These past few weeks I have been engaged in meetings which seek to
promote the significance of various large scale diseases. The Stop TB
Partnership held a consultation with civil society at the World Health
Organization at the end of September. We heard from a range of
practitioners that this historically rampant disease is ravaging many
parts of the world, especially Southern Africa. Those weakened by HIV
are particularly prone.
The Minister of Health for South Africa confirmed the seriousness of the
situation at an interfaith conference on religion and health care
hosted by the Archbishop of Cape Town in early October. He offered the
statistic that his country bears 17% of the entire world's TB cases. At
any one time throughout the world there are 9 million suffering from TB.
2 million die each year. Increasing numbers of these cases involve
strains that are drug resistant; a situation exacerbated as sufferers do
not maintain their treatment after an initial flourish of improvement.
This week I met with Mark Lodge of the International Network for Cancer
Treatment and Research at his base in Oxford, UK,. He is looking for
wider partnerships to address the growth in cancer prevalence in the
developing world. The days have now passed when cancer can be considered
a disease of the developed world. 60% of cases now arise from middle
and low income countries, with 5 million deaths a year.
Later that same day I met with Ruth Wooldridge, a founder member of AHN
who works with the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance. She and her
husband Mike, a respected BBC documentary maker and journalist, have
made a film about some of the cancer services and palliative care
facilities in Kenya. It demonstrates how much can be done with limited
resources. Ruth has written a handbook which gives practical advice
about running a simple palliative care programme in the most basic
circumstances.
Along with HIV, malaria, maternal and child health, respiratory and
diarrheal diseases, TB and cancer deserve wider interest and support.
Quoting competing mortality rates might seem crass, but this helps to
convey a wider picture of the overall burden of disease. The global
health community can only manage to give attention to a limited number
of so-called vertical diseases at any one time. Anglicans who seek to
promote health and provide clinical services face the diversity of
disease at grass roots level. We have to manage as broad a range of
services as possible; a challenging task when resources are few and
clinical specialists are absent.
The opportunity to improve our capacity to meet this challenge lies in
networking with those who are active in their specialist fields. I
suspect many of the skills and a considerable amount of knowledge lies
within our own network. Shared with one another, these capabilities can
have a widespread impact. Along with partners in other networks and
agencies we have the chance to build health systems that can roll back
such a high burden of disease. The work goes on...
Paul
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