Check out the “featured expert commentary” on this link: http://www.plosntds.org/home.action Or rather after this week, it is here: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000160 

From an email from the one.org campaign:

On the Record Petition

As a member of ONE, I write to ask you to go on the record on where you stand on fighting extreme poverty and global disease that affect the one billion people around the world.

Alleviating suffering and tackling the root causes of global poverty will be defining issues for the next President of the United States and deserve your full attention. I hope you will respond to this letter with your plans to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, eradicate malaria, improve child and maternal health, achieve universal primary education, and provide access to clean water and food, as well as a personal message about how you plan to lead on the fight to make poverty history.

We are only one year away from Election Day 2008. The time to go on the record on extreme poverty and global disease is now. Thank you for considering this request and I look forward to your response.

http://www.one.org/ontherecord/ 

Coptic Mission HIV Clinic, Nairobi.

This morning the doctor saw a 34 year old woman at the HIV clinic. In the waiting room, there were already roughly 40 people waiting to be seen at 8:30 am. For patients who fit the algorithm they get ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) at no cost. Of course many of them also have TB and malaria and all those NTDs that everyone is slowly starting to talk about in the discourse on global public health. Many of those other drugs however to treat all the other infectious diseases of course cost money–something which is clearly not abundant here in Kenya. One-third of the city’s population lives in the Kiribi slums I was told today. That is over 1.5 million people. 1.5 million people crammed into a not-so-large area in conditions that you can’t imagine unless you’ve had the opportunity to spend some time in a developing world African slum. And a really bad, dirty, violent one at that. Most of these people aren’t starving and Kenya is not war-torn. These 1.5 million people just have endemic diseases that have long been eradicated from the developed world and live on less than $1 USD a day.  However, this is nothing new. Every year more and more people live in urban slums because they offer the best opportunities for employment and education. But this is all obvious and known. How do we fix this? Whose job is it to fix it?   Can something be done? Why is it not being done? 

Nairobi, Kenya.   

In the lounge at my Nairobi hotel  I talked with someone from England who comes to work here, clearly in the business world, about trachoma. Trachoma, classified often as an NTD-Neglected Tropical Disease, is caused by Chlamydia trachomatis, an intracellular bacteria whose different serotypes have brought us not only Trachoma (the leading cause of preventible blindness in the world), but also chlamydia the STD. It’s traditionally treated with Azithromycin–a simple macrolide antibiotic.  Said businessman’s buddy developed repeated conjunctival infections with C. trachomatis from working in the field. And, because he was opposed to taking antibiotics (“…they aren’t natural”). My unofficial host mother in Lafiabougou, Mali had trachoma and the corneal scarring eventually led her to loose her vision in one eye. She though did not have access to western medicine, money to buy the antibiotics even if she could get them nor the means to prevent future infections. What a contrast.