Category: World health

World Blood Donor Day: What can you do? Give blood, give now, give often

By Stella Nikolaou, Clinical Research Fellow, The Royal Marsden Hospital and Imperial College London and Shahnawaz Rasheed, Consultant Surgeon, The Royal Marsden Hospital and Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London.

Worldwide, there are more than 5 million people who die from violence and injury1. Uncontrolled bleeding causes more than 40% of trauma-related deaths1. More than 530 000 women die each year during pregnancy, childbirth or post partum and 99% of these women are in low and middle-income countries with severe bleeding being the commonest cause of death1. Safe and affordable surgery, therefore relies on access to a sufficient volume of blood which can be safely transfused2.

SMILE – a smart vaccine cooling system for the last-mile journey in developing countries

By Kitty Liao and Abellona U of Ideabatic, IGHI’s 2017 Student Challenges Competition winners

Each year, there are two to three million children who die of a vaccine-preventable disease and there are 19.4 million who are unable to receive basic immunisation. One of the main reasons behind these figures is that the carrier boxes currently used to carry vaccines during the last miles of the delivery journey are incapable of sustaining the vaccines at the required temperature range for the entire duration of the journey. This is an urgent global health issue and Ideabatic is developing a solution called SMILE— a smart last-mile cooling and delivery system to address these problems.

Implementing Universal Health Coverage in India and around the world

Universal Health Coverage (UHC) Day (12th December) highlights the growing consensus that health coverage should be for everyone. On this day in 2012, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for countries to provide affordable, quality health care to every person across the world. Since then, governments have been urged to move towards this.

Global Diffusion of Healthcare Innovation: Making the connections

The diffusion or spread of innovations over time through a specific population or social system is important to unlock the potential benefits of an innovation. There has been much study of how to encourage the uptake of innovations so that they become part of everyday practice and benefit many, rather than a few. In this research, we explore this from the demand side. This report, ‘Global Diffusion of Healthcare Innovation: Making the connections’, which is to be discussed this morning at the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) looks at how frontline health workers (FHWs) and leaders find solutions to their everyday challenges, and which sources are the most influential.

Investing in health: The economic case

Developing country governments and aid agencies face difficult decisions on how best to allocate their finite resources. Investments in many different sectors – including education, water and sanitation, transportation, and health – can all reap social and economic benefits. This report, ‘Investing in health: The economic case’, which is to be discussed at today’s World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH) focuses specifically on the health sector. It presents compelling evidence of the value of scaling-up health investments. The economic case for increasing these investments in health has never been stronger.

Having made progress in reducing maternal and child mortality, and deaths from infectious diseases, it is essential that policymakers do not become complacent.

Healthy Populations: Designing strategies to improve population health

The health of a population is influenced by a wide range of factors, most of which lie outside the healthcare system. This includes social, economic and environmental factors, as well as individuals’ behaviours.

Tackling the major health challenges facing populations across the globe – including the rise of chronic diseases and widening inequities in health requires co-ordinated action between different parts of society. Yet approaches to improving population health are typically fragmented and imbalanced towards healthcare services.

Innovative approaches to prevention: Tacking the global burden of cardiovascular disease

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes 17.5 million deaths each year. Most of these deaths are from heart attacks and strokes, and many are premature. Although outstanding progress has been made in CVD awareness, prevention and treatment, three out of every 10 deaths this year will still be result of CVD.

A global epidemic, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide, affecting all regions regardless of income. Low-and middle-income countries make the largest contribution to the burden of CVD, particularly in terms of deaths in people aged 30 to 70 years, and those figures are still rising. However, CVD deaths and disability are not inevitable and up to a quarter could be avoided with more effective strategies for primary and secondary prevention.

An international perspective on information for patient safety: What can we learn about measuring safe care?

The fact that patient safety is an important issue in healthcare is not up for debate. We can all agree that it is unacceptable that almost one in 10 patients are harmed while receiving care in the hospital. However, it is also worrying that we rely on estimates of safety levels because of the lack of comprehensive information.

Through a combination of a review of the literature and a qualitative survey of eight organisations, this report compares how health systems measure patient safety. The report of the Leading Health Systems Network (LHSN) 2016 reviews which information sources are used and to what end.

Genomics in the Gulf region and Islamic ethics

In much the same way that genomic technologies are changing the landscape of biomedical research, the ethical issues these technologies generate are setting today’s agenda of ethics research. The distinct ethical issues concerning the management of incidental findings represent a serious challenge that has occupied the minds of

Western bioethicists for a while, but has yet to capture due attention from specialists in the Muslim world.

Incidental findings are generally defined as results that arise although they were not part of the original purpose of the research project or clinical test. Ethical management of these findings is not a simple matter, because while they can be lifesaving, they can also lead to harmful consequences for the individual and community at large, and at other times lack any clear significance.

Implementing accountable care to achieve better health at a lower cost

Most countries have well-established mechanisms to pay for medical treatments. However, many innovations – telemedicine, use of community health workers and lower-cost versions of treatments – are inadequately reimbursed, if reimbursed at all.

Payment systems are often slow to support new care models, and understandably so: additional payments for innovations create fiscal concerns; innovations may not be cost-effective unless integrated appropriately with other services; and existing institutions may lack experience or clear authority to support new services. Accountable care can help to overcome such barriers.