News Flash 500: Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

News Flash Links, as part of the research project PEAH (Policies for Equitable Access to Health), aim to focus on the latest challenges by trade and governments rules to equitable access to health in resource-limited settings

White Seabream (Diplodus Sargus Sargus)

News Flash 500

Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

 

Online and in-person event: HEALTHCARE AND CLIMATE CHANGE: VICTIM OR PERPETRATOR? INTERNATIONAL GENEVA GLOBAL HEALTH PLATFORM 14 November 2022, 18:30 – 20:00 Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Maison de la Paix, Geneva Graduate Institute

Webinar registration: Financial Justice for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Tuesday, 15 November 2022 at Geneva Press Club

Webinar registration: Tackling and preventing medical deserts with the Medical Deserts Diagnostic Tool Monday November 21st, 2022

Online event: GLOBAL HEALTH CENTRE DIGITAL JUSTICE: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA IS TRANSFORMING YOUNG PEOPLE’S HEALTH AND RIGHTS 22 November 2022, 14:00 – 15:30

COP27: World Bank, IRENA Pledge $1 Billion for Solar Electrification of Health Facilities, Food Storage and Agriculture

Developing Nations Clamour for New Deal on Debt and Climate Finance

Cop27: world on ‘highway to climate hell’, says UN chief

COP27 Climate Change Conference: urgent action needed for Africa and the world

COP27: EU launches Forest Partnerships with five partner countries

Why COP27 needs radical ideas and a shift of paradigm

COP27: What is ‘Loss and Damage’ compensation, and who should pay?

Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people

Europe rapidly losing its forest carbon sink, study shows

Cop27: ‘Water-related risks keep me up at night’:, says UN’s disaster risk reduction boss

UN unveils global ‘early warning’ system for disasters at $3 billion

Fossil Fuel Companies Are Continuing the Scramble for Africa & We Need to Talk About It

Brazil’s Lula vows to prioritise climate, science amid crisis

Debt-for-Nature Swaps Gain Traction Among Developing Countries

Oh FFS: A guide to climate change acronyms

WHO: Public Health round-up

COVID vaccine hoarding might have cost more than a million lives

WEMOS report: Make pooling work to end pandemics: A qualitative analysis of the Covid-19 Technology Access Pool

Keeping Track of COVID-19 Omicron Variants

Audio Interview: Masking and Covid-19

World-first vaccine campaign brings hope in fighting deadly hepatitis E

Uganda to close schools early after eight children die of Ebola

New MSF report warns that major opportunity to increase access to newer, safer DR-TB drugs is at risk

DR-TB Drugs Under the Microscope, 8th Edition

Progress on Tuberculosis Can Be Achieved in Africa

Success Stories: SUCCESS ARK by Tukashaba Felix

Focus on: UGANDA’s HEALTH ISSUES

Bulletin #37: No to austerity, yes to strong health systems People’s Health Dispatch Nov 5, 2022 

The Sustainable Livelihoods Handbook: An asset based approach to poverty

Book: Patient involvement in the development, regulation and safe use of medicines

Health systems and policy research needed to strengthen the rehabilitation workforce

Human Rights Reader 654: IF SANITY WERE NOT A RARE COMMODITY, WE WOULD NOT BE DROWNING IN AN ECOLOGICAL CRISIS NOW.

 

 

 

 

Success Stories: SUCCESS ARK

SUCCESS ARK is a registered Not-for-Profit Youth-Led organization operating in West Nile region in Uganda specifically in Arua City and Arua District. It was established in 2018, March. Its mission is to foster empowerment   through advocacy for human rights, health education and poverty alleviation for positive living.

PEAH is pleased to host here an illustrated summary by the Executive Director Tukashaba Felix on some SUCCESS ARK success stories in the fields of Education, ICT (Information and Communication Technology), Health and Environment projects

  By Tukashaba Felix

SUCCESS ARK Executive Director

successark2018@gmail.com

tu.felix3@gmail.com/

 Success Stories: SUCCESS ARK

 

ICT-Information Communication Technology and Education Project

ICT is one of the most vital tools used almost in everyday life for various purposes. The government encourages the use of ICT in learning centers by teachers to enable them smoothly handle academic stuffs. However, there has not been enough impact by the government to build capacity of the teachers both in primary and secondary schools.

SUCCESS ARK decided to take on the mantle to contribute to the integration of ICT into education system by initiating and implementing ICT project targeting 600 teachers from primary and secondary schools. It is aiming at increasing access to ICTs and equipping teachers with basic literacy skills. The project is ongoing with internal funding; however, external support is so much needed to successfully implement this project to full scale. The project has started with some teachers in a school called Arua Public Primary School.

ICT capacity building sessions at Arua Public Primary School and a group photo with some of the participating teachers in the ICT project

 

Health Project

We have had several interventions related with activities of Health in various communities. Our beneficiaries have appreciated the work done in health especially in the HIV, TB and Malaria and Sexual Reproductive Health interventions.

Over 1000 community members have benefited from our health projects including the currently ongoing Project funded by The AIDS Support Organization related with HIV. The project currently ongoing aims at improving the prevention, care and treatment of HIV/AIDS amongst the pregnant women and their sexual partners in Arua City.

This project has been so important that beneficiaries even requested the organization tackle the TB, and Malaria aspects. People are coming in large numbers for screening and testing for HIV, TB and Malaria.

This project is evidenced from the following photos and captions

HIV screening and testing, TB and Malaria were being carried out in these pictures and medication was given or is given to those who are diagnosed and are found positive of any disease diagnosed. IEC (Information, Education and Communication) materials, condoms, and HIV self-Test kits were (are) given. Sensitization, guidance and counseling sessions are being given

 

Environment Projects

West Nile was one of the greatest forested lands in 2000, so far it is one the most deteriorating land when it comes to vegetation cover, it is so vital that communities engage in planting of tree and conserving what is available. SUCCESS ARK has had great in implementing environmental conservation and protection activities in learning centers and local communities. Over 50,000 trees have been planted with support from  DanChurch Aid, National Forestry Authority, and UNHCR nursery beds. These seedlings have been distributed amongst the beneficiaries for planting for future benefits such as fruits, wind breaks, and formation of rainfall. The project aims at improving the green vegetation and conserving the ecosystem in West Nile.

The following pictures show evidence of what SUCCESS ARK does in the area of environment

Community beneficiaries receiving tree seedlings, sorting of tree seedlings, and planting of tree seedlings in communities and learning centers

 

News Flash 499: Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

News Flash Links, as part of the research project PEAH (Policies for Equitable Access to Health), aim to focus on the latest challenges by trade and governments rules to equitable access to health in resource-limited settings

female Parrotfish (Sparisoma Cretense)

News Flash 499

Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

 

Webinar registration: Financial Justice for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Tuesday, 15 November 2022 at Geneva Press Club 

Webinar registration: WHA 75 resolutions on Communicable Disease- a Review Nov 4, 2022 06:30 PM in India 

A New One Health Global Action Plan is Out!

Ethics and governance challenges related to genomic data sharing in southern Africa: the case of SARS-CoV-2

Omicron Subvariants Race for Dominance

Mapping our unvaccinated world

The Equity-First Vaccination Initiative’s Challenges And Successes

The 5 dimensions for an equitable and effective response to pandemics

How to Combat Future Pandemics by Brian Johnston

Invasive mosquitoes could unravel malaria progress in Africa

Belarus: A revolution in TB treatment leads to safer and more effective practice

Anti-Microbial Resistance Strategies Need Urgent Attention to Prevent Unnecessary Deaths in Africa

THE GLOBAL STATE OF HARM REDUCTION 2022

Cough Medicine Deaths Highlight India’s Problem With Sub-standard Medicine

WHO: Medical Product Alert N°7/2022: Substandard (contaminated) paediatric liquid dosage medicines identified in WHO region of South-East Asia

Big Pharma Says Drug Prices Reflect R&D Cost. Researchers Call BS

MPP signs licence agreement to increase access to nilotinib for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia This is the first ever public health-oriented voluntary licence agreement on a cancer medicine

Health experts challenge inequitable distribution of new medicines across EU

INEQUALITY.ORG

Leading While Locked Out, an African Woman’s Perspectives

When Will India End Violence Against Health Workers?

END THE CAGE AGE: LE VIDEO-INCHIESTE per mettere fine all’allevamento in gabbia

The Social Medicine Portal

Our Research is Completed: is There an Ethical Way to Disseminate its Findings? by Raffaella Ravinetto

How deep-seated sexism is making food insecurity worse in Nigeria

Africa Faces 1.1 Million Deaths Annually from Air Pollution – Second Largest Risk After Malnutrition

‘Radical collaboration’ needed for climate adaptation

Climate change and security crises ‘a toxic threat to peace’: former EU environment commissioner

Europe warmed twice as much as global average in last three decades: report

Phase Out Fossil Fuel, Urges Tedros on Eve of COP27

Why COP27 Must Put Climate Adaptation at the Top of Its Agenda

Four Climate Finance Discussions to Watch at COP27

Climate change and the future: facts and figures

Climate, Pollution, and Children’s Health

 

 

 

 

 

How to Combat Future Pandemics

…If we are to improve our resilience to new and emerging threats, whether from pandemics or elsewhere, we need innovative ways of effectively navigating a sea of scientific knowledge, that is continuously growing. This will require not only time and effort, but also a change in mindset, towards a flexible and adaptive way of engaging with the data. Important messages need to be separated from the roar of background noise and communicated effectively in a clear and concise way to stakeholders and decision makers…

By Dr. Brian Johnston

Senior Public Health Intelligence Manager

London, United Kingdom

How to Combat Future Pandemics

 

The UK Covid-19 Inquiry has recently been set up to examine the national response to the pandemic, its impact and possible lessons for the future. Whilst this inquiry should be welcomed as a way of finding shortcomings in logistics and decision making, its findings and recommendations are likely to be out of date when they are eventually published. By its very nature, the enquiry will be retrospective and relate to our past relationship with COVID-19. Indeed, from the moment of its inception, the inquiry has inevitably been tied to an historic account of our interaction with the virus. Both the virus and our ways of dealing with it have moved on.

On first sight, this may seem a negative way of looking at inquiries, but the UK has a long history of conducting high profile, costly inquiries into other important issues (such as child abuse), which have proven less than fruitful. Often these inquiries make many recommendations, which are then not effectively implemented on the ground, leading inevitably to a similar tragedy to the one that sparked the initial enquiry in the first place. The media then ask why the recommendations from the previous enquiry were not followed and a new enquiry is called, to see how we can do it better next time…and so the carousel revolves.

To avoid this endless cycle, perhaps we could use the recommendations from the UK Covid-19 inquiry in a different way this time; by employing them as a framework for an annual audit into national preparedness for a future pandemic. The recommendations could be reformulated and reworded into quantifiable indicators (metrics) and the audit process made a mandatory report, which all local authorities have a legal obligation to complete by a specified deadline each year. In this way, potential weaknesses in our responsiveness to a pandemic could be effectively identified and monitored, on an ongoing basis. Complacency is our enemy when it comes to dealing with COVID-19 and similar pathogens, but the adoption of such an audit mechanism could prove a cost effective and practical way to refresh our preparedness for a future pandemic.

Of course, this audit mechanism should be flexible and not rigidly tied to an annual response format, if news emerges of a new threat. In such circumstances, the audit process could be quickly swung into operation and the local logistical “armour” quickly repaired and strengthened, in preparation for the oncoming pandemic. In some cases, where the onset of the pandemic is rapid, this recharging of the local logistical response would be made in the very early stages of the emergency. In other scenarios, where there is greater warning, the refresh of systems and processes could be carried out before the threat has even gained a foothold.

At a local level, the formation of multidisciplinary teams at the height of the recent COVID pandemic, clearly demonstrated what could be achieved when people from different professional backgrounds worked together to find quick and practical solutions to difficult logistical questions. This lesson should not be lost or forgotten, and where possible the networks formed at that time should be maintained and strengthened. Adequate funding, to help keep these structures in place, whilst maintaining their readiness for a future emergency, would be money well spent.

For future pandemics, the ability of health and care professionals to form mutually supportive and co-operative networks of responders to facilitate logistics, will be of great importance, especially in the early stages of a major outbreak. By having a dedicated person within each local Public Health department tasked with maintaining and growing such networks, the activation of a wide range of professionals across a variety of disciplines could be achieved very quickly and efficiently at a time of crisis. Virtual hubs of mutually supportive professionals could be created, and their contact details, skill sets, and areas of expertise held on shared directories to facilitate a rapid, flexible and co-ordinated response to all emergencies (not just pandemics).

Similarly, the creation of a specialist role within Public Health teams to horizon scan for new developments in science and technology, would be another worthy investment. More generally, there is currently considerable interest within health professionals in artificial intelligence (AI) and how this can be used to improve the treatment of patients, for example in breast cancer screening. This shared interest has already led to the development of platforms and forums for networking and the sharing of information. However, the sheer volume and diversity of the information generated by these initiatives can make it difficult for health professionals to keep up to date with important developments, not only in AI, but in science and technology in general.

By having a dedicated member within Public Health teams, whose primary focus would be to tap into these forums and liaise with them, would be a major benefit. Specifically, this individual would be tasked with the identification of practical and important intelligence and its presentation in user friendly digests to senior decision makers at a local level. This “research specialist” could also actively search the relevant scientific literature for new developments, discoveries and inventions, that could be applied locally. More importantly, these research specialists could inform the targeted commissioning of services and the creation of new and innovative strategies, which could make tangible and significant reductions in health inequalities.

If we are to improve our resilience to new and emerging threats, whether from pandemics or elsewhere, we need innovative ways of effectively navigating a sea of scientific knowledge, that is continuously growing. This will require not only time and effort, but also a change in mindset, towards a flexible and adaptive way of engaging with the data. Important messages need to be separated from the roar of background noise and communicated effectively in a clear and concise way to stakeholders and decision makers.

Any idea that is shared and acted upon has the potential to create a solution, that can then seed further ideas, and so on. However, in a world where health challenges come in many forms and sometimes with very short notice, we need quick and practical solutions to be accessible to a targeted audience and in a timely fashion. Only then can we hope to effectively combat future pandemics and health emergencies, without needless loss of life.

We must effectively catalyse data, science and technology to energise the logistical structures necessary to minimise the impact of future pandemics. Hopefully, rather than dodging these icebergs, we can have viable structures in place, to first slow them down, and then melt them, through the judicious application of science and technology. Similarly, by focussing a concentrated beam of relevant knowledge on any future pandemic, we will not only cut it down to size, but save lives through the timely and efficient use of people and resources.

 

By the same Author on PEAH

The New Abnormal

Living with COVID in a Transformed World

Death in the Time of COVID

Unleashing the True Potential of Data – COVID-19 and Beyond


Our Research is Completed: is There an Ethical Way to Disseminate its Findings?

Full of suggestions, this article turns the spotlight on what should be strictly pursued to timely, clearly and transparently disseminate all findings of health and medical research to the people who can make use of them. To this aim, it maintains that all research stakeholders should integrate ethics and integrity principles in their institutional dissemination policies and personal belief systems 

By Raffaella Ravinetto

Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium (Twitter: @RRavinetto) 

Our Research is Completed: is There an Ethical Way to Disseminate its Findings?

 

All findings of health and medical research, whether positive, inconclusive or negative, should be timely, clearly and transparently disseminated to the people who can make use of them[1],[2]. This, in order to inform policies and practices, and to maximize the social value and benefit of the research without delay”[3]. In a paper recently published in the BMJ Evidence Based Medicines[4], Jerome A Singh and myself reflected on the ethics challenges faced not only by researchers, but also by other concerned stakeholders, when it comes to disseminating research findings. In particular, we looked at the challenges and opportunities of peer-review publications, abstracts, pre-prints, press-releases, and media and social media coverage. Dissemination of research findings to the research participants and communities is at least equally important, but it requires different modalities and contextualized approaches.

Herein, I present an overview of our reflection and call from the publication in the BMJ Evidence Based Medicine, which is available open access at Responsible dissemination of health and medical research: some guidance points | BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.

The main modalities of dissemination

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals remains the benchmark dissemination modality. However, it is not exempt from shortcomings and weaknesses[5], particularly if there is lack of qualified reviewers, and/or if researchers are subject to a ‘publish or perish’ institutional culture. Furthermore, independent researchers or those in resource-constrained settings may be unable to publish their research due prohibitively high publication fees[6]. Before peer-review publication, scientific conferences provide adequate platforms for sharing research results with peers. However, the limited information contained in a conference abstract will not allow reviewers to identify all potential scientific and/or ethical shortcomings of the concerned work.  Preprints, i.e. preliminary reports of work not yet peer-reviewed, are more and more frequently uploaded in dedicated free-access servers, such as https://www.medrxiv.org/[7]. They allow for rapid, open-access dissemination, accompanied by informal peer-appraisal; but rushed readers may miss the cautioning  that they are not peer-reviewed, thus not suitable yet to inform policy or medical guidelines.

The scientific community, health system policy-makers, and regulators are the primary target of  peer-reviewed manuscripts, abstracts, and pre-prints. Conversely, corporate press-releases for early dissemination of (in particular) clinical trial findings, primarily aim at influencing the market. They are drafted by marketing experts, and are often preceded by stock repurchasing, i.e. companies buy back part of their own stock held by executives, thus increasing demand for the stock and enhancing earnings per share.[8]

Last, irrespective of the initial dissemination modality, upstream information is cascaded to mainstream and social media, helping to spread valuable knowledge, but also risking to catalyze misunderstanding or overemphasis on marginal, unsignificant or inaccurate findings.

A call for good dissemination practices

In our paper in the BMJ Evidence Based Medicine, we drafted some recommendations for good dissemination practices. They are aimed at researchers, research institutions, developers, medical journals editors, media, journalists, social media actors, medical opinion leaders, policy makers, regulators, and the scientific community. For instance, researchers, research institutions and developers (including pharmaceutical companies) should publish all results, including those that are negative or inconclusive, and they should do it in open access journals when possible. They should also ensure that conference abstracts, pre-prints and press-releases are (rapidly) followed by a peer review publication – and if this does not happen, be transparent on why this does not happen. Research institution should avoid fostering an explicit or implicit ‘publish or perish’ culture. Medical journals should adopt fair prices for open access publication; rigorously ensure compliance with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), beyond a formal “checklist approach”; and comply with the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). As we advocated for elsewhere, the scientific community as a whole should agree on “good pre-print practices”, and on a less ambiguous terminology, e.g. not peer reviewed”[9]. There is also a key-responsibility of journalists and key-opinion leaders to critically appraise any dissemination modality (and press-releases in particular) for ethics, science and possible bias, and to communicate accordingly, whether in mainstream media or in personal social media feeds.

In summary, in order to ensure timely, comprehensive, accurate, unbiased, unambiguous, and transparent dissemination, all research stakeholders should integrate ethics and integrity principles in their institutional dissemination policies and personal belief systems.

 

REFERENCES

[1] World Medical Association. Declaration of Helsinki: ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects. JAMA. 2013; 310: 2191–94.

[2] Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS). International ethical guidelines for health-related research involving humans. 4th ed. Geneva: Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS); 2016 Nov. Accessed on 21/04/2022 at: https://cioms.ch/shop/product/international-ethical-guidelines-for-health-related-research-involving-humans/

[3] National Institute for Health Care and Research. “How to disseminate your research”. Version 1.0, January 2019. Accessed on 21/4/2022 at https://www.nihr.ac.uk/documents/how-to-disseminate-your-research/19951

[4] Ravinetto R, Singh JA. Responsible dissemination of health and medical research: some guidance points. BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine Epub ahead of print 2.9.2022; doi:10.1136/bmjebm-2022-111967

[5] Smith MJ, Upshur REG, Emanuel EJ. Publication ethics during public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Am J Public Health. 2020; 110:947–8.

[6] Ellingson MK, Shi X, Skydel JJ, et al. Publishing at any cost: a cross-sectional study of the amount that medical researchers spend on open access publishing each year. BMJ Open 2021; 11: e047107. 7

[7] Massey DA, Opare MA, Wallach JD, Ross JS and Krumholz HM. Assessment of Preprint Policies of Top-Ranked Clinical Journals. JAMA Network Open. 2020;3(7): e2011127

[8] Sorkin AR, Karaian J, Gandel S, de la Merced MJ, Hirsch L, and Livni E. Biden Renews Pushback Against Stock Buybacks. 28 March 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/business/dealbook/biden-stock-buybacks.html.

[9] Ravinetto, R., Caillet, C., Zaman, M.H. et al. Preprints in times of COVID19: the time is ripe for agreeing on terminology and good practices. BMC Med Ethics 2021;  22 (106).

News Flash 498: Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

News Flash Links, as part of the research project PEAH (Policies for Equitable Access to Health), aim to focus on the latest challenges by trade and governments rules to equitable access to health in resource-limited settings

Conger eel (Conger Conger)

News Flash 498

Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

 

UNCHR: Social Forum on Water and Human Rights, Geneva 3-4 November 2022

Webinar registration: WHA 75 resolutions on Communicable Disease- a Review Nov 4, 2022 06:30 PM in India

Meeting registration: Healthcare in war-torn Tigray: targeted or collaterally attacked? Nov 2, 2022 01:00 PM in Rome

Meeting registration: Debt as Health “Aid”? Decolonization in global health: an exploration by the Kampala Initiative and allies Nov 2, 2022 01:30 PM in Nairobi

TDR October 2022 eNewsletter

Gastein and EU Health Union: A tale of “Moonshots” and public health Cinderellas?

Networking & Hobnobbing 101: The Road to Bogota, 7th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research

Hospitals in Haiti Facing Shutdown as Cholera Threat Escalates

Cholera thrives in a warming world

Tuberculosis deaths rose during pandemic, reversing years of decline, WHO says

MSF responds to WHO Global TB Report 2022, calls for scale up of shorter and safer DR-TB treatments to help save more lives

Untangling antimicrobial resistance: the legacy of an unhealthy development model

Monkeypox

Private-Public Drug Deal Enables Generic Production of Expensive Cancer Medicine

It’s high time for balanced collaborative action on access to medicines – The Oslo Medicines Initiative

How the Pandemic Accord can ensure equitable access to medical products

Towards sustainable access to healthcare: patient-centred, needs-driven, and evidence-based

The Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index 2018: A global ranking of governments based on what they are doing to tackle the gap between rich and poor

Does the right to a healthy environment need a treaty?

Advancing Health Equity And Integrated Care For Rural Dual Eligibles

Libya: torture and killings of civilians by law enforcement ‘endemic’

World still far from mine-free, 25 years since landmark treaty

Tigray’s civilian toll, Rohingya security fears, and cholera vaccine cuts: The Cheat Sheet

Shocking farm footage shows piglets with tails cut off and mothers crammed into tiny cages

‘Take a deep breath on indoor air quality’ at the European Health Forum Gastein

Global deforestation pledge will be missed without urgent action, say researchers

Global South farmers desperate for COP27 adaptation action

COP27: Climate change threatening global health – report

EU to back climate compensation talks at U.N. summit – document

EU Seeking Deals on Three Climate Laws in Time for UN Summit

European Green Deal: Commission proposes rules for cleaner air and water

Developing Countries Battle Climate Change, While the Wealthy Make Frozen Pledges: Will COP27 Usher a New Era?

Climate pledges have only inched forward since last year’s summit, UN finds

We can’t beat climate change without listening to women

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

News Flash 497: Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

News Flash Links, as part of the research project PEAH (Policies for Equitable Access to Health), aim to focus on the latest challenges by trade and governments rules to equitable access to health in resource-limited settings

Flying Gurnard (Dactylopterus Volitans)

News Flash 497

Weekly Snapshot of Public Health Challenges

 

WHO Call for Submissions: Fifth Global Forum on Human Resources for Health parallel sessions. Deadline for submission: 15 November 2022

Meeting registration: G2H2 research 2022 (financing): Restitution session for members Oct 28, 2022 01:00 PM in Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna

Webinar registration: Healthcare in war-torn Tigray: targeted or collaterally attacked? Nov 2, 2022 12:00 PM in Universal Time UTC

Call For Applications: International People’s Health University (IPHU) Course of PHM: Last date to apply: 25 October, 2022

Research, Interrupted: How Covid-19 Slowed Basic Research

World Health Summit Ends on Uneven Note

World’s Pandemic Response: Tall on Principles But Short on Plans

Parliamentarians Unite Forces Globally to Advance Pandemic Treaty

EMA recommends approval of Comirnaty and Spikevax COVID-19 vaccines for children from 6 months of age

EMA recommends approval of second adapted Spikevax vaccine

Audio Interview: Covid-19: Where Are We Heading?

Global leaders commit US$ 2.6 billion at World Health Summit to end polio

Shortage of cholera vaccines leads to temporary suspension of two-dose strategy, as cases rise worldwide

Health worker shortage in Uganda fueled spread of Ebola, says WHO

Vaccines to treat cancer possible by 2030, say BioNTech founders

The war in Ukraine is fueling antimicrobial resistance

Roundtable: How Can Disclosing Clinical Trial Costs Increase Access to Medical Products?

Stigma’s Toll on Sexual and Reproductive Health

World Cancer Congress: lack of early screening is driving deaths in poorer countries, NGO boss warns

How many? A new analysis finds 1.3 million American adults rationed insulin due to cost

EXTRACTIVISM: THE QUIET RUINER OF HUMAN HEALTH, SETTLEMENT & BIODIVERSITIES IN UGANDA by Michael Ssemakula

Digitalisation has the power to revolutionise human rights tracking for the best

HRR 651 HOW MUCH POVERTY CAN DEMOCRACIES TAKE AND HOW MUCH UNDERDEVELOPMENT CAN WORLD PEACE TAKE?

Do Cash Transfers Deter Migration?

Time is Running Out for Decisions on Debt Relief as Countries Face Escalating Development Crisis

How the Global Debt Crisis Could Make the Hunger Crisis Worse

EQUITY IN GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH: HIGH TIME FOR FUNDING AGENCIES TO WALK THE TALK by Luchuo Engelbert Bain

Commission to propose EU-wide phaseout of male chick killing

In COP27 host Egypt, hunger mounts amid soaring import costs and weather extremes

What Climate Change Means For Africa’s Food Crisis

UK Parliament report warns climate change likely to worsen atrocities

Are Climate Summits a Waste of Time?

Heal the world to make it a better place: A step closer to healthy urbanism in Egypt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EQUITY IN GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH: HIGH TIME FOR FUNDING AGENCIES TO WALK THE TALK

...the voice of funders with clear commitments on how they intend, and should ensure, that there is equity in global health research remains disturbingly absent. If any concrete progress is envisaged in ensuring equity in global health research, then the funders must walk the talk... 

...funders should come up with clear guidelines and indicators to ensure that equity is engrained throughout the research cycle with the research they fund...

 By Luchuo Engelbert Bain, MD, PhD1,2,3

  1. International Development Research Centre, IDRC, Ottawa, Canada.
  2. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
  3. Pan African Medical Journal, PAMJ.
Email: lengelbert-bain@idrc.ca

lebaiins@gmail.com

EQUITY IN GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH: HIGH TIME FOR FUNDING AGENCIES TO WALK THE TALK

 

Healthy partnerships in the global health research agenda stand to greatly accelerate the decolonization of decolonizing global health. Indeed, the much-awaited Cape Town Statement of the just ended 7th World Conference on Research Integrity (29 May-1 June 2022, Cape Town, South Africa) will put extra momentum in ending “helicopter research”. Some major players in the global health publication space (The Lancet, Nature, The BMJ, Anesthesia) have taken a clear commitment to ensure equity when it comes to authorship. As we speak, the voice of funders with clear commitments on how they intend, and should ensure, that there is equity in global health research remains disturbingly absent. If any concrete progress is envisaged in ensuring equity in global health research, then the funders must walk the talk.

As a starting point in this reflection, funders should come up with clear guidelines and indicators to ensure that equity is engrained throughout the research cycle with the research they fund. Clear equity indicators in the terms of engagement, that should/must be respected by grantees, as well as reporting framework are highly needed. Conscious inclusion of capacity building plans of grantees is required. Only through an extra and conscious effort in building the capacities of researchers can ending helicopter research be envisaged. Empirical research to identify the needs of actors, as well as co- defined meaning of equity for stakeholders to have a common meaning of the concept at the outset.

Coming up with a clear transparency mechanism (e.g through guidance documents on the websites) is highly needed to ensure that funder is actually walking the talk in ensuring equity in global health research.

 

 

EXTRACTIVISM: THE QUIET RUINER OF HUMAN HEALTH, SETTLEMENT & BIODIVERSITIES IN UGANDA

As a dominant model of economic growth, development and economic diversification, extractivism continues its enormous existence and influence on the ecosystems and conservation approaches of the environmentalists and health activists in Africa. With the overwhelming ambitions of boasting the Countries’ Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) and nations’ income per capita especially among the emerging global-south economies, a heavy parallel diversion has existed over the years between the environmentalists and political-economic approaches to extractivism in Uganda. The economic impact that comes along with the valuable economic rent gains of extraction ventures elevate and strengthen the State’s economic growth stages especially from the pre-conditions to take-off economic stage through the drive-to-maturity economic stage.

This paper further high-marks the unimaginable awful climate dynamic implications that come lengthwise with the mining activities that cause human-induced destructions.

Mining in Uganda is mainly done for exportation of the raw-form minerals by the multinational corporations through private sector investments to the foreign markets and highly industrialized global-north nations that have highly-advanced appropriate technology to convert mined minerals into finished valuable treasurable products. This paper postures a heavy juxtaposition question on the two extreme ends of extractivism gains, that is, positive and negative gains through critically studying and analyzing the adverse health costs of extractivism in developing countries like Uganda.   According to (Arquinego, 2014), climate change does not affect the global South and global North equally, and within those hemispheres not everyone is affected equally either. Climate impacts affect people according to their race, class and gender. Responses to climate change need to begin from this recognition.

This paper continues to explore the gaps and issues underlying management and exploration of natural resources through natural resource governance, and approaches to extractivism, and its dangers on the Uganda’s ecosystem with oil exploration as the major area of focus. Further we discuss the health effects of extractivism as one of the physical environment determinants of health in the vulnerable communities and low-resource settings around the oil and other mineral fields, the displacement of the local natives due to dominant civil corporate controls with amplified militarization of resource regions and transnational corporations’ influence in the conservation policies of the environment protection authorities

 By Michael Ssemakula

Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, and Health Rights Advocate

Alliance of Women Advocating for Change, and PHM-Network

Uganda

 

EXTRACTIVISM: THE QUIET RUINER OF HUMAN HEALTH, SETTLEMENT & BIODIVERSITIES IN UGANDA

 

 

Background and Introduction

Extractivism is the mining or extraction of natural resources that are intended to be sold in the country’s export market.  This comprises the extraction of minerals and fossil fuels, deforestation for lumbering, agro-industry, and megadams. Down-the-factual lane, extractivism disastrous consequences are more eminent in Low-Income Countries (LICs) compared to the High-Income Countries (HICs), this is reflected in the LICs’ native communities and penniless disadvantaged women especially countries in sub-Saharan Africa like Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo; and in contrary, this has benefited the rich and wealthy HICs at the expense of the poor and destitute countries henceforth environment conflicts and resource-wars.

As an emerging economy with the ambition of achieving the well-laid down Nation Development Plan or Vision 2040 (NPA), of   Transforming Ugandan Society from a Peasant to a Modern and Prosperous Country within 30 years, and following the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #1 of end poverty in all its forms everywhere, there has been a praxis dynamic development in Uganda’s diversification vehicle through exploring and embracing all sorts of economic ventures that best suit the structure of Uganda’s economy with the major focus on main unindustrialized income generating ventures such as extractivism. The extraction industry in Uganda has several minerals including the colonial era minerals such as copper and gold which have been bracketed in several generations of national incomes and GDP computations, however, in the historic shift, the petroleum (oil and gas) exploration in the mineral sub-sector especially in the Albertine rift has shadowed the entire picture of the extractivism industry since its discovery in 2006. Oil and gas in the Uganda National development plan is referred to as oil industry. Through the health and conservational protection lenses, exploration activities are taking place in ecologically protected areas which makes the resource landscapes become the major concern and areas of extreme significance to the environmental and health advocates.

Uganda announced the discovery of commercially viable oil and gas deposits in and around the North-Western shores of Lake Albert, a region known as the Albertine Graben. (Holterman, 2013) In a report, (EPRC, Feb, 2015). Albertine Graben region, which stretches along the entire western border of the country, is host to endangered biodiversity. At least 5,793 different plant varieties have been recorded in the region, and 551 of these species are endemic to it. The Albertine Graben’s Lake Albert has 53 different fish species, and approximately 10 of these are unique to the lake and thus are found nowhere else in the world. The region’s residents depend on these critical natural resources for their livelihoods—in agriculture, fishing and tourism—all of which could be adversely affected by oil exploitation.

These new and fresh explorations in the western part of Uganda are magnified by further recent past discoveries in the northern parts of Uganda which traverse diverse ethnic, environmental and political lines with a storyline dissimilarity concerning the oil deposits’ location thereby bringing an immensely a parallel historic viewpoint.

The geopolitics is at the center-edge of mineral exploration in Uganda’s oil and mineral regions depicted through the vivid existence of major multinational corporations in the region such as Ireland’s Tullow oil Uganda Operations Pty Ltd, the French company Total and Chinese National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), making up the tripartite and other oil companies (Pulse, 2015). The Ministry of Energy and Minerals Development (MEMD) through the Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) and the Uganda National Oil Company (NATOIL) with the investment advisory assistance of the Private sector, are planning to permit more firms through a request for proposal and modal production-sharing agreement documents (NPA), as a way of streamlining the oil and gas extractivism activities, and clearly drawing the guiding policy for the corporations’ activities. All the companies will thrive on the presence of the oil in the oil regions, new explorations, political and macroeconomic outlook of the economy. In the recent past, findings show oil exploration has marked a fruitful end through oil discoveries in the Albertine rift for Uganda. By 2014 (Patey, October 2015) the Ugandan government estimated that there were 6.5 billion barrels of oil in place, but recoverable oil is estimated to be between 1.8 and 2.2 billion barrels with an annual revenue forecast of 2billion US-Dollars. Oil production is expected to reach heights of between 200,000 and 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) based on current discoveries. This places Uganda in the position to be a mid-level African producer, comparable with present day levels in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The global oil price rise in the previous decade was influential in revealing Uganda’s oil resources thus beguiling intercontinental oil corporations to set their direct oil investments to the virgin Ugandan oil and gas sub-sector in the-face of the economic and political security challenges.

Underlying Social, Economic, Political, Health and Environmental Implications

The extractivism gains is a long time-anthem of economic growth that is being hummed by millions of Ugandans and the national economy planners due to the backward-forward economic linkages and the mining outward-looking industrial-strategy economic benefits associated with oil, and accompanied by the anticipated positive dynamic shift in the income elasticity of demand of Ugandans to reduce the deflationary-economic gap that is being experienced due to the low effective aggregate demand and income inelastic demand. Oil and gas top the scale of economic ventures that the country is expectantly waiting to improve its balance of payment position in the global economy and stabilize its ever deteriorating Terms Of Trade (T.O.T) due to the excessive reliance of the economy on agricultural sector that is ever faced by price fluctuations in agricultural products that results in low price exchange for imports thereby increasing currency depreciation.

Across the globe especially in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil prices have experienced a positive wave trend through minimal volatilities with the barrel of oil expected to rise from the current $72 to $82 in October 2018 (Amadeo, 2018). The attractive price movements heighten the expectations of the citizenry from the extractivism sector with undoubtable immediate primary benefits such as employment creation by the oil companies and service providers, scaling-up foreign direct investments, supplies of goods and services by Ugandan companies, capacity development of Ugandans through training in the sector (to enhance their capacity fortunes to work in Uganda or abroad), infrastructural development, and growth of a petrochemical industry to reduce expenditure on global north product importation and rawmaterials thus increasing the overall national income, national income multipliers (Savings, investments, government expenditure and consumption multipliers), GDP growth rate, GDP per capita, improving the economy fiscal performance and closing the gap in the Uganda’s deficit budget to reduce the country’s reliance on public debt and foreign tied-aid, thereby giving the government an edge through political forces to defend for oil exploration at the expense of ecosystem conservation. The World Bank (BankWorld, 2016) through the Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) projected a GDP growth rate bracket of 7-10% when the oil production starts which will improve our investment multiplier effect. The Country Economic Memorandum also points out and highlights experience of other countries in the African continent and other parts of the world, which had large scale production of oil, gas and other mineral resources that created great economic opportunities. However, the Country Economic Memorandum presents foremost challenges as in the foregoing. A case in point is Angola where high oil production and high international prices boosted gross domestic product (GDP) growth during most of the 2000s but a massively expanded, incompetently managed, public investment program created congestion, inefficiencies and inflationary-gap in the country, instead of developing the long-term physical and human capital necessary to replace non-renewable resources.

The new century contemporary switch in the economic diversification drive through new extractivism discoveries, has forecasted enormous projected benefits to revitalize and fortify the national social economic and political building blocks for Uganda, to strengthen its influential footprint in the sub-Saharan Africa region and Africa in its entirety. The countless ugly gory tales have come along with oil explorations due to the untamable ambitions of the economy’s targets and development goals through indescribable ecologically unfriendly and harsh extraction undertakings which is intensifying the foul misconceptions of the environmentalists and health activists about extractivism activities vis-à-vis the great gain projections as discussed in this paper in the preceding discourses.

Internal displacements of people in the oil regions has been the foremost point of concern in the social adverse effects of extractivism. This has resulted in creation of group-temporary roofs commonly termed as Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps due to land grabbing and conflicts fueled by well-connected island of unscrupulous civil corporate controls. In (Nalubega, 2014) Buliisa the Member of Parliament, Stephen Mukitale (2011-2016) questioned the manner in which his constituents were being evicted. There’re over 120 land cases in Buliisa district and we all know that the grabber is working with some of the district leaders because he would not know where these oils would be set up, and there is an escalating number of land conflicts. In Nwoya District which started in 2006, around the time oil was found, farming activities are diminishing every passing day due to the restricted access to land in these areas yet people must find means of survival.

Therefore, they fight against these dominant structures for their only asset to secure their fundamental right to land as the only source of livelihood which is under attack. Land is a physical determinant of health through which one grows food to adequately meet his/her nutrition needs as one of the aims of the Sustainable Development Goal #2 and #3, and one of the significant components in Primary Health Care used to achieve Universal Health Coverage. During the dislodgments, the health of the vulnerable women and the children is the most affected in contrast to men. This is because land in most impoverished communities is the only source of food to feed households and generate income for them through farming. Therefore, land grabbing intercepts their subsistence and commercial farming activities which incapacitates and cripples their financial muscles thus making such societies deprived of access to fundamental basic necessities of life, adequate feeding and personal developments. This further exacerbates the gender disparity and income Gini-coefficient gap due to the gender structuralized economic violence against women through socio-economic system pathways that harm their welfare especially the penniless underprivileged and indigenous women.

The Resource Governance in Uganda which incorporates management and allocation of resources is being hovered by a micro- and personalized system of resource management through a tight terrifying resource militarization. This is evidently and heavily being felt by the natives in the resource regions, done to protect the interests of a group of black-to-black apartheid oppressive rulers, the Museveni-bush men and company. Since they are the country managers, they tend to owe unbreakable materialistic-allegiance to the transnational oil corporations, with the intent of expanding and strengthening their financial empires and grip on power. In return, due to the constrained and expensive regulatory and bureaucratic procedures, the transnational corporations in extractivism leverage on maximizing resource exploitation with limited inclusion of ecosystem protection into their management systems and programmes. Given their strong set-of-capacities and influence in the global oil and gas industry, transnational corporations tend to compromise the global climate change policy enshrined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This undermines and violates the sovereignty of some states especially the LICs in the global-south because the transnational oil corporations tend to parade their economic interests above the environmental, health and social interests of people.

The oil industry is undertaking its activities within the communities and environs of the ecosystems. Destruction of the Lake Albert area’s ecological biodiversity is unescapable due to the poor and inefficient environmental governance which exposes the region’s rich wildlife ecologies to six-feet under degradation. Thus, creating a rift between the politicians, health activists and the environmentalists’ approach to extractivism. According to the report by (Patey, October 2015) Albertine Graben, along with eco-tourism in Murchison Falls National Park, where 40 per cent of Uganda’s discovered oil resources are located is under threat if the oil   industry does not follow the international environmental standards. By virtue of the fact that Uganda’s oil is waxy, groundwork infrastructure requirements are bigger, and they are at the verge of leaving a large black-mark on the natural resource environment, thus creating a need for extra power plants that will deal with heating, storage, and transport of oil, and the shallow depths of oil wells and weak natural flow pressures will require significant water injection for oil extraction.

Remediation

Formulate and strengthen regulatory policies concerning extractivism

This provides space for checks and balances in the sector because oil companies are self-regulating due to the fact that Uganda’s system body that is National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) is inadequately supported in terms of funding from the government and has deficiencies in its administrative authority to sufficiently penalize the ecology destroyers. Therefore, such regulatory policy helps to guide the oil corporations to frequently conduct environmental impact assessment and treat their wastes like oil spills that may be a health hazard to humanity and in long-run cause a cancer nightmare to the populace in the region.

Proper mapping and formulating a well streamlined compensation policy

Uganda has a land Act but does not have a compensation policy. In many incidents this Act works in favor of the bourgeoisie class over the interests of peasants on the land. Section 6(5) (b) of the Land Act provides that, where a person awarded compensation under this Section refuses to accept payment, the High Court on the application of the Attorney General may order payment to be made into court on such conditions as it thinks appropriate. Most of the times the compensation awarded is inadequate and this becomes a financial and a heavy wealth loss to the victims. Further, the property valuers who can help are government employees and the law does not provide for private property valuers. Most government valuers are easily bribed and manipulated by the rich and experts from the corporations to authenticate the unscrupulous results.  The outcomes out land evictions are often disastrous especially in the wave-length of health. Most of the times, evictions involve resettlement of the victims in distant and remote free lands secured by the government which are far away from the health centres. This limit people’s access to health care especially the HIV/AIDs patients who consistently need to visit the health centres to get health advisory services in regards to their CD4 counts and access to medicines such as antiretrovirals.

Conclusion

Oil discovery in Uganda is the newest economic gear in the diversification vehicle that has been embraced by economists and politicians as a heavy-rewarding economic undertaking to revive the Uganda’s economy. This will close the budgetary gap in order to reduce the country’s reliance on domestic and foreign public borrowing in the national budgets to stimulate the drive to economic self-sustenance. Contrariwise, the oil exploration drive under the environmentalists’ and health advocates’ approach has been sieged on the grounds of overwhelming adversative effects it may have on the ecosystems and health. Crude oil leakages and spills my cause escape of substances used in the oil production processes which detrimentally affect the habitats of flora and fauna in the freshwater and in-land biodiversity systems thereby troubling several living organisms’ functions like feeding, respiration, and body temperature-regulation. Meanwhile, the ecosystem in its entireness changes with time because of the chemical substances and compound-elements of the dripped oil that are noxious to the environs. Therefore, the government should come up with a stringent activity regulatory policy framework that standardizes and controls the activities of the oil companies to protect the ecologies against destructions by the oil and gas industry.

 

References

Amadeo, K. (2018). Oil Price forcast 2018-2050.

Arquinego, S. (2014). Climate Impacts. Extractivism, 1.

BankWorld, G. (2016). Uganda Economic Memorandum: Black Gold: Oil and Mineral Extraction Can Diversify Uganda’s Economy. Kampala: World Bank.

EPRC. (Feb, 2015). NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN THE ALBERTINE GRABEN REGION OF UGANDA:. Kampala: Uganda Journalists’ Resource Centre.

Holterman, D. (2013). The Biopolitical War for Life: Extractivism and the Ugandan Oil State. Critical Managament Studies, University of Manchester (p. 9). Oxford: ScienceDirect.

Nalubega, B. O. (2014, September Friday). Oil fuels land grabs in the Albertine Region. Oilinuganda.org, p. 1.

NPA, N. P. (n.d.). NDPII.

Patey, L. (October 2015). Oil in Uganda: Hard bargaining and Complex politics in East Africa. Oxford: The Oxford Institute For Energy Studies.

Pulse, W. (2015). Uganda names 16 firms eligible for first licensing round. Building Towards the Future of Energy.

 

 

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