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Greetings!
We extend our congratulations to two Master of Science in Global Health (MSc-GH) students Jackie Ndirangu and Michael Catalino, on successfully defending their thesis. They are the first to complete the program. In next week's newsletter you will find about their future plans. In the meantime, they share their global health experiences in this DGHI video.
If you missed the DGHI holiday message, watch it here. From all of us at DGHI, we wish you a happy and safe holiday season.
Until next week,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI! |
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| Epidemiologist Studies Maternal Health and Infectious Diseases
Daniel Westreich, assistant professor of OB/GYN and Global Health, joined DGHI in October. He is undertaking research that seeks to understand how pregnant women with HIV respond to antiretroviral therapy. To date, there is little information available among this population in low- and middle-income countries like South Africa where there are high rates of HIV. Currently funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, this research is a continuation of Westreich's work in South Africa, which he began at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Westreich came to Duke and DGHI this fall from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he completed a doctoral degree and postdoctoral fellowship in epidemiology, with a focus in global health and infectious diseases.
Learn more about Westreich's research and the new course he is teaching this spring in the Master of Science in Global Health.
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| Why Should You Care About Global Health? Why Not?
DGHI Founding Director Michael Merson makes the case for why Americans need to care about global health in a new opinion piece on ABC News' " Be the Change: Save a Life" website. The website was unveiled last Friday in
An ABC News Series |
conjunction with ABC News' launch of its year-long global health series in partnership with the Duke Global Health Institue.
In the op-ed, Merson writes, "I'm often asked, with the current economic challenges, rising health care costs and growing national deficit, why should one care about the health of people in other countries? Over my 40 years of working to address health disparities around the world my response has remained the same -- because we cannot afford not to.
The United States has seen a significant return on its global health investment, in the form of improved diplomatic relations, enhanced national security and more effective efforts to strengthen failing nations. Beyond this, global health is one of the world's challenges we know, at least in part, how to address.
Three diseases - pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria - accounted for 43 percent of all deaths in children under five worldwide in 2008. We know how to treat and prevent these diseases. In the case of diarrhea, the treatment costs just pennies."
History shows that with sustained commitment, the right tools and adequate resources, global health challenges can be solved. The eradication of smallpox is one example. But what about eradicating polio, providing access to a trained health care workforce, protecting mothers in childbirth and children during their first years of life, or providing clean water and basic sanitation?"
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| From Zimbabwe to Duke
By Justin Hubbard
Exhausted from a morning of crowded trains and walking under a sweltering sun, Joshua Foromera finally reached the U.S. Embassy in Johannesburg. It was 2007 and Foromera, now a Duke University sophomore, was a refugee, desperate to further his education after leaving his native Zimbabwe for South Africa.
Joshua Foromera | "I was accepted to a couple of South African universities, but couldn't get a scholarship or pay the tuition," said Foromera, who plans to become a doctor.
After journeying between Johannesburg and Pretoria, searching for the appropriate U.S. consulate to help him pursue higher education in the United States, Foromera eventually caught the attention of an education official.
"I told her 'this is my last hope,'" Foromera said. The official gave him a Peterson's S.A.T. study guide and instructed him to study everything in it.
"It was my new bible," said Foromera, who went on to study the book while working in his uncle's shop in Johannesburg, eventually earning the $60 fee to take the S.A.T. exam.
Hope and his "bible" sustained him as he sought to build on his rural secondary school education.
"The teacher had one textbook which he read to the class," said Foromera, describing the rundown classrooms he attended in Zimbabwe.
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Global Health Opportunities
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