December 19, 2007

Global Health Survey Finds Regional Differences

Health care has been a prominent issue on the campaign trail in the U.S. this year, with presidential candidates, particularly on the Democratic side, vowing to expand access to health care coverage for the over 40 million Americans without insurance. According to a new study, these concerns about the quality and availability of health care are also shared worldwide, albeit in different ways.

The global survey [PDF] from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows that while health care ranks high among citizens' political priorities around the world, attitudes toward the issue vary widely according to where people live, their economic status and their experiences with particular diseases.

Overall, the survey of over 45,000 people in 46 countries finds that health is a "local phenomenon." Not surprisingly, respondents in areas hardest hit by disease and malnutrition, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, were more likely to rank health as the top problem for their countries. In other regions, including Latin America, Asia and Europe, crime, terrorism, drugs and pollution were perceived as greater threats than the spread of infectious diseases.

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Posted at 12:30 PM
Posted to: Africa, Campaigns, Economy, HIV/AIDS, Health, U.N., WH 2008
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December 04, 2007

China Turning The Corner On AIDS

Just as an increasingly third-world epidemic threatened to shatter China's move toward superpower status, changing public attitudes and determined prevention efforts appear to be pulling the Asian giant back from the brink. Shanghaiist has a roundup of recent optimistic headlines on AIDS in China, while noting Beijing still has a ways to go. The Atlantic's James Fallows gets a shout-out here, for noticing on Sunday a rare photo of President Hu Jintao shaking hands with (i.e., touching) an AIDS patient.

State-run Xinhua news agency reported earlier this week on a celeb-studded AIDS-awareness march along the Great Wall. The main obstacle in China's fight against HIV/AIDS is its rapid spread in impoverished and remote regions of that country. The U.N. recently estimated that between 30 and 50 million people in China are at risk of contracting the disease, GayWired reported last week.

Posted at 3:55 PM
Posted to: Asia, China, HIV/AIDS, Health
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September 25, 2007

Bush's Other Legacy On Display At U.N.

President Bush called on the U.N. General Assembly to renew its focus on human rights, as he reminded increasingly distant member nations of America's outsized role in humanitarian work around the globe.

Placing the spotlight on the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Bush told the audience, "The nations in this chamber have our differences. Yet there are some areas where we can all agree."

The president ticked off a laundry list of ills, some of them ancient, still plaguing the globe, from malaria to HIV/AIDS, starvation to closed markets, impositions on the freedom of speech and assembly, and "tyranny and violence."

The Universal Declaration is not being upheld, Bush said, "when innocent people are trapped in a life of murder and fear" or "when millions of children starve to death or die from a mosquito bite."

"Changing these underlying conditions is what the declaration calls the work of underlying freedom," he said.

Bush then turned his attention to the representatives of Myanmar.

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Posted at 12:17 PM
Posted to: Asia, Bill Clinton, Bush Administration, China, Climate Change, HIV/AIDS, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Middle East, President Bush, Russia, Terrorism, U.N.
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June 08, 2007

G-8 Africa Pledge: Everyone's A Critic

The Group of Eight nations today renewed a high-priority platform with a pledge of $60 billion in aid to combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases in Africa, but activists remained skeptical.

Rocker Bono, a self-appointed thorn-in-the-side of wealthy nations on the issue of global poverty, told Reuters he was "exasperated" at what he viewed as the G-8's failure to follow through on its promises. "I think it is deliberately the language of obfuscation," the U2 singer said, referring to the lack of timeline on the AIDS pledge. "It is deliberately misleading."

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Posted at 1:35 PM
Posted to: G-8, HIV/AIDS
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