A depressing human interest piece on tuberculosis treatment in Turkmenistan from MSF.
Month: July 2003
A depressing human interest piece on tuberculosis treatment in Turkmenistan from MSF.
An article in the Guardian about the impact of AIDS on Malawi. The personal accounts are heart wrenching, and it’s a good overview of what AIDS can do to a society. Central Asia could be this bad someday, if governments in the region don’t take the steps they need. Although maybe not. I suspect that if(when) the HIV/AIDS explosion comes to the former Soviet Union, the international community will have realized that ARV treatment is necessary to keep societies from collapsing and serve as an incentive to get tested. (Right now, it’s very hard to encourage people to get tested – what do you say, “get tested, so you’ll know you have a terminal illness with no available treatment”? Social responsibility is the only motivator.) Also, there are enough health care providers and health care infrastructure to ensure that the drugs can be distributed. Though I guess tuberculosis is a similar model of an illness that requires a supervised treatment regimen, and the treatment and cure rates are abysmal.
Wow. Better handwashing could save a million lives a year. You don’t mess around with diarrheal diseases.
An article in the Guardian about the impact of AIDS on Malawi. The personal accounts are heart wrenching, and it’s a good overview of what AIDS can do to a society. Central Asia could be this bad someday, if governments in the region don’t take the steps they need. Although maybe not. I suspect that if(when) the HIV/AIDS explosion comes to the former Soviet Union, the international community will have realized that ARV treatment is necessary to keep societies from collapsing and serve as an incentive to get tested. (Right now, it’s very hard to encourage people to get tested – what do you say, “get tested, so you’ll know you have a terminal illness with no available treatment”? Social responsibility is the only motivator.) Also, there are enough health care providers and health care infrastructure to ensure that the drugs can be distributed. Though I guess tuberculosis is a similar model of an illness that requires a supervised treatment regimen, and the treatment and cure rates are abysmal.
Wow. Better handwashing could save a million lives a year. You don’t mess around with diarrheal diseases.
An article in the Guardian about the impact of AIDS on Malawi. The personal accounts are heart wrenching, and it’s a good overview of what AIDS can do to a society. Central Asia could be this bad someday, if governments in the region don’t take the steps they need. Although maybe not. I suspect that if(when) the HIV/AIDS explosion comes to the former Soviet Union, the international community will have realized that ARV treatment is necessary to keep societies from collapsing and serve as an incentive to get tested. (Right now, it’s very hard to encourage people to get tested – what do you say, “get tested, so you’ll know you have a terminal illness with no available treatment”? Social responsibility is the only motivator.) Also, there are enough health care providers and health care infrastructure to ensure that the drugs can be distributed. Though I guess tuberculosis is a similar model of an illness that requires a supervised treatment regimen, and the treatment and cure rates are abysmal.
Wow. Better handwashing could save a million lives a year. You don’t mess around with diarrheal diseases.
I love the International Crisis Group. I am constantly impressed with the quality of their research. They have a new report out on Central Asia governments and Islam, that seems to be based on solid sources and impressively detailed. It makes a case that I and most people I know have been arguing for a while – repressive government policies on religion and creating the threat of violent political Islamism, not preventing it. There is also a slightly older report on Hizb-u-Tahrir, that I have not yet read.
I have, by the way, now read the WHO health observatory document referred to in my last post. It is a nice little summary of the health systems of Central Asia and their major problems, but it’s short on detail and based on government numbers.
I love the International Crisis Group. I am constantly impressed with the quality of their research. They have a new report out on Central Asia governments and Islam, that seems to be based on solid sources and impressively detailed. It makes a case that I and most people I know have been arguing for a while – repressive government policies on religion and creating the threat of violent political Islamism, not preventing it. There is also a slightly older report on Hizb-u-Tahrir, that I have not yet read.
I have, by the way, now read the WHO health observatory document referred to in my last post. It is a nice little summary of the health systems of Central Asia and their major problems, but it’s short on detail and based on government numbers.