CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

April 25th World Malaria Day: affordable medicines & artemisinin-based control

April 25th is World Malaria Day and we’ve had some mixed news this month concerning the GlaxoSmithKline RTS,S vaccine, reported in New England Journal of Medicine. 65% of children were protected in the 1^st year, but protection then declined to zero over the next 3 years: which means booster shots will be essential.  Vaccine efficacy also declined faster in children who were more exposed to malaria than in those who had below-average exposure. Not the grail we hope for, but we inch our way there.

Effectiveness is at the heart of the problem of malaria control. Last year Oxfam’s report “Salt, Sugar And Malaria Pills”  highlighted their concerns on the effectiveness of the “Affordable medicines facility for malaria” (AFMm) hosted and managed by the Global Fund, with financial support from UNITAID, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and others.

A fuller discussion of these issues can be found in the April issue of Global Health Knowledge Base,  along with the latest research on drug-related aspects of malaria control

Related articles

Wellcome Image of the Month: Malaria

News in Brief: Malaria drug made by baker's yeast

Amyris (AMRS) Scientists to Publish Data on Breakthrough in Key Malaria Vaccine Ingredient

Prevalence rate of malaria declining in Ghana

Malaria: the Institute of Tropical Medicine focuses on elimination using knowledge

Reducing hunger and undernutrition - how are we doing?

Hunger and undernutrition are amongst the most persistent global development challenges. Part of Millennium Development Goal 1 is to ‘Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger’ (UN, 2012). With global numbers of undernourished people static at 870 million for the past 5 years and undernutrition contributing to the deaths of 2.6 million children under five each year (FAO, 2012), at the global level, clearly insufficient progress has been made towards achieving this target. But, at a national level, how are governments doing?

Designers help people to see and medicine to hitch a ride with cola

This year’s “Designs of the Year” (an annual competition staged by Design Museum, London) include two entries focussed on improving the health of people in developing countries.

The first is a pair of spectacles, whose lenses are filled with liquid silicon via mini-syringes in the arms. All the wearer has to do is adjust a dial to fill the lens (so changing its shape) until the world comes into focus, their refractive error corrected. Thus you don’t need an optometrist to work out your prescription for you.                

Optometrists are in short supply in Africa & India, so even if you can get hold of a pair of donated spectacle frames & maybe the money to pay for the lenses ( =3 months wages in Africa), you mostly can’t get someone to assess your prescription! Uncorrected refractive error and cataract are the major causes of blindness in developing countries. There’s only so much Unite for Sight and Vision20:20 can do in training & field visits. 

These spectacles, whilst not high-fashion, will eliminate the need for lens prescriptions and expert fitting, and would seem to be the solution to getting 1 billion people to see properly for the first time.

Arab world holds first public health conference

CABI is attending the First Arab World Congress on Public Health this week. Opening in Dubai tomorrow, the conference will be a forum for leaders in public health to exchange knowledge and develop best practice in the region. Speakers from Europe, the USA and Australia, will also bring an international perspective to the public health issues facing Arab countries.

Read more...

Low salt diets could allow iodine-deficiency diseases to re-emerge

Salt has been used for thousands of years to flavor & preserve food BUT reliance on fast food, biscuits and tinned goods, with their hidden salt content, has created for us a high salt diet and with it an alarming rise in cardiovascular disease.

Reducing our salt intake, by working with food industry and educating the public (World Salt Awareness Week), should counter this disease epidemic.  BUT take this too far, and could an old disease re-emerge? I speak of iodine deficiency in the diet, which can cause abortion, stillbirth, goitres, mental retardation & birth defects: iodized salt solved it.

WHO recommend universal salt iodization for developing countries as a simple, safe and cost-effective measure to address iodine deficiency, and many developed countries follow this too. 

                                                                        Image: Amanda Mills, USDA. 

People afraid of salt so a disease re-emerges or is unaddressed?

If we ever needed a reminder of the importance of iodized salt & public attitudes to health, you only had to read “salt rumors add to health crisis in pakistan” (Washington Post).

A fuller discussion of these issues can be found in the March issue of Global Health Knowledge Base,  along with the latest research on iodine deficiency and salt iodisation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related articles

Eat less salt but make sure it contains iodine

Ethiopia en route to eliminating iodine deficiency disorder

Mild iodine deficiency in pregnancy in Europe and its consequences for cognitive and psychomotor development of children: A review

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Iodized Salt

The Significance of Iodine and 7 Foods Rich in Iodine

Stop Wasting Money On Expensive Sea Salt

It Had to Happen: CT'ers Go After Iodized Salt

Iodine deficiency and how it can impact pregnancy

Is artisanal salt healthier than commercial salt?

 Guest blogger, Henry Ko, health services researcher with SingHealth, Singapore, provides a personal commentary on issues raised by Mark Bitterman's book  on salt: “Salted: A manifesto on the world’s most essential mineral, with recipes”.

 As a healthcare researcher with both professional and recreational interests in food, nutrition, and cooking, I was drawn to a book I casually found whilst scanning a bookstore shelf in the cooking section called “Salted: A manifesto on the world’s most essential mineral, with recipes”. The writer is ‘selmelier’, Mark Bitterman.  

  Image: Mark Bitterman

For a book in the cookbook section, I found it highly enlightening and detailed, almost like a scientific textbook on salt. Make no mistake, this is not a regular cookbook. It is a book with three sections that (1) highlights human’s history with salt, especially the production of salt and culinary traditions of using salt, (2) has a section on identifying all the many different types and features of artisanal salts, and finally (3) a section with recipes for cooking and using salt for food (e.g. seasoning, curing).

What I learnt about the salt industry really opened my eyes. Some of the points highlighted in the book and by skeptics of the salt industry in the public, match - that there appears to be an agenda by big industry to sell iodised salt.

Editor's note:

You can read the full article  by Henry Ko in the March issue of Global Health Knowledge Base, along with the latest research on iodine deficiency and salt iodisation.

Also relevant to the debate is "Salt, could it be implicated in autoimmunity?"(CABI's Nutrition and Food Sciences), reporting on two animal studies in Nature two weeks ago.

Related articles

 

Health-giving properties of artisanal salt

Eat less salt but make sure it contains iodine

Govt promotes use of iodised salt in far-west

Preserving Food: Traditional Method

Finding the Right Salt

Foods aimed at toddlers loaded with salt, study finds

It Had to Happen: CT'ers Go After Iodized Salt

Salty ain't healthy

Chocolate Made in South Africa for homesick Brits?

This blog is about the weirdness of global trade… and the lengths (literally) we go for chocolate.

The wrapper on my Marks & Spencer (M&S) valentine chocolates read: “Made with our exclusive British Milk chocolate recipe, Made in South Africa”.

Incredibly, it seemed that a firm in South Africa (SA) was targeting local people with a taste for British chocolate, and somehow M&S sourced them for sale in the UK! 

Was this I wondered another example of fuel miles not being built into food production costs (see “food miles”), like apples  from the Cape or Kenyan flowers at petrol stations?

How alien species cost Europe €12bn a year

 A report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) sets out the staggering cost of alien species - animals and plants brought to Europe from other parts of the world. The cost, and the threat to health and the environment, is said to be greater than expected, costing at least €12bn (£10bn) a year.

More than 10,000 "alien" species have gained a foothold in Europe, from Asian tiger mosquitoes to North American ragweed, and at least 1,500 are known to be harmful, the EEA said. And the real cost could be even greater than quoted.

Horse in burgers and the long tradition of adulterating food.

We don’t know yet how the horse DNA recently found in cheap burgers supplied by several supermarkets in the UK got there, whether by accident or deliberately but debasing or adulterating food by using something cheaper to bulk it out it is an ancient tradition. The incentive is great. A trader or producer who does this and gets away with it makes a profit. Recent high profile cases that were prosecuted include the case where melamine was discovered in milk in China in 2007. At least in the horse DNA case there is not a food safety concern as horse is deemed edible while melamine is definitely not.

A new Food Tank for 2013

At the start of this new year (as at the start of many previous years), I am making the resolutions of improving my diet and getting fitter with the aim of ending 2013 healthier than my current state! From this personal level, I was interested to read about the launch of Food Tank: The Food Think Tank on January 10^th and their views on the state of the World population's food supply and health. Driven by the global situation in 2013 that sees nearly one billion people still hungry and more than one billion suffering from the effects of being overweight and obese, this Think Tank's goal is to be a clearing house and community to inform, share, and scale up innovations that are helping alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. The forum aims to offer original research, share stories of success and impact, and highlight what's working on the ground. Of particular interest are the Food Tank’s 13 resolutions to change the food system in 2013: