International Health Policies in the news today 35 2 Oct 2009

Dear Colleagues,

From 14 to 18 October, the first World Health Summit will take place in Berlin. The Lancet invited influential speakers to share their thoughts on priorities the summit shouldn’t overlook. We included an article from Peter Piot. Mary Robinson from GAVI and Cesar G Victora from Pelota’s university in Brazil also gave their opinion. The People’s Health Movement (PHM) has a number of concerns about this summit.

The Global Fund observer’s newsletter has just been released. We share a comment on the efforts by the Global Fund to fight corruption, as illustrated by the two recent suspensions for Mauritania and the Philippines. In the Lancet Infectious Disease, Lee discusses some issues around the pneumococcal vaccine that has been launched recently in Rwanda and Ghana.
Access to care is central to health policy. The BMJ highlights the new strategy for universal access in Asia by WHO. Our colleague Keugong argues that beside action at the international level to provide drugs to low income countries (as argued by Rafaelli in an earlier journal), action at the national level should also be undertaken if one wants quality drugs to be   available for all. Morris reports on an inquiry by the UK all-party parliamentary group on AIDS that “shows that we are sitting on a treatment timebomb” and underlines the need to scale up ARV’s, as the number of patients requiring ART will continue to rise in the coming years. Finally, we include a report from MSF on the benefit one could gain from patent regulation for access to drugs.
This week’s cherry on the cake comes from the Guardian. Obama is already soaking up the atmosphere in Copenhagen, but the US health care reform still faces strong resistance. The British newspaper reveals why members of the US Congress put so much pressure on the Obama administration.

Enjoy your reading.

David Hercot, Kristof Decoster, Josefien Van Olmen & on behalf of Wim Van Damme