Friday, March 26, 2010

GHIG and Dr. Smiddy


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

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

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!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

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.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

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

Monday, March 1, 2010

International Women's Day - March 8th

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

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.