Advancing Global Health

Living in the United States, it can be easy to forget the global health crisis in the developing world. According to U.N. estimates, 33 million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, with 2.7 million new infections every year.¹ Over two thirds of those people are in Sub-Saharan Africa,² where they have minimal access to life-saving medicines and where the stigma of the disease prevents them from holding regular jobs or continue as functioning members of society.

It’s even easier to forget about the widespread diseases now eradicated in the U.S., but still running rampant in the developing world. Malaria infects 250 million people annually, according to the World Health Organization, and kills one million of those people - mostly children.³ Diarrhea due to food contamination kills 1.8 million people every year, and leads to malnutrition in many more.⁴ Tuberculosis and measles are also endemic to the regions where Global Goods Partners’ (GGP) community based organizations (CBOs) live and work. With prevention education and minimal resources, many of these diseases are both preventable and largely curable.

Unsurprisingly, meeting basic health care needs represents two of the U.N.’s eight Millennium Development Goals - but lack of clinics and resources has seriously hampered success.⁵ Where basic health care is improving, it is generally met by the existence of free or low-cost local clinics. Organizations like GGP’s community based organizations often run or support such critical healthcare initiatives:

The women of Gulu la anthu Oluka (“knitting group” in Chichewa) in Malawi know first-hand the importance of addressing global health issues; of the eight women in the cooperative, seven live with HIV/AIDS and one is living with polio. The knitting group was formed to help the members generate income and pursue financial independence - a hard fight given the stigma of HIV/AIDS in Malawi. Gulu la anthu Oluka is a project of the international health organization Partners in Health (PIH), which works closely with the Ministry of Health in Malawi. PIH provides primary health care and basic social and economic needs in impoverished communities around the globe.

In 2004, Rwandan women came
together with a group of international activists to start WE-ACT, an association of 24 small grassroots organizations whose mission is to increase access to health care for women and children affected by genocide. Their three free clinics are especially targeted to serve HIV+ patients (of whom they have seen over 5,000) with anti-retroviral medicine (ARVs), to provide counseling and to refer patients to other AIDS clinics. They also address the constant developing-world afflictions of malaria and diarrhea.

Wola Nani (“We embrace and develop one another,” a Xhosa phrase) in South Africa, addresses the lack of education around HIV/AIDS. Aside from the physical stresses of living with HIV/AIDS, those living with the disease also face social stigma. Because of its sexual associations, HIV/AIDS is often kept hidden by the community, and those living with the disease are often forced into silence and isolation. Wola Nani works to fight this stigma by providing services for those infected as well as workshops and educational projects to raise awareness of the disease.

1 UNAIDS, “2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic,” 32.

2 UNAIDS, “2008 Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic,” 30.

3 WHO, “Malaria,” [http://www.who.int/topics/malaria/en/].

4 WHO, “Food Safety and Foodborne Illness,” [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs237/en/].

5 United Nations, “The Millennium Development Goals Report—2008.”