Global-Health

The PARTNER study, involving more than 750 discordant heterosexual and homosexual couples,  are showing that an effective treatment by antiretroviral therapy (ART) prevents the transmission of HIV to the seronegative partner.

This study brings evidence showing  that treatment as prevention works. learn more about the studyResults were  reported at the 21st Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2014) in Boston, in March 2014 learn more about Treatment as Prevention

People living with mental illness suffer from many disadvantages in regard with their health status, among others: earlier death, more preventable diseases,  tiresome side effects from medications. In addition to this, when seeking health care they often receive lower quality care compared to other patients.

This article points out the obstacles that people suffering from mental health face in regard of  accessing health care that is adapted to their vulnerabilities.

L’OFSP vient de publier , dans le cadre du programme “Santé 2020”, un excellent outil de formation disponible gratuitement et en ligne destiné aux infirmiers, aux médecins et au personnel d’accueil.

Interaction et qualité dans le domaine de la santé

Trois modules de formation avec un test final afin de favoriser des soins de qualité pour tous!

Accéder au module e-learning

Health workforce shortage is becoming  an urgent problem in high income countries ( including Switzerland). In order to respond to an increasing need,  health workers have been drained from other countries ( including from developing countries).

But when looking at the availability of health workers around the world related to the population needs, there is a great inequity in the distribution of nurses and doctors among countries, which should encourage a more fair distribution of resources and a greater effort in education of health workers across the globe.

Access to quality health care for all is a universal goal for health.

The way migrant people access quality healthcare services is yet poor.

This metasynthesis pulled together results about barriers in access to health care  that were described in quality studies retrieved in the international literature.

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Dr. Terrie Taylor is a medical professor at Michigan State University who spent years  studying malaria in Africa. In 2008 she managed to get a Magnetic resonance imaging machines (MRI’s) donated to her project in order to research the reactions going on in the brain of children suffering from severe malaria. access link hereSevere malaria is the kills 600,000 children under five every year worldwide, mostly in sub-saharan Africa. Taylor and her colleagues used the MRI on dozens of sick patients, and they noticed an unmistakable pattern: Children whose brains swelled dramatically and irreversibly died. Children whose brains did not swell – or swelled, but then returned to a normal size – lived. This discovery is important because it might dramatically increase the chances for children to survive a severe malaria, by administrating drugs to reduce brain swelling. These drugs (corticosteroid) are in the WHO List of Essential Medicines for Children and are likely to be easily accessible in most health centers in Africa.

Today I found this great project, aiming at providing short videos ( also suitable for cell phones) about key health care procedures for treatment of newborns. The videos are based on recognized WHO protocols and are tested for comprehension in focus groups. They are available in many languages. I think it’s a great way to pass clear and culturally-adapted short messages to health workers as a complementary tool for training.

A. D. Harries, R. Zachariah, A. Ramsay, et al, ( from The Union, MSF and WHO) , with the support of Public Health Action are working  on gathering data about the impact of research on public health. Does research make a difference to public health? Time for scientific journals to cross the Rubicon

Field Research is MSF research’s website publishing operational research that was carried out in MSF’s projects around the world. access Field research.

MSF and The Union (International Union against Tuberculosis and pulmonary diseases) started a collaboration aiming at promote operational research, defined as " The science of doing better"  for low income countries.

The goal is to use data that are collected routinely in health care facilities and turn them into results that will improve health care delivery, diagnosis and patient treatment.

In the last months I have been exploring different ways in which I could get involved in research work.

In his article Zachariah, head of the operational research at MSF, describes the research I am interested in: operational research article Zachariah et al, 2012