incidence of TB – 40 cases per 100,000. The new policy will cover over 60 countries including China, South Africa and Russia.
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) have welcomed the announcement from the Home Office and noted that they had been concerned for a number of years that the current policy of chest x-rays at Heathrow and Gatwick is not an cost effective or appropriate way of dealing with TB.
Why have the Home Office made this change?
The policy change has been driven by a review by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) with support from the HPA and Department of Health of the current arrangements for screening migrants from high incidence countries for active pulmonary TB to better protect UK public health and to use public resources more effectively. The scheme, which is employed in the USA, Australia and Canada, has already been piloted in 15 countries by the UKBA and will be introduced in three phases over an 18 month period – beginning in the summer of 2012.
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Speakers at a training session on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Odek County, Uganda. Photo by Bryan Lupton AP Fellow in Gulu, Uganda July 2009 Partner: Survivor Corps Uganda
15% of the world’s population – over a billion people – live with a disability, and disabled people are also disproportionately more likely to be among the extremely poor. The World Bank estimate that 20% of people living below $1.25 a day are disabled. The link between disability and poverty works both ways: disabled people are more likely to become poor, and poverty is also a major cause of disability. Disabled people are frequently excluded from accessing basic services, including education (approximately one third of out of school children of primary age have a disability) and health (disabled people are more likely than non-disabled people to report being denied access to healthcare, not being able to access appropriate healthcare, and being badly treated by healthcare professionals).
But despite this, there has historically been very little attention to the rights and needs of disabled people in development work. There is no mention at all of disability in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This is a serious problem – discrimination against disabled people frequently leads to being trapped in a cycle of extreme poverty for life, and there is far too little done to address the specific problems faced by such a big section of the population that the MDGs are supposed to target.
But is this changing? We have seen encouraging signs in recent months that disability is moving up the list of priorities in the development sector. RESULTS has been working with BOND’s Disability and Development Group and with an informal group of NGOs who are campaigning together on the need to improve disabled children’s access to quality education in the developing world, and we are seeing more receptivity to our messages. Continue reading →
Posted in Disability, International Institutions
Tagged AK Dube, BOND Disability and Development Group, David Cameron, DFID, Disability, Education, Education for All, Global Health, Inclusion, MDGs, Post-2015, RESULTS, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, WHO, World Report on Disability
Today’s blog comes from Nick Horslen, who took part in this year’s Live Below the Line challenge for RESULTS UK. Nick is also a Global Poverty Project Ambassador and social entrepreneur. He was invited to speak at a celebratory event at the House of Lords at the close of the campaign. Here is what he had to say about his experience.
“Good evening, my name is Nick Horslen. Let me start by first of all offering my thanks, support and applause to everyone involved with LBL and to the many organisations aiming to eradicate extreme poverty here tonight, and especially my friends as sponsors. Let me also stand here and humbly share my five day experience in three minutes as I’ve been invited to do.
I’m here because my mum Joan was born in extreme poverty here in the UK in 1936, she was dumped in a field at the age of two days old in the east end of London by her mother, that level of neglect is the depths of poverty for me, whatever the reasons that we never did find out. She went on to raise five kids, of whom I’m the middle one and my elder sister Tina born in 1956 died in extreme poverty in 2011 and is buried in a field on the boarder of Guyana and Brazil. She could not get back to Georgetown because of the lack of transport and healthcare on the border between Brazil and Guyana, something as simple as a tropical storm prevented her getting back to her loved ones. That lack of choice and control was what poverty does to people.
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Today’s post comes from Ejike Ndaji. Ejike has a Masters in International and European Law and is currently a trainee solicitor in England.
The fight against Polio (poliomyelitis) received a boost last week with the launch of an ‘emergency action plan’ by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). The news follows recent fears about the resurgence of the disease in countries such as the Congo and China where the disease was thought to have been eradicated.
Polio is a disease caused by a virus which operates within its victims’ nervous system. It affects children mainly under the age of five and often leads to paralysis and in some cases death.
The plan devised by the GPEI involves increasing the WHO’s current vaccination programmes in Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the only three countries where polio remains endemic, to levels needed to prevent the transmission of the disease. If the programme is successful in eradicating the disease, polio will become only the second disease ever to have been eradicated after small pox.
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We are delighted to announce that a European parliament Written Declaration has been passed after reaching, and exceeding, 372 MEP signatories. The Declaration is currently standing at 398. You can watch a video of the declaration being passed here
This particular Written Declaration was tabled by a group of MEPs including Mary Honeyball MEP who represents members of the RESULTS London groups. The RESULTS July 2011 action on EU financing for vaccination played an important role in getting the Declaration tabled.
The Declaration makes three points:
1. Congratulates the Commission on the support it has given to the GAVI via the Development Cooperation Instrument and the European Development Fund between 2003 and 2012;
2. Urges the Commission to make a continued commitment to reducing the number of vaccine-preventable deaths in its future external actions;
3. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the parliaments of the Member States.
Now that the Declaration has passed, there are a number of possible further actions which MEPs can take to further the agenda set out in the WD within the European Parliamentary system, putting increased access to vaccination firmly on the agenda. We will be working hard to maximise this exposure and make use of all possible advocacy channels with our colleagues in Europe.
This is an excellent step forward for our EU advocacy work and shows the strong support among MEPs for global health and vaccination, the collaboration between RESULTS UK, the ONE Campaign Brussels and Global Health Advocates France has been crucial in making this happen. RESULTS grassroots have also played a key role in helping to reach the required number of signatories, contacting those members that were slow to sign and building public support for the declaration.
The UK International Development Select Committee report on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was released today. RESULTS UK has been following this process closely, given the critical importance of the Global Fund in the fight against these three killer diseases, particularly tuberculosis (TB), with our Executive Director, Aaron Oxley, being called on to give oral evidence to the Select Committee.
The Chair of the Committee, Malcolm Bruce MP, summed up the findings with:
The UK has been a reliable partner to the Global Fund but we are concerned at the continued delay in providing additional funds. We strongly urge the Department for International Development to do all possible to commit funds earlier than 2013. A significant increase by the UK could help to catalyse contributions from other donors.
There has been some welcome news since we completed our report with the Global Fund announcing £630 million in new funds. It is also reassuring to see other countries such as Japan stepping up to the plate with their largest ever annual contribution. Other donors – including the UK – also must commit new funds in the coming months if the Global Fund is to return to full operation speedily and carry on doing what it does best – saving lives.
We at RESULTS couldn’t agree more. Continue reading →
Posted in Department for International Development, Global Health, International Institutions, News, TB
Tagged AIDS, gfatm, Global Fund, IDC, Inquiry, International Development Select Committee, Malaria, news, TB
This World AIDS Vaccine Day, 18th May 2012, the UK Consortium on AIDS and International Development working groups on TB-HIV and Prevention held an event which sought to address the importance of TB and HIV vaccines in assisting in getting to zero deaths from TB-HIV. The key message which came across during the meeting was that a vaccine is possible and that we not only have the tools to develop TB and Aids vaccines but we are well on the way towards doing so, with sustained and predictable funding.
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Posted in Child Survival, Department for International Development, TB, Vaccines, immunisation
Tagged GAVI, Health, hiv/aids, IAVI, Imperial, LSHTM, Oxford Emergent TB Consortium, UK consortium on AIDS and International Development, World AIDS Vaccine Day
A number of prevention strategies have been implemented in recent years in an attempt to halt the spread of HIV, from voluntary medically supervised adult male circumcision, prevention of mother-to-child transmission and treatment as prevention. These interventions have undoubedly prevented millions from infection. However, with 2.7 million new HIV infections in 2010 alone it is becoming quite clear that the best chance we have of controlling, and ultimately ending, the HIV/AIDS pandemic will require combining current prevention stategies with an effective vaccine.
A statement by Anthony Fauci, M.D. Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), brings new hope that, with conststant research and funding, a successful HIV vaccine may become available in the not too distant future.
There have been a number of encouraging developments over the last year, with a number of NIAID-sponsored HIV vaccine clinical trials under way. The largest of these is examining whether a prime-boost vaccine regimen can prevent HIV infection or reduce the amount of virus in the blood of those participants who become infected despite vaccination.
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We are delighted to announce that a European Parliament Written Declaration that is currently under signature has passed 300 signatories. A Written Declaration is a statement by members of the European Parliament calling on the European Commission to undertake a specific action on a policy decision. In order to pass and thus be debated in plenary, a Written Declaration needs to be signed, in person, by over half of the parliament’s MEPs, which currently stands at 378.
This particular Written Declaration was tabled by a group of MEPs including Mary Honeyball who represents members of the RESULTS London groups. The RESULTS July 2011 action on EU financing for vaccination played an important role in getting the Declaration tabled.
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