#partners in health

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

I just read the article you posted a while back about TB (heads up- it said the gift article link has lapsed or some such). Did J&J ‘evergreen’ (be allowed to be evil) or was it allowed to become generic?

Relatedly, how do you manage empathy fatigue? I deal with OCD too and it screams at me that I have to care about and do all the things all at once. How do you choose where to put your time and energy?

(Also, when I get the coffee subscription for my husband’s birthday, which version should I get?)

For me empathy fatigue sets in when I careen my attention from this crisis to that one to the next one to the one after that, always feeling overwhelmed by each emerging problem but never having the time or attention to devote myself to one problem or another.

I'll give you an example. In 2014, a horrific ebola epidemic swept through Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The world paid attention to it. Everyone was talking about it. And then .... it ended. At least in the global imagination. Money dried up. The world moved on to the next crisis.

That's not to say the next crisis wasn't important. It was important. But in Sierra Leone, the ebola crisis wasn't really over even after people stopped contracting ebola. 15% of Sierra Leone's healthcare workers had been killed by ebola, and the already fragile healthcare system plummeted into what one Sierra Leonean physician described to me as "a state of collapse."

And so the crisis remained a crisis even after the world's attention shifted. 1 in 17 women in Sierra Leone were dying in childbirth. Over 10% of kids born died before the age of five. Tuberculosis killed thousands every year despite curative treatment being available.

And this is when Hank and I finally, belatedly realized that responding to crises in the news was not adequate. Instead, we would need to commit the kind of long-term attention and long-term support that long-term crises demand. This means making difficult choices--there is also high maternal and child mortality in countries other than Sierra Leone, but we choose to focus on Sierra Leone because we see an opportunity to make a difference, because the government is serious if limited in its commitment to improving healthcare and educational opportunities, and because we had to make a choice or else we would be overwhelmed by the many causes.

What about the other causes? Well, we trust people to work on those causes. We believe in their importance. And we support their work by doing ours as well as we can, and trusting they are doing theirs as well as they can. I still get overwhelmed. I still get depressed. But I find that the deeper I go into my particular areas of interest--global healthcare delivery, health care accessibility, ending TB, fighting maternal mortality--the better I feel personally, and the more good I feel like I'm able to do.

2. Johnson & Johnson has not abandoned their secondary patents on bedaquiline but they have committed to allow generics to be available in most countries, even those where the secondary patents apply. Unfortunately this deal leaves out many countries that need generic bedaquiline, including Ukraine, which is absolutely unacceptable. So progress has been made, but the progress (as is so often the case) is inadequate. The fight goes on.

[shitjethrosays]

I wonder what John Green's thoughts are on Tuberculosis?

[lithiumseven]

Hey, if you are bored at any point in the next 48 hours (Feb 16-18, 2024) you should check out the Project For Awesome on YouTube. The P4A was started by John Green and Hank Green, it’s the 17th annual, it’s a 48 hour livestream with them and guests, and they raise money for charities. The money from the first 24 hours goes to Save the Children and Partners in Health, two very well established charities that have been around for decades (Save the Children for 125 years) and Save the Children is all around the world but also in Gaza and it’s actually been there for decades and Partners in Health works to build hospitals, clinics, and resources and research all around the world in areas that need it and helped get the UN to require Johnson and Johnson to give up the patent to the tuberculosis cure (TB is the disease that kills the most people in the world every year). The money raised in the second 24 hours goes to charities voted on by viewers.

So if you can’t donate you can vote and have a very tangible impact, and you can vote for as many charities as you want. If you do want to donate there are fun perks and stuff you can choose. It’s my favorite thing every year they have guests I know Brennan Lee Mulligan is gonna be on with Hank at midnight EST tonight

Seriously guys this is a huge thing that raises millions for great charities and especially this year it’s so so important, and it’s FUN

[bassproshopspyramid]

‼️⚠️ 🎉 GOOD NEWS (nov. 15 / 2023)

[image ID: the destiel confession meme. cas says "I love you.

dean replies: "the endTB clinical trial found 3 new all-oral drug regiments with similar efficacy and safety to current conventional treatments while reducing the treatment time by up to two-thirds. they will allow for more individualized treatment centred on patients. and for the first time in the care of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, these treatments can be used in nearly all cases of MDR-TB, including in children, adolescents, adults, and pregnant people."

end ID.]

multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a form of tuberculosis that is particularly difficult to treat due to resistance to the 2 most powerful firstline antibiotics. many people are still treated with conventional treatments that are long (up to 24 months), ineffective, and often cause terrible side effects.

every year, there are about 500,000 new cases of MDR-TB worldwide - but only a tiny fraction are successfully treated. the endTB trial, led by MSF (médecins sans frontières/doctors without borders), PIH (partners in health) and IRD (interactive research and development), funded by Unitaid, and featuring 754 participants in 7 countries is a randomized, controlled trial designed to provide high-quality evidence on new, all-oral, shortened drug regimens.

one of the new regimens was found to be even more effective than current conventional treatments. the new trial also added an additional 4th regimen as an alternative for people who can’t tolerate some TB drugs.

there are now — for the first time ever! — 5 all-oral regimens that are effective against MDR-TB in 9 months or less and which are as good or better than a contemporary standard-of-care control. if recommended by WHO, they can be used in nearly all cases of MDR-TB, including children, adolescents, adults, and pregnant people, a first in MDR-TB care. two of the non-inferior regimens cost under $400, and a third costs under $600, for the full course of treatment.

EDIT: press release from endTB for a source

[michoodles]

I got an idea of a fic of Link and Tauro ( Lauro, obviously ) but idk if I'm gonna write it soon, so hear me out.

We know that there's more than 100 years between these two, and I don't think we are getting straight the epoch punch between them. Their minds are so different, they grow up in completely different places, different times, different history contexts and ( the point I wanna get ) different hyperfixions, Tauro is deeply in love with the zonai history bcs he grows up of a teen as an adult hearing people discuss about the ancient pass and the Zonai, what makes him the leader of the zonai search team. Link in another case, grows up with all the Sheika stuff.

We always assume that Link is okay with that part of the epoch change, but I want to explore that line between him and Tauro. This will sound cliche but, this makes me see Link as the Moon and Tauro as the sun, the ancient Sheika love the night sky, and the Zonai were so close to the sun, looking for that sacred gold light.

And these two different epochs, were connected, bcs there people were interested in the stars in the same way, the same stars we see in the Sheika Shrines are too in some Zonai ruins, especially in that one's over Ganondorf in the beginning of the game.

They are the opposite of each other, but they're in love, and they will make it work.

Also, idk when I'm gonna do this but, this idea is in my mind and I just can't let it go 😭😭 I'm back to students life in a few days, so probably a hiatus is coming, BUT I PROMISE TO MAKE THIS

¿I want to explore all this in a fic? Yes, I think that Tauro ( as a passion awareness man ) wants to know about the past, but in the eyes of someone who lived in the way of Link.

Also ¿It will be okay if I just, make doodles of this too? My idea is to make a fic with fanarts and all, I'm silly.

[clarejgold]

Stuff

Here are the Tests

I don’t want this to sound like a complaint, but people could not stop telling us about their stuff. Every lab tech and pharmacist. Every community and social worker. I am not a medical professional and half of these things were just words that I didn’t understand, but my goodness were they happy about the stuff they’ve got. 

One way to look at that is to assume it’s because people wanted to let me know that donor money is well spent. There are probably donors out there who need and want that reassurance, perhaps because they’ve had bad experiences in the past or their unconscious bias is telling them they need to check up on any resources shared with poor people.

There is however one form of stuff that I was and remain interested in and that’s the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) tests and the machine that uses them. Some readers of this will be well aware of the #TimeFor5 campaign to get the cost of these tests reduced to $5 per test from $15 per test, which is, depending on whom you ask, somewhere between a 300%-500% profit . 

These tests are the difference between following a treatment plan that will cure your TB and one that can ravage your body while the TB you have is still killing you. Over a million and half people needlessly die from TB every year solely because of lack of access to the right tests and medication. By ‘access’ I don’t mean transportation or the ability of a medical facility to handle the tests nor do I mean that not enough tests exist. The resources physically exist. They simply aren’t available to everyone who needs them because a pharmaceutical company decided that the poor people of the world were the right folks to squeeze knowing they don't have many voices to fight for them.

If you don’t know about it, it’s because most of your exposure, no pun intended, to TB as an illness probably comes from historical fiction and you, like many, think of TB as a disease of the past and/or something that affects only a small handful of people in tiny, isolated places. Let me point out that a ‘population’ of 1.6 million dead is far from small and that the vast majority of cases occur within a day’s transport of an international airport. 

The most recent successes in getting test and drug prices reduced have come from social pressure in the form of tweets, letters to representatives, and direct contact with the companies themselves to let them know that gross profiteering off the lives of vulnerable people is unacceptable. See the TBFighters for more information or look to Doctors without Borders or PIH .

[just-a-turtleduck]

Call To Action Now:

Tell Johnson & Johnson to not renew their patent on bedaquiline

Medical-capitalist eldritch horror, The One With Ten Million Brands, Johnson & Johnson is planning to renew their patent on bedaquiline, a tuberculosis drug, next week, July 18th. Rather than allow the world's deadliest infectious disease which kills mostly the very poor to have treatment options most patients can actually afford, J&J wants to keep a monopoly on what should be a human right.

Tell them that's beyond fucked up and also it violates their credo.

File a report by phone or by typing: https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/28704/report.html (most important please do this! the company is Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and the country is wherever you are) Good reddit thread full of useful templates: https://www.reddit.com/r/nerdfighters/comments/14wv93v/nerdfighter_call_to_action/

Keep the pressure on their social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/JNJNews and https://twitter.com/JNJGlobalHealth Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jnj/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jnj/?hl=en

Further: If you're contacting them maybe even bring up that they promised to help end TB by 2030! Price comparison between J&J* and generics *Not sure if this reduced price is even still happening or if that was just for the pandemic! Will update once I can clarify. I called! It took ~20 minutes and the person on the line was very nice.

[shakespearenews]

“I connected with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C, which holds the world’s largest collection of printed Shakespeare, to see if they’d donate 50 copies of ‘Macbeth,’” said Targoff. “Many of these students don’t own many books of literature. They were excited just to have a physical copy all to themselves.”

Upon arriving in Rwanda, Targoff toured the new medical facilities and the nearby regional hospital. As she made her way around the campus she discovered students engrossed in reading Shakespeare.

“I noticed six young women sitting on the grass, reading ‘Macbeth’ aloud to each other,” said Targoff. “It was moving to see how excited they were to be engaging with Shakespeare’s play.”

Through classroom conversations with her students, Targoff came to see “Macbeth” from an entirely new angle. As they spent their time together reading and analyzing different moments and scenes in the play,  Targoff found her students focusing both on the witches and themes around mental health.

“In parts of rural Rwanda, the students explained that many villagers still rely on traditional healers, so it’s challenging to get people to trust western doctors when they need antibiotics or serious medical attention,” she said. “The students were interested in discussing local healers in relation to the power the witches had in ‘Macbeth.’ They were curious to see how the witches’ might affect the plot both positively and negatively.”

The students also discussed Lady Macbeth’s struggles with her mental health. The doctor visits Lady Macbeth, but struggles to diagnose her.  She can’t be diagnosed because the doctor can’t find the illness in her body.

[beautifulbookishdisaster]

Disease does not treat people equally unless society treats people equally

John Green, ...to the UNITED NATIONS?

[mcb3k]

Watch "GOOD NEWS" on YouTube

Such a wonderful news ♥️!

[laprimanerda]

From Partners in Health

[sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog]

You may wonder what this whole Awesome Coffee Club thing is all about. Today I was reminded what it’s all about:

In 2019, the unpaid intern who runs this tumblr account visited Sierra Leone’s Kono District. Kono is the among the most impoverished communities in the world due to a long history of enslavement, colonialism, and civil war. A decade ago, Kono’s healthcare system was in a state of collapse--clinics had no running water or electricity or paid staff, and inconsistent supplies of medications and other necessities.

As a result, Kono was the epicenter of the global maternal mortality crisis: One out of every seventeen women could expect to die in childbirth. Over 10% of children died before the age of five. 

Beginning in 2014, Partners in Health began working with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health to bring change. This started with the basics at the region’s hospital, Koidu Government Hospital: running water, 24-hour electricity, and hiring nurses, community healthworkers, cooks, facilities management staff, and so much more. 

At the time, KGH’s maternity ward had a dirt floor. Many people were dying for want of an emergency C-section or a blood transfusion. By 2019, this was getting better--two functioning operating rooms were able to perform C-sections, and a blood bank could address postpartum hemorrhaging. But it was still inadequate, and maternal and child mortality were horrifyingly routine.

To address the crisis, PIH Sierra Leone directors Jon Lascher and Dr. Baillor Barrie wanted to build a world-class maternal and child health center that could save thousands of lives yearly while also serving as a teaching hospital to train the next generation of Sierra Leonean healthcare workers. They told us they needed $25,000,000 to break ground, and would probably eventually need another $25,000,000 to support the hospital’s operation over its first few years.

I am, as unpaid interns go, doing quite well, but not THAT well. So our family committed what we could and asked others to join us, and within two years, we passed that $25,000,000 goal. Together, we’ve now raised close to $40,000,000. 

Today, I visited the site of the Maternal Center of Excellence, the first wards of which will hopefully open next year. Nearly all of the construction team are from Kono, and 65% of them are women--they work as welders, engineers, planners, laborers, and so much more. You see three of them above. I had the privilege of talking with them about this project. The young woman to the right, Success, told me that her dream is to work for the hospital her whole life, helping to maintain and support it. One of the other women told me, “We are passionate about this work because it is the future of our country. And we know that we and our friends will someday give birth here.” I am so proud that our projects support their training and livelihood, and so grateful to have them as colleagues in this work.

The hospital--which will include over 100 maternal beds, a NICU, and enough operating suites to perform over 10 emergency C-sections per day, will also require ongoing funding for staff, stuff, systems, maintenance, and more. Our hope is that open-ended projects like the Awesome Coffee Club and Awesome Socks Club can help provide that funding, although the most efficient way to support this project is to donate directly! 

So that’s why this tumblr, and the awesome coffee club, exists. World-class maternal and infant healthcare is coming to Kono, a wonderful and  too long impoverished by colonialism and extractive capitalism. It is only a first step. There is so long to go. But what a first step.

[closetcatholic]

Today, Feb 21st, is one year since Dr. Paul Farmer, one of the founders of Partners in Health, died suddenly. I never met him. I’ve only read about him in books, watched him on videos, listened to him on podcasts. Once he did a Q&A with a book club I was in.

I don’t know that anyone I’ve never met has changed my life the way Paul Farmer has. His vision was — and is — a world with global heathcare equality. And more than that! A preferential option for the poor. Not give the poor the least. Not wring your hands and go oh well kids/women/babies/humans die every day nothing can be done.

Paul said hahaha we shall see about that! And spent more money on poor people than the World Health Organization said they were worth. He stole medicine from Harvard. He sat with kids as they died. He saw everyone as an equal, as a fellow human, worthy of care and respect.

He said once, when someone gives you a problem, you treat it as your own. This gives you the courage to solve it.

[kitamars]

gay lawyers man. crazy

[ionomycin]

My favorite pieces this year

[ciy0]

i just thunk a thought so please bare with me

I’m thinking about how Mingyu is definitely the type of guy that’s drawn to someone who’s severely lacking love or might’ve been hurt deeply in past. He doesn’t do it consciously, but he just starts to notice you. How sometimes you have this far away look in your eyes, or how you keep your head down when talking to others or god forbid he overhears you demeaning yourself disguised in jest. He so full of love I see him gravitating towards someone who’s cup it’s damn near on empty but trying their best to save every last drop and he just wants to pour everything thing he has into it and then some; till it’s overflowing.

He doesn’t even realize his initial interest blossoming into a full blown crush. He wants to be the shoulder you cry on, he wants to carry any burdens you have, he wants to see that smile that reaches your eyes be directed at him. He just wants you bursting at the seams from happiness but he’s a little selfish in the fact that he wants it to be by his hand.

He notices the little things and big things about you that may go unnoticed by others and finds himself worrying over you and rooting for you even before you both have a proper conversation. Wondering if you ate, if you had a good day today, if you enjoyed the new episode of that anime he overheard you liked (he started watching it too), if you slept well even though the most you’ve both uttered to each other was a simple pleasantry in passing and a bow.

His mind reels when you kindly pick up things people accidentally dropped or that one time you helped clean up the coffee he’d spilt on the floor without a word. Or even that time when you offered a staff member your umbrella on a rainy day saying you had two, just for him to see you drenched in the rain a couple blocks away as his driver took him home (once recovered from the shock he shot out of the car running back to where he saw you last but you were long gone). His heart clenched painfully when he heard the reason he hadn’t seen you around the week after that was because you had come down with a nasty cold. You give and give without ever expecting anything in return; without thinking you deserve anything in return. But who’s giving to you?

He finds his gaze wondering off in your direction during social gatherings. His own features softly morphing into a for-longing smile as he sees you enjoy yourself with your group of friends, hearing that rare burst of genuine laughter at whatever you guys were joking about. He cursed his cowardice, not being able to approach confidently like how he’d imagine in his head so many times. He had some mutual friends maybe that’d be a good place to start—

He was startled out of his reverie as Seungwan pointed out his goofy expression teasing “What’s got you so distracted lover boy?” Mingyu ops to just huff a smile in into his drink as he bashfully looked away.

You, it was you who had him like this