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Home Publications e-pharmalink e-pharmalink June 2009
e-pharmalink June 2009

e-Pharmalink is an electronic newsletter of the Ecumenical Pharmaceutical Network (EPN), an independent, non-profit Christian organization, whose mission is to support churches and church health system provide and promote just and compassionate quality pharmaceutical services through networking, access to medicine and treatment literacy programmes.

This newsletter aims at equipping pharmacists and other health professionals with information about international trends relevant to their work and opportunities that could support them in their efforts to provide effective and efficient services, particularly in poor countries. It is a summary of news reported by a wide range of publications or organizations and includes web links to the original sources. Anyone can receive this e-mail

NEWS

Hiv and Aids Treatment

Over 3000 children diagnosed with HIV in Lusaka after hospital introduces opt-out HIV testing
Implementing a policy of routine opt-out HIV testing led to the diagnosis of 3000 HIV infections in children admitted to hospital in Lusaka over an 18-month period, investigators report in a study published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/5727979B-DD27-4949-9BAE-3D47A6F462B5.asp

HIV treatment should be started earlier in resource-limited settings
A major clinical trial has shown that HIV-positive patients in resource limited countries are more likely to survive and experience less HIV disease progression if they start taking antiretroviral therapy when their CD4 cell count is between 350 and 200 cells/mm3, rather than waiting until their CD4 cell count falls to below 200 cells/mm3.
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/B4BEE942-4347-4FBB-87AC-38C654774959.asp

HIV Prevention efforts and infection patterns mismatched
In at least five African countries, scarce resources are being spent on national HIV prevention campaigns that do not reach the people most at risk of infection, new research has found.
Between 2007 and 2008, UNAIDS and the World Bank partnered with the national AIDS authorities of Kenya, Lesotho, Swaziland, Uganda and Mozambique to find out how and where most HIV infections were occurring in each country, and whether existing prevention efforts and expenditure matched these findings.
The recently released reports reveal that few prevention programmes are based on existing evidence of what drives HIV/AIDS epidemics in the five countries surveyed.
http://www.plusnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=84579

Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control

Resistant tuberculosis worrying
Although only one case of Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR-TB) has been documented in Kenya so far, news that the government has run out of cash to treat TB patients infected by the multi-drug resistant tuberculosis is highly disturbing.
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Editorial/-/440804/605456/-/pm391hz/-/index.html

Bacteria photo shows role of hand hygiene in hospitals
The image, of the superbugs on a health-care worker's hand after the worker treated a patient, is proof of the role inadequate hand hygiene plays in the spread of infections in hospitals.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090115/dirty_hands_090115?s_name=&no_ads

Transmission of resistant HIV common in clusters of newly infected individuals
Swiss researchers have found that 84% of individuals with newly-diagnosed HIV who were infected with a strain of the virus resistant to antiretroviral drugs were part of transmission clusters composed only of other newly diagnosed individuals. The study, which is published in the online edition of AIDS also found that 9% of recently diagnosed individuals were infected with a drug-resistant strain of HIV, and that 53% of individuals with recent HIV infection could be linked to a transmission cluster.
“Newly diagnosed, untreated individuals are a significant source of resistant strains, thus suggesting an important self-fueling mechanism for transmitted drug resistance”, write the investigators.
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/B486A11A-0022-4C7D-84AD-4BD859BA6C1B.asp

Plant Microbe Shares Features with Drug-Resistant Pathogen
An international team of scientists has discovered extensive similarities between a strain of bacteria commonly associated with plants and one increasingly linked to opportunistic infections in hospital patients. The findings suggest caution in the use of the plant-associated strain for a range of biotech applications. The genetic analysis was conducted in part at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, and will be published in the July 2009 issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology.
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=946

Others

People’s health movement secretariat moves to Cape Town, South Africa
From 1 June 2009, the PHM Global Secretariat will be hosted by PHM-South Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. For the last three years, from June 2006 to June 2009, PHM’s Global Secretariat has been based in Cairo at the Association of Health and Environment Development (AHED). Cape Town will be the fourth location of the PHM Global Secretariat. From January 2000 to December 2002, the Secretariat was hosted by Gonoshasthaya Kendra in Savar, Bangladesh, from January 2003 – May 2006 in Bangalore, India, hosted by the Community Health Cell.
http://phmovement.org/cms/en/node/2010

2008 International Drug Price Indicator Guide Available
Management Sciences for Health (MSH) announce the availability of the 2008 edition of the International Drug Price Indicator Guide. The Guide provides a spectrum of prices from 25 sources, including pharmaceutical suppliers, international development organizations, and government agencies.
http://erc.msh.org/dmpguide/pdf/DrugPriceGuide_2008_en.pdf

Guidelines for Field Surveys of the Quality of Medicines
Evidence suggests that a significant proportion of drugs consumed in the developing world are of poor quality .Translating evidence on drug treatment outcomes into treatment policy is futile if the medicines actually used have substantially inferior efficacy compared with the medicines originally evaluated.
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000052

RESOURCES

Training opportunities

i+solutions offering training on management of pharmaceutical supplies
i+solutions collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners, is offering   training on all major issues related to the management of pharmaceutical supplies to strengthen  local knowledge to ensure  current and future essential drug programs are implemented more efficiently, safely, and cost effectively.
http://www.iplussolutions.org/training/

Publications

The costly access to essential medicines in Kenya: Voices of consumers on affordability and availability
According to quarterly medicine price and availability monitoring surveys conducted in Kenya by the Ministry of Health in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and HAI Africa since 2006, many Kenyans can't access the medicines they need.
The stories of 12 consumers have been published in a short booklet titled : “The costly access to essential medicines in Kenya: Voices of consumers on affordability and availability.” Their testimonies are a sample of the real life experiences of ordinary Kenyan consumers, and give a human face to the problem of accessing essential medicines in Kenya. A limited number of copies are available on request from the HAI Africa Secretariat.
http://www.haiafrica.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=241:new-publication-are-medicines-available-and-affordable-for-kenyan-consumers&catid=74:other-hai-publications&Itemid=111

New Publication on Medicine Prices Issues
A new publication entitled Medicine Pricing Matters has been published by HAI and the World Health Organization (WHO) as part of their medicine prices and availability project.
http://www.haiweb.org/medicineprices/

Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
Our Daily Meds shows how corporate salesmanship has triumphed over science inside the biggest pharmaceutical companies and, in turn, how this promotion driven industry has taken over the practice of medicine with life-changing consequences for everyone.
http://astore.amazon.com/wsdm-20/detail/0374228272/103-7056402-2016609