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Greetings!
"I can't do justice to the full richness packed into our busy days..."
Those are the words of Duke President Richard Brodhead as he describes his recent trip to Tanzania and Uganda. With days filled with visits to local hospitals, partner universities and student field sites, Brodhead saw the full breadth of Duke's global efforts in Africa, along with the great need for continued support and further development. View a small, but illustrative, sampling of photos taken during the visit and read President Brodhead's final blog post.
Don't forget about tomorrow's Global Health Exchange featuring Dr. Ayaba Worjoloh, global health OB/GYN fellow. It takes place at 12 pm in Trent Hall. See you there.
Until next time,
Geelea Seaford and Everyone at DGHI
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President Brodhead Reflects on Trip to Africa
 From the Summer 2011 Blog: "In Asia Duke connects with the most rapidly developing parts of the contemporary world. Singapore, where I had the pleasure of watching the first class graduate from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, boasts to have progressed from a third-world to a first-world country in a single generation. It's hard to overstate the transformation: someone we met said that Singapore is like San Francisco, except more modern.
But the modern world is not only made up of the developed world, and if it's important for us to be involved in "emerging" Asia, it's equally important that we be exposed to the very different conditions of life elsewhere. To grasp the depth of Duke's global connections, we set off from Shanghai and Singapore to Africa. I have long known of Duke's relation with the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi, Tanzania, and I was keen to see it in person. Tanzania is one of the most beautiful countries in the world but also one of the poorest. The consequences for health are striking. Singapore has one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, Tanzania one of the highest. Singapore has a comprehensive health care system; in Tanzania, one of every ten people hospitalized with a fever dies in hospital, since patients are typically so sick by the time they are brought there. In face of this massive challenge, KCMC plays a major role in treatment and medical training, and, increasingly, in research..." DGHI Photo Slideshow "It's ironic that I had to leave Duke to see what university faculty, staff and students are doing around the world," said Brodhead before a group of Ugandan academic and faith-based partners who are working with the Duke Global Health Institute, Fuqua School of Business and the Divinity School to strengthen health care through leadership and management training. Click on the image below to see more highlights from the trip. | Click image to watch slideshow |
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Study of Disease Care Initiative in India Supported by Gates Foundation
A large-scale evaluation of an innovative health care program in the Indian state of Bihar has been awarded a $3 million grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Bihar Evaluation of Social Franchising and Telemedicine (BEST) study will be led by Manoj Mohanan, an assistant professor of public policy and global health at Duke University.
Mohanan and his co-principal investigators at COHESIVE-India , a multi-institution research collaboration, will assess the impact of the World Health Partners (WHP) telemedicine and social franchising program. Specifically, they will assess the program's impact on health outcomes associated with four priority diseases in 12 districts in Bihar: childhood diarrhea, childhood pneumonia, tuberculosis and visceral leishmaniasis, the second-largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Their study will assess program results based on data collected from more than 100,000 households over the next four years.
In addition to the grant from the Gates Foundation, Mohanan anticipates receiving supplemental funding of $1.3 million for the BEST study from other organizations.
The goals of the WHP program, which is also funded by Gates Foundation, are to improve the quality and sustainability of rural health care services delivered by the private sector and to standardize service delivery through the creation of affordable local franchisee networks.
These networks of private-sector practitioners treat and refer cases, but because they may have minimal medical training, they are able to consult with formally trained physicians through the use of cell phones and telemedicine facilities.
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DGHI Adjunct Professor Appointed to Nigeria Federal Ministry of Health
The newly appointed Minister of State for Health, Dr. Mohammed Ali Pate has assumed duty at the Federal Ministry Health, Headquarters, Abuja.
Pate is a 2006 alumnus of the Fuqua School of Business and an adjunct professor of the Duke Global Health
 Institute. He serves as Executive Director of the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency. In his new role, Pate promises improved healthcare delivery. He called on Management and staff to work as a team to impact positively on the health of Nigerians. He said "we need to step up and drive the Transformation Agenda of Mr. President, for the best of our people."
He admitted that there were a lot of expectations from Nigerians from the health sector noting that in order to meet those expectations, there was need for all and sundry to work as a team to deliver efficient and affordable healthcare services to the citizenry.
Pate said "we will work collectively as a team to make things work better for Nigerians". He reiterated that character, right values, integrity, and courage matter a lot in leadership. He said that he would offer his wealth of experience he garnered over the years to come to bear on the health sector and also for the growth and development of his father land. He said that he would consolidate on what his predecessors have done.
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Noteworthy
Metabolomics Research is on the Fast Track, featuring DGHI Faculty Svati Shah
Two men walk into their doctor's waiting room, and with them arrives the puzzle that plagues so many physicians. The men are of similar build, age, and ethnic background. They have the same general diet and lifestyle habits. However, in two years, one of these men will die of a heart attack. The other will live for many years with no heart disease.
How does the doctor know which man is at immediate risk? Two of our most intractable diseases -- heart disease and diabetes -- are widely accepted as having a "multifactorial" origin in most patients.
They can't be explained by genetics alone, and the mishmash of contributing behavioral causes are not only maddeningly variable from patient to patient but also nearly impossible to measure accurately over the decades it takes for their impact to play out.
So far, the best laboratory tests still cannot identify with any reliability just who will get sick from these illnesses and who won't. But what if they could? This is the goal of metabolomics: a relatively new field of studying the chemicals produced by the many metabolic processes in the body. "Your body is in a constant state of metabolism," explains Duke cardiologist Svati Shah, MD.
Paul Farmer Book Explores Suffering, Resilience After Haiti Earthquake
Partners in Health co-founder and DGHI Board Member Paul Farmer's new book Haiti After the Earthquake arrives in bookstores tomorrow. The book recounts the devastation - and resilience - that he encountered following the deadly January 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Farmer, who has worked in Haiti for nearly 30 years, describes the earthquake's impact on the country, both as he experienced it working as a physician in the days and weeks immediately after the event, and over the subsequent year, when he and his colleagues worked along with the UN to try to marshal international support for Haiti's recovery efforts.
Farmer explores the country's troubled history to illuminate how chronic disabilities, engendered over two centuries by more powerful nations and by economic forces deeply rooted in the colonial enterprise, made Haiti so vulnerable to the earthquake. He recounts efforts to address the dysfunctional system of humanitarian aid-a system that, good intentions aside, has become another obstacle to Haiti's recovery and sovereignty.
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Global Health Opportunities
Job Opportunities: Research Coordinator (Part time): Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research
*Special Announcement*
Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH): Authors wishing to report original research, innovative projects or novel programs related to global health are encouraged to submit abstracts to the 2011 Global Health Conference. Abstracts may focus on a new finding, the development of a program, project or new global health tool, moving from development to implementation, policy or ethical issues, or related topics. Abstract submissions must be received by August 1, 2011. For more information, visit the conference website.
Faculty Safe and Effective Instruments and Devices for Use in the Neonatal Intensive Care Units (R43), (R41) - due Aug. 19
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