CNS

Women and the challenges of lung health

Sam Banda Jnr, Malawi
The world on March 8 every year celebrates the International Women's Day which, originally, was known as International Working Women's Day. The focus of the day involves general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women for women's political and social achievements. In some countries, however, the political and human rights theme designated by the United Nations runs strong and political and social awareness of the struggles of women worldwide are brought out and examined in a hopeful manner.

Advocacy efforts for improving TB services in Tamil Nadu

Civil society organizations, TB forum members, the State NGO Network and Partners working in different districts of Tamil Nadu under Project Axshya and Partnership for TB Care and Control in India met recently in Chennai to discuss the current scenario of Tuberculosis programme in Tamil Nadu and the challenges faced at grass root level for providing services to the TB patients. The meeting was coordinated and facilitated by The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease and REACH.

Moses Wasamu, Kenya
Results of recent research findings underscore the need to accelerate development of additional HIV prevention options for women in the area of HIV prevention. The HIV prevention trial was done among women in Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa, and its results released at a scientific conference in the US early March. At the same time, the results from a large-scale HIV prevention trial among African women known as VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic), provide an urgent reminder that products must meet the needs of the people using them.

MARCH 2013

This is a special issue of Vote For Health e-magazine on the theme: Women and Lung Health. Vote For Health e-magazine presents select news articles penned by members of CNS Health Writers' Network from African and Asian countries on specific themes every month. We are grateful to International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) for its support and The Union experts who helped Health Writers tremendously in developing their articles.

Gugulethu Nyazema, Zimbabwe
(First published in Daily News, Zimbabwe on 13th March 2013): Zimbabwean women are suffering health risks arising from being exposed to indoor smoke. But the problem is not unique to Zimbabwe: nearly three billion people, most living in low-income countries, rely on solid fuel for cooking, lighting and heating. Health experts said the great challenge is that Zimbabweans are unaware of the problem, making them more vulnerable to it. “The diseases that women get from the smoke exposure occur only after many years of and this means that they are unlikely to make the connection between exposure and the disease,” local doctor Manikai Nyandoro said. Nyandoro said that the best way to inform people and engage them for change is to select “change agents” in the community who are affected by the problem.

Female MDR-TB Ward
KS Roy Hospital, Kolkata
Photo credit: CNS

Moses Wasamu, Kenya
(First published in The Star, Kenya on 8th March 2013): The International Women’s Day is marked all over the world to celebrate the positive developments that have taken place among women. Annually on March 8, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. However, despite the positive developments that have been experienced, women still face many challenges in life. The unfortunate fact is that globally, women's health is worse than that of men. Lung disease is one of the top three causes of death among women worldwide. The World Health Organisation says the leading risk factor is tobacco use, and the sad fact is that it is on the rise among women.

Alice M Tembe, Swaziland
Tuberculosis, commonly called TB, is caused by microscopic bacteria called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It can be pulmonary in nature, when it affects the lungs and is highly infectious or extra pulmonary when it affects some part of the body other than the lungs and is less communicable. TB can be latent (meaning the TB bacteria are in the person’s body but are not causing illness) and it can be active whereby the bacteria causes illness. Tuberculosis is transmitted through the air from exposure to bacilli in the sputum by inhalation through the mouth or nose via the trachea leading to the lungs.

Okeoghene Oghenekaro, Nigeria
Mrs. Christy Efemena, 59, a mother of four children, had never smoked a cigarette in her life, just as Mrs. Joyce Adefila, 47, a mother of five had never done. Ironically, they were both victims of lung cancer and unfortunately, they were not able to survive the disease in spite of series of treatments, including chemotherapy, at home and abroad. Such cases tend to elicit some thought-provoking questions as to why non-smokers die of lung cancer in spite of the fact that smoking is adjudged to be one of the major causes of the disease.

Dr Rishi Sethi, Cardiologist, KGMU

Dr Rishi Sethi, Dr Sharad Chandra awarded prestigious FACC
[हिंदी] The Cardiology Department of King George’s Medical University (KGMU) in India added yet another feather to its cap with two of its faculty members being awarded in the same year with the prestigious fellowship of American College of Cardiologists. Dr Rishi Sethi and Dr Sharad Chandra, both Associate Professors in the Cardiology Department at KGMU, were awarded the coveted Fellowship of American College of Cardiologists in its Convocation held in San Francisco on 11th March 2013.

Bernard Appiah, Ghana
A rat burrows into a small bushy hill, and makes the hole its abode, supplying food and leafy "clothing" into it. Men or boys, dressed in sweat-drenched shirts bent on having bush meat put fire materials like dry leaves in front of the hole, light a match, resulting in fire and smoke. Then they begin to fan the smoke directly into the hole resulting in the sound "pupupupupupu" while hunting dogs and other interested men anxiously look on. Roughly 10 to 20 minutes later, the smoke forces the unfortunate rat to jump out of its abode into the paths of its enemies who chase it and literally arrest it.

Carolyn Kavita Tauro - CNS
According to the WHO In 2011, an estimated 8.7 million people fell ill with tuberculosis and 1.4 million people died from it, including 0.5 million women, making TB one of the top three causes of death for women aged 15 to 44 worldwide. “Although the ratio of males to females affected by TB in the pre-puberty and childhood ages is almost equal, this changes significantly in adulthood, and we find almost 4 men per 1 woman affected with TB,” according to Dr Sarabjit Chadha, Project Director at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union), India. Dr Chadha attributes this to “access related issues considering that women in the rural settings do not have a similar health seeking behavior as men. Also, issues of poverty and malnutrition are more relevant in case of women because of gender inequality.”

Tuberculosis care and control came under gender lens when participants attending Western Regional Consultative Meeting of Partnership for TB Care and Control in India (PTCCI) shared their perspectives on TB and women. This regional consultation was held in Indore, Madhya Pradesh during 5-6 March 2013. If we look at data, number of new TB infections in India was more in men than women. However statistics on male: female ratio in new TB cases is different too in some parts of India.

GeneXpert at Lok Nayak Hospital
Delhi: Photo credit: CNS

Recent advances in TB diagnostics, particularly around GeneXpert, a technology which enables a rapid diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) and also of Multidrug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) within two hours, has been a breakthrough in the worldwide efforts to curb the spread of the disease. Increased media coverage of this development and the growing incidence of MDR-TB as well as Extensively Drug-Resistant TB (XDR-TB) have stepped up general awareness and knowledge in the community of TB. Patients and families affected by TB are now coming together to demand the latest available technology with the potential to save many lives through an early and accurate diagnosis.

Breath is life, and yet the importance of lung health is under-recognised, especially in women. No wonder then that lung disease (including respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), tuberculosis, lung cancer and asthma) accounts for more than 16% deaths among women worldwide. Exposure to tobacco smoke and indoor air pollution, from using solid fuels for cooking and heating, are the two leading risk factors that impact women’s lung health much more than that of men, especially in low/middle income countries. Each of these pollutants kills over 1.5 million women worldwide every year.

Do you have US$ 24 or Indian Rupees 1,000 to spare? Now the choice is yours how you would like to spend the money: buy movie tickets and enjoy with friends or sponsor four women for a year to help protect their dignity? With this money these women would get the supply of sanitary napkins for a year. Till 5-6 years back menstruation was a tabooed topic in the Indian society. Activists avoided discussions on this integral part of a woman’s life. Even women felt embarrassed to talk about this biological cycle. The situation was despite the fact that the focal point for all schemes of social uplift always remained women–be it micro finance, self help groups or corporate social responsibility.

PrEP Strategies Remain Valuable Prevention Tool: AVAC
Results from a large-scale HIV prevention trial among African women known as VOICE (Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic) provide an urgent reminder that products must meet the needs of the people using them. While disappointing, the results lend new urgency and direction to the search for additional safe and effective HIV prevention options for women, AVAC said. Researchers announced on 4th March 2013 that none of three pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and microbicide interventions tested in VOICE – daily oral tenofovir, daily oral TDF/FTC (Truvada), and daily 1% vaginal tenofovir gel – provided additional protection against HIV in the study, likely because few of the women in the trial used the products as directed.

BREAKING NEWS
Efforts to get women controlled HIV prevention tools have once again suffered a setback following the release of final results from a 4 year study that that sought to determine the safety and effectiveness of two antiretroviral (ARV)-based HIV prevention approaches in women. Speaking to a select team of journalists in the trial countries of Uganda, Zimbabwe and South Africa via teleconference on Monday afternoon, the lead researchers announced that none of the three products - tenofovir gel, oral tenofovir and oral Truvada proved to be effective among the women enrolled in the VOICE study.

A national level consultation on "Reducing Gender Inequalities: A Possible Framework for Post 2015" was recently held at Nawabganj, Unnao. Organized by the National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW), Government of India, and supported by the UN Women South Asia, it was hosted by the Centre for Advocacy and Research and brought together leading civil society groups, think tank bodies and academicians to deliberate on the strengths and weakness of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); to review gaps and suggest remedies and evolve an inclusive, participatory and sustainable framework to advance the MDG post 2015.

As part of the ongoing 2by4 communications and advocacy campaign the first mini-series of e-consultation and key informant interviews is on the theme: Women and TB. 2by4 campaign focusses on two key populations (women and children) and four key issues (multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB); laboratory and diagnostics; private-public partnerships (PPP); TB-HIV collaborative activities).

Have your say in the online consultation and key informant interviews in lead up to the World TB Day, 24th March 2013. 'Two by Four: 2by4' is a time-limited communications' campaign hosted by Citizen News Service - CNS, a partner of Stop TB Partnership, on the Global Stop-TB eForum and other platforms CNS is part of. The 2by4 campaign runs for two months from 24th February to 24th April 2013.

[Images] [हिंदी] About thousand villagers in Reusa Block, Sitapur, staged a Jal Satyagrah by getting down into the waters of river Sharda and standing there all day long on 25-26 February 2013. They were demanding immediate action by the government to start work to stop erosion lest their villages and fields may again get submerged and destroyed by the fury of the swelling river. A population of 50,000 people residing in 20-25 villages are threatened to be displaced by the rising and shifting waters of river Sharda.

So said Freddy Svane, Ambassador of Denmark in an interview given exclusively to Citizen News Service - CNS, during his recent visit to Lucknow. He rightly believes that, “Diabetes is a non- communicable disease that is self-inflicted. It is generally not something that we inherit, but something that we inflict on ourselves mostly by adopting an unhealthy life style. Dealing with it is all about applying our own common sense to change our mindset. Of course some will have to be assisted to do this, and so it calls for education. It should definitely be part of school programmes, because that is the time the kids start aping all the bad habits that we have in the western culture—more junk food and less exercise, lots of cars and less of walking. The most important thing is to raise awareness and I have the firm belief that one needs to start from a very early stage.”

Narmada Bachao Andolan has been using Jal Satyagrah since 1993 as a means of protest wherein people facing submergence stay put in waist, or sometimes neck, deep rising waters of the river and endanger their lives. The administration or the government, on the other hand, is busy trying to save people by either forcibly pulling them out of water or agreeing to talk to them on their demands. Last year in Ghoglagaon of Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh people were left standing in water for 17 days and the government was not willing to talk to them until the body parts of some of the people in water started dissolving.

The recently released fourth annual edition of the financing series of the Institute of Health and Metric Evaluation (IHME), ‘Financing Global Health 2012: The End of the Golden Age?’ tracks Development Assistance for Health (DAH) from government aid agencies, multilateral donors, and private foundations. It also analyses health spending from governments in developing countries between 1990 and 2010. By combining health funding estimates with the results of the newly published Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2010, the report provides metrics that can help inform donor priority setting. Comparisons between the amount of DAH that a country receives and its disease burden provide useful tools for assessing need versus funding.

Rising Of A Billion Voices For Justice

It was a Valentine’s Day celebration with a difference. On 14th February, 2013, a vibrant crowd of Lucknowites marched from Begum Hazrat Mahal Park to Hazratganj-- the heart of the city—as a part of ‘Odhani ka Parcham’, a campaign to condemn violence against women. The three hours long event was in support of the global campaign ‘One Billion Rising’ to stop violence of all forms against women. Women (and men too) from different strata of society, transcended boundaries of caste, creed, colour, and community, to come together under the aegis of one common agenda—rise, dance and strike to end violence against women.

This is an appeal from a person in her own words who urgently needs support for her healthcare needs. She is a brave woman who is a living example of the oft-quoted adage - 'When the going gets tough, the tough gets going...' Read her story in her own words -a real-life experience, full of grit, courage and determination, to continue living and spreading light despite seemingly insurmountable challenges.
(CNS has met and interviewed Payel and strongly supports her efforts to exercise her right to health. Please consider supporting her personal fight against Von Hippel Lindau (VHL) Syndrome and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). Kindly find her contact details or ways to support below)

According to an estimate, one in three women on the planet is likely to be raped or beaten in her lifetime. So on 14 February 2013, the 15th anniversary of Valentine’s Day, one billion women in unison across the globe, along with their well-wishers, hope to walk, dance, rise and demand an end to this violence. This historic day will see the collective strength and solidarity of women transcending all borders of caste, creed, religion and social status. It would be the clarion call to all women and men to refuse to accept and participate in any act of violence against women and girls and to end the rape culture.

Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most under-reported and under-rated chronic disease for children across the world. Although childhood TB has been receiving attention from global health experts, it still remains a major cause for illness and death of children. Yet TB is preventable, treatable and curable. Children generally contract this disease because they are in proximity to elders who are already affected by the TB bacterium, such as a nanny, the mother, the care-giver or other infected family members.

Civil society organizations came together in Hyderabad today to enlist gaps in tuberculosis (TB) control programme in Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and appeal to authorities to strengthen the TB response. Partnership for TB Care and Control in India, along with LEPRA Society, Catholic Health Association of India (CHAI), Catholic Bishops Conference of India – Coalition for AIDS and Related Diseases (CBCI-CARD), Damien Foundation India Trust, David and Lois Rees Hospital, Shivananada Rehabilitation Home, TB Alert India, Vasavya Mahila Mandali, World Vision India, Christian Association for Medical mission and People's development (CAMP) and Rayalaseema Gramena Vikas Society, submitted a memorandum to Commissioner, Principal Secretary (Health) of AP Government, among others.

For a disease as old of tuberculosis (TB) how come despite all the scientific research and development (R and D) we still have about a century old BCG vaccine which is the only licensed vaccine to prevent TB - it is used extensively with approximately 100 million newborns being vaccinated globally each year. While BCG can prevent severe forms of TB in some children, its widespread use in infants has failed to control the global epidemic. Sustained efforts have been made to develop new, safe and more effective TB vaccines over the past years. Results of one such effort were announced in The Lancet on 4th February 2013.

Photo credit: CNS - Seoul 2012

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least one-third of all cancer cases are preventable. Prevention offers the most cost-effective long-term strategy for the control of cancer. Despite strong evidence and clear mandate to protect public health, lifestyle related cancers are on an alarming rise. Direct, indirect and surrogate corporate advertising of tobacco, alcohol, food, and other lifestyle related products must be censored to ensure consistent public health messaging.

[हिंदी] "We, as representatives of women’s organizations, civil society groups, and activists committed to women’s rights, convey our strong opposition to the Government's decision to move an ordinance on the criminal law amendments related to sexual violence. We call upon the President of India to not sign such an Ordinance" said firebrand social activist Arundhati Dhuru in a press conference in Lucknow. Arundhati is also the UP State Advisor to Right To Food Commissioners appointed by Supreme Court, and has been a long-time social activist with Narmada Bachao Andolan and National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM).