Want to help remove the Neglect from Neglected Tropical Diseases?

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) infect over a billion people, causing significant illness and death and limiting lives and livelihoods in poor countries. Yet, they have received far less attention than diseases like HIV and malaria and relatively little regarding research, control and treatment.

A particularly problematic subset of NTDs are neglected zoonotic diseases (NZDs) – endemic or (re)emerging diseases that afflict humans and animals, often transferred by vectors, and which present greater challenges for control and treatment. Despite their major impact on animal and human health, such diseases that are transferred between humans and animals are under-sourced in terms of health care provision, and scientific research, cultural, geographical and political aspects are poorly understood.

PhD Studentships on Neglected Zoonotic Diseases in Africa Available

The Centre for African Studies at the University of Edinburgh is looking for three outstanding candidates to explore crucial, yet neglected, issues in the governance of human and animal health.

As part of a new initiative by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the studentships will examine the policies, research activities, and the control, diagnosis and treatment initiatives that aim to control neglected zoonotic diseases (NZDs).

These studentships are highly multidisciplinary and drawing on both the social and biological sciences. Students will receive tailored training from the ESRC Scottish Doctoral Training Centre and the EASTBIO Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership, both based at the University of Edinburgh, before embarking on one of three PhD projects:

1.) Tracing International Policy Networks – focusing on the role of international organisations – for instance the World Health Organization and Médecins Sans Frontières - in shaping research into and control of African Trypanosomiasis. The nature of this project means that fluency in French is desirable.

2.) Mapping the post-MDG Agenda – will examine the evidence base, funding streams and policies that shape the future global health agenda in relation to NZDs, especially in the content of debate around the replacement of the current 2015 Millennium Development Goals.

3.) ‘Below the radar innovation’ – will analyse how technological innovation may generate appropriate, sustainable, local-level vector control and diagnostic measures in East and Central Africa.

Students will also have the unique opportunity to work with a wide range of interdisciplinary scholars from the University of Edinburgh School of Social and Political Science, including the Centre for African Studies and the Innogen Institute.

Each of these studentships is fully-funded for four years and will provide an enhanced stipend (c. £15,000 per annum).

We anticipate that successful applicants will already hold a masters degree in an appropriate area of study. These studentships are available to UK citizens or EU citizens who ordinarily resident in the UK.

The deadline for application is 20 May 2013 and for more information, please visit the Centre for African Studies website.

A BIG impact on the bioeconomy

At the heart of the bioeconomy is a desire to make the world a better and more equitable place to live. From biotechnological advances in health, agriculture and environment, we have the opportunity to cure currently incurable diseases, grow new crops that feed more people, and find cleaner and more efficient energy sources.

There is rapid growth in the European and global bioeconomy. In Europe, the bioeconomy makes €2 trillion a year and employs more than 22 million people, yet as it grows the shortage of people skilled to work in it also increases. Living up to the future promises of the bioeconomy requires a workforce skilled in innovation and governance of scientific, technological and social change.

With unemployment in the Eurozone currently reaching over 20% of those under the age of 25, Europe now has a unique opportunity to overcome the evident mix-match of skills and provide training options and job opportunities that meet labour demands in areas such as agriculture, energy production, health, manufacturing, environmental clean-up, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, while at the same time ensuring its economic competitiveness on the global stage and a better quality of life for its citizens.

OU DPP Guest Blog: Mission Possible

By Julius Mugwagwa, recently in South Africa and Zimbabwe

Spending a week each in South Africa and Zimbabwe doing a pilot study for my new ESRC-funded project on ‘innovative spending in global health’ from the end of February to early March was indeed an eye and ear opener…for me and the various people I met and talked to.

I met and had discussions with people ranging from officials in ministries/departments of health, universities, civil society organisations with activities in the health arena, retail pharmacists, private health practitioners to people going about their everyday lives in cities and rural areas.

The issue of being creative and innovative in raising resources is a dominant one, not only in health, but all facets of human endeavour. In fact, there are all sorts of names and phrases in the local languages of South Africa and Zimbabwe to describe the innovative and entrepreneurial ‘wiring’ of those who are successful at accumulating resources. There is an unwritten consensus that once the resources are there, spending them in an impactful way will not be a problem.

It gave a bit of a jolt, therefore, when I asked the various people I spoke with whether they had stopped for a moment to think about innovative spending?

Read the whole story on the DPP Blog.

Technology Justice and Inspirational Innovation

By James Smith

Technology is inextricably linked to development. Neither exists without the other, each propels the other along, and the successes and failures of both are bound together. However we choose to conceive of development, as a deeply historical process of change or as the small-scale activities non-governmental organisations (NGOs) engage in, as macro-economic policy or community development, technology is always present.

That ubiquity may well be a problem in itself. If we have access to the results of technology - clean water for example - we become blind to the technology itself. From another perspective, if we focus development around targets and end products - improved health, improved education, or access to energy - we may not focus on the technological and knowledge-based building blocks we need to get there (and often it’s not easy to understand for the non-expert, anyway). Technology, and underpinning science, may be hidden both by its presence and its absence.

Bill Gates and 'Impatient Optimism'

By James Smith

Bill Gates delivered the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby lecture yesterday (29 January 2013). He spoke with great passion about the work and goals of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in particular, his impatient optimism for the eradication of polio.

It is clear that the Gates Foundation has had a profound affect on health provision and innovation in the developing world. The Foundation’s $36 billion endowment alone ensures it is a major player in global health, but its approach and its focus are also highly influential (as some of Innogen’s PPP work attests).

The Foundation favours efficiency and focusing on big solutions - in many respects this is entirely appropriate as we are talking of big problems - and many of these solutions tend to the high tech. Vaccines are a case in point. The history of Jonas Salk and his half century old polio vaccine is both one of innovation, inspiration and public will, and one of lack of access, endless patience and disease. One can see why the story of the polio vaccine inspires, but it ought to caution, too.

Inspiration and innovation, driven by the vision and generosity of the Gates Foundation, are transforming the way health research for development is undertaken (and in many respects the direction it takes). It may take a more patient, or circumspect, optimism to transform the world into a place where vaccines get into the veins of those who most need them, when they are needed.

Neglected Tropical Diseases: What Next?

Neglected Tropical Diseases and the Post-2015 Global Development Agenda

Part Two: What Next?

By E. Michelle Taylor and James Smith

Given the recent meeting of the high-level panel in London and high profile debate around both the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and what might supersede them, it is significant to reflect that the strides made in Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) control in the first decade of 21st century were made despite the diseases’ effective omission from the MDGs. Does this mean that getting onto the post-2015 agenda is immaterial to the NTDs?