http://www.globalhealthtv.com/

http://www.globalhealthtv.com/

Check out this new website with up-to-date videos of pressing global health issues from around the world.  The videos have some great images and are very informative.

PIG+GHIG joint meeting

Thank You

First of all a round of applause to Dane and Jason for presenting on their experiences abroad. Another thank you to everyone who showed up for the meeting.

Be sure to check out our Opportunities Abroad Database. This Database will be updated as new information and new programs abroad are found. If you guys have any questions leave us a comment. A tutorial on how to join GHIG through this website will be going up in the next few days. Lastly, be sure to check the website for the latest news, activities, and meetings for GHIG.


Thanks,
GHIG

Upcoming Meeting

Monday, August 23, 12pm

Small Auditorium

Second Year Students JASON BARTER and DANE DALEY will be discussing their international medical experiences from this past summer!

Come see all the pictures, enjoy the food, and learn all about the unique medical conditions that exist around the world!

RSVP to ghig.qcom@gmail.com

(Come even if you forget to RSVP)

Welcome QCOM Class of 2014

GHIG welcomes the newest and largest class to Quillen College of Medicine.

Make sure to check out the website often for announcements and activities.

UPCOMING EVENT!

Considering an international rotation? 

"Medical Student International Rotations Presentation” 

Friday, April 16th, 12pm, Large Auditorium, Stanton-Gerber Hall  

The following 4th year students will discuss their rotations, describe their unique medical experiences, and answer questions:

Ginger Lovingood - Honduras

Norm Litchfield - Honduras

Ari Alexandroni – Honduras and Israel

Sonia Millian – Honduras and Thailand

Hao Pham- Vietnam  

World Health Day - April 7
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/04/139594.htm

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

April 7, 2010

---

Today the United States joins the World Health Organization and countries around the world in commemorating World Health Day.

This year’s theme is “Urbanization and Health: Urban Health Matters.” The rapid rise in the number of people living in cities will be among the top global health issues of the 21st century. The World Health Organization estimates that six out of every 10 people will be city dwellers by 2030, rising to seven out of 10 by 2050. In many cases, especially in the developing world, the speed of urbanization has outpaced the ability of governments to build and maintain essential health, water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure and provide basic services.

Disease is both a symptom of poverty -- with over-crowding, inadequate infrastructure and lack of health care increasing transmission and susceptibility -- and also a contributor to poverty. Poor health shreds communities, undermines economic opportunity, and holds back progress. And it denies children around the world the opportunity to live up to their full God-given potential. We have also seen that oceans and borders are no defense against the pandemics that threaten us all. These are global challenges that demand a global response.

The United States and our international partners are committed to improving health and strengthening health systems around the world. We understand that addressing global health challenges is not just a humanitarian imperative -- it will also bolster global security, foster political stability and promote economic growth and development.

Through our Global Health Initiative, we are investing $63 billion, with an emphasis on women and girls whose health has the biggest impact on families and communities. Efforts such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Safe Water Programs and the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Making Cities Work strategy are focused on public health concerns of urban residents worldwide. Our foreign assistance programs are improving local governance, creating new partnerships with civil society and the private sector, and targeting the urgent needs of the urban poor. From Afghanistan to Zambia, we are helping cities create a better quality of life for their inhabitants through access to higher paying jobs, improved health care, and quality education.

On this World Health Day, let us renew our resolve to work together to meet the global health challenges of the 21st century. 

GHIG and Dr. Smiddy

Thanks to Dr. Smiddy and to all of those who attended the presentation on the scope of international medical work!

Stand With Haiti

Join Fellow Medical Students Across the Country in Supporting Haiti

As our nation's future physicians, it is our duty to rise up and come together to assist the people of Haiti as they suffer through this disastrous event. For that reason we have come together to organize a unified effort to raise money for the people of Haiti.

We are selling t-shirts with the design that you see on this page, with all of the proceeds going directly to Partners In Health (PIH), an established medical relief organization with a long history of providing primary care to the extreme poor in Haiti. For more information on this organization visit the website www.StandWithHaiti.org

T-shirts will be sold for a minimum donation of $15.00. Please contact Andrew Parsons or Sara Wilgenbusch at ghig.qcom@gmail.com to purchase a shirt or for more information.

Thank you so much for your participation in this incredible effort!

UPDATE: WE HAVE RAISED OVER $300 SO FAR!

UPCOMING EVENT!

UPDATE: DR. SMIDDY'S TALK WILL NOW START AT 
7:30pm

Dr. Joseph Smiddy practices Pulmonology and Internal Medicine in Kingsport, Tennessee. He is a leading public lecturer in our region who is very involved in, and nationally recognized for, a wide range of voluntary medical activities.  These include working with Remote Area Medical clinics throughout the United States, operating a unique mobile radiology unit, and a variety of international work in Belize, India, and Peru.  He is also planning an upcoming trip to Haiti.

WORLD WATER DAY 3/22

March 22 is World Water Day, which aims to raise awareness around the world about the importance of access to clean, safe water.

Safe drinking water is becoming ever more precious and hard to find. More than 1 billion people in the developing world do not have access to clean water and in many cases rely on water from polluted rivers and lakes and unsafe wells or piped water supplies. The consequences are catastrophic.

About 1.7 million children under age 5 died last year from diarrheal diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation in developing countries, and millions more were put at significant risk of exposure to water-borne infections such as cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery. Contaminated drinking water is also a threat to people living with HIV/AIDS.

The recent cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe is a stark example of the need for clean, safe drinking water. More than 91,000 people have contracted cholera, and more than 4,000 have died from this easily preventable and treatable intestinal infection. The disease is rampant because drinking water has been contaminated and people lack the chemicals to purify it.

Those without safe water and sanitation are likely to be poor, hungry, and malnourished. The increasing scarcity of safe water, combined with rapid worldwide population growth and environmental degradation, is also leading to biodiversity loss and agricultural failure.

Improving access to safe drinking water is an important component of health and emergency response programs. Household water treatment and safe storage reduces water-borne disease, empowers families and communities, and improves productivity. These measures complement community and municipal water supply infrastructure programs by providing immediate access to safe water while construction is planned or implemented. Several options for ensuring safe drinking water in the household or at the point-of-use are available, including chlorination, filtration, solar disinfection, and combined methods such as Procter and Gamble’s PuR sachet, which disinfects and removes large particles from water. These inexpensive and easy-to-use solutions can be deployed and adopted rapidly. - source USAID

Learn more at www.worldwaterday.org

Water Success Stories - from USAID

• Indonesia: Clean Water for Indonesian Families
• India: Harvesting the Rain
• Iraq: Bringing Safe Water, Promoting Hygiene
• Kyrgyzstan: Clean Water Eases Ethnic Tensions
• Mali: Clean Drinking Water Is A Lifesaver In Mali

"If the millions of women who haul water long distances had a faucet by their door, whole societies could be transformed."

-Tina Rosenberg (National Geographic - http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/04/water-slaves/rosenberg-text)

International Women's Day - March 8th

Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women, on International Women’s Day

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

Today is International Women’s Day, and in fact the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. It’s a date that is much better known abroad but is beginning to get more traction in the U.S. as well. So what interventions get the most bang for the buck in raising the status of women around the world? What is most helpful in overcoming injustices such as human trafficking and acid attacks?
First, I think girls’ education may be the single most cost-effective kind of aid work. It’s cheap, it opens minds, it gives girls new career opportunities and ways to generate cash, it leads them to have fewer children and invest more in those children, and it tends to bring women from the shadows into the formal economy and society. It’s not a panacea, of course. Lebanon and Sri Lanka were leaders in girls’ education, and both ended up torn apart by conflict. In India, the state of Kerala has done a fine job in girls’ education, but its state economy is still a mess and dependent on remittances. But overall, educating girls probably has a greater transformative effect on a country than anything else one can do.

Second, I’d argue for deworming and micronutrients. These may not sound like they’re “women’s issues,” but in a sense they are. For example, iodine deficiency particularly affects female fetuses, for reasons that we don’t fully understand. Insufficient iodine in the first trimester of pregnancy costs that child 10 to 15 I.Q. points for the rest of his or her life, and yet iodized salt programs that prevent the problem cost less than 5 cents per person reached. There are still tens of millions of girls out there with cognitive deficits because so much salt in poor countries is still not iodized. Likewise, women and girls disproportionately suffer from anemia, partly because of menstruation. In the United States, if a woman showed up at an E.R. with a hemoglobin level of, say, 9, she might get an immediate blood transfusion, and lower levels are rarely seen. In contrast, hemoglobin levels of 5 and 6 are routinely seen among women in poor countries – just unheard of in the United States. Deworming would help them, because worms cause anemia, and costs only about 50 cents per person and lasts a year (deworming is backed by groups like Deworm the World). So would iron supplements, which likewise are very cheap and can be given in particular to high school girls and to women expecting to become pregnant. Family planning likewise falls in this category: an intervention that is relatively cheap, pays for itself, and is vastly underfunded.

Third, we need more support for women starting businesses. These can be microsavings and microlending programs, or training in entrepreneurship. BRAC and Grameen have done great work in this area, as has Injaz in the Middle East. Such programs lead women to bring in incomes, and that gives them more weight in the home and society. Moreover, they tend to invest the income in their children, so there’s a broader effect in fighting poverty. Lots of aid groups implement these kinds of approaches, including the big ones like CARE, Save the Children, Mercy Corps, and so on. So do small ones; Camfed, for example, is focused on girls’ education in Africa.

Welcome

Welcome to GHIG's official page!

Here we will post highlights and announcements for upcoming events. Stay tuned for more information.

The Global Health Interest Group strives to:

1. Host a monthly event to increase global health education and excitement about international issues
   
2. Post a weekly article emphasizing how global health issues affect us on a local level
3. Maintain a database of international clinical elective opportunities and encourage students to spend a 4th year rotation abroad

Our faculty advisor, Randy Wykoff, MD, MPH & TM, is a physician board certified in both Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine, has a Masters of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and is the current Dean of the ETSU College of Public Health. He has over twenty years of executive public health leadership experience on the local, national, and international level.


2009-10 Officers
President: Andrew Parsons
Vice-President: Sara Wilgenbusch
PR: Andrew Wong