Europa im Sommer 2024

Wir freuen uns sehr die Abteilung für Klinische Epidemiologie am Universitätsspital Basel als neue Mitgliedorganisation in unserem Netzwerk begrüssen zu können und freuen uns auf eine gute Zusammenarbeit. - Die Klinische Epidemiologie ist eine Abteilung des Universitätsspitals Basel und der Universität Basel. Ein Teil der Forschung findet in Partnerschaft mit Organisationen in Ländern Afrikas statt. Schwerpunkte sind HIV/AIDS, Tuberkulose, psychische Gesundheit und kardiovaskuläre Krankheiten. Als Grundsatz führt die Abteilung in Afrika nur Forschungsprojekte durch, die für die teilnehmenden Institutionen und/oder die teilnehmenden Personen auch einen potentiellen direkten Nutzen haben.

• Medicus Mundi Schweiz
• Abteilung Klinische Epidemiologie, Universität Basel/Universitätsspital Basel
• Projekte im Gesundheitsbereich

"Seit Juni 2024 ist Anja Ebnöther neue Geschäftsleiterin der CBM Schweiz. Sie übernimmt die Leitung vom bisherigen Geschäftsleiter ad interim Mark Schmid. Ihre beruflich ersten internationalen Schritte tätigte die studierte Juristin beim Eidgenössischen Departement für Verteidigung, Bevölkerungsschutz und Sport im Bereich der internationalen Sicherheitspolitik. (...) Zu ihrer Motivation, für die CBM zu arbeiten, sagt Anja Ebnöther: «Die Vision der CBM, dass Menschen mit Behinderungen ihre Rechte als Mitglieder der Gesellschaft leben und ihr volles Potenzial ausschöpfen können, teile ich voll und ganz. Ebenso unsere Überzeugung, gemeinsam mit betroffenen Menschen die Abwärtsspirale von Armut und Behinderung zu durchbrechen. Das alles spornt mich an, die Extrameile zu gehen.»

• Christoffel Blindenmission Schweiz

​"Das Bundesamt für Gesundheit und das Staatssekretariat für Migration haben einen Schutzbrief veröffentlicht, der Familien bei Auslandreisen dabei unterstützen soll, sich gegen Druck aus dem sozialen Umfeld im Herkunftsland zu wehren. Dies, falls sie dazu gedrängt werden, die Tochter beschneiden zu lassen. Der Schutzbrief des Bundes kann in vielen Fällen hilfreich sein: Etwa, wenn sich Eltern zwar gegen FGM/C aussprechen, die im Herkunftsland verbliebene Familie die Praxis jedoch befürwortet und Druck auf die Eltern ausübt. Der Schutzbrief kann beigezogen werden, falls Fachpersonen Klient*innen bei bevorstehenden Auslandsreisen über die Schweizer Rechtslage zu FGM/C informieren möchten. Er dient also primär dem Schutz vor FGM/C bei Auslandsreisen und der allgemeinen Information. Herausgeberin des Schutzbriefes ist die Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft. Den Lead im Projekt hatte das Bundesamt für Gesundheit BAG. Das Netzwerk gegen Mädchenbeschneidung Schweiz hat die Erarbeitung des Schutzbriefes begleitet. Der «Schutzbrief gegen Mädchenbeschneidung» existiert auf Deutsch, Französisch, Italienisch, Englisch, Amharisch, Arabisch, Somali und Tigrinja. SEXUELLE GESUNDHEIT SCHWEIZ ist zusammen mit Caritas Schweiz und dem IZFG der Universität Bern Trägerin des Netzwerks gegen Mädchenbeschneidung."

• SEXUELLE GESUNDHEIT SCHWEIZ
• Schutzbrief gegen Mädchenbeschneidung
• Bundesamt für Gesundheit BAG
• Netzwerk gegen Mädchenbeschneidung Schweiz

"Gewalt gegen Frauen findet auch im digitalen Raum statt: Inzwischen ist es fast alltäglich, von Frauen und Mädchen zu hören, die online sexuell belästigt oder bedroht wurden, deren Bilder und Videos ungewollt geteilt wurden oder die online Stalking erlebten. Unsere albanische Partnerorganisation «Counselling Line for Women and Girls» (CLWG) bietet Beratung für Frauen und Mädchen, die Gewalt im digitalen Raum erleben. Ejnxh Pepa koordiniert das Projekt bei CLWG und stellt die Schnittstelle zu IAMANEH Schweiz sicher. Im Frühjahr 2024 stellte sie die Arbeit der CLWG an einer Konferenz von Medicus Mundi in der Schweiz vor und gab Auskunft zum Projekt."

• IAMANEH Schweiz

Sei bei der Einreichung dabei und setze ein starkes Zeichen für eine inklusive #Schweiz. Am 5. September 2024 treffen wir uns um 14.00 Uhr auf dem Bundesplatz in Bern. Wir wollen mindestens 1'000 Menschen auf dem Bundesplatz versammeln, um die Bedeutung der #InklusionsInitiative zu unterstreichen. Dieser Anlass soll für alle Menschen zugänglich sein, mit barrierefreie Bühne, Gebärdensprach-Dolmetschenden, Assistenzpersonen und einer Live-Untertitelung auf grossem Bildschirm. Magst du mithelfen bei diesem Anlass? Melde dich heute noch an!

• Formular für die Mithilfe an der Einreichung der Inklusions-Initiative
• Inklusions-Initiative

"Die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels sind vielseitig und werden politisch oft heiss diskutiert. Die Stimme von Menschen aus armen Ländern fehlt dabei aber häufig. Und dies, obwohl sie am stärksten von den Folgen der globalen Erwärmung betroffen sind. Auch in den FAIRMED-Projekten wird der Zusammenhang zwischen Klima und Krankheit zunehmend sichtbarer. Erste Anzeichen dafür zeigen sich beispielsweise in einem FAIRMED-Projekt in Kamerun, das die Gesundheitssituation der Baka verbessern will: Die indigene Bevölkerungsgruppe lebte in den Wäldern des Kongobeckens für lange Zeit in Harmonie mit der Natur, wurde durch Abholzung und absichtliche Benachteiligung aber aus ihrem Lebensraum vertrieben. Als Konsequenz davon sind die Baka besonders häufig von Armutskrankheiten, Unterernährung und den Auswirkungen von Naturkatastrophen betroffen."

• FAIRMED

"​Sie kamen im März zusammen um zu feiern, nachdem sie alle erfolgreich die einjährige Grundausbildung in der Krankenpflege absolviert hatten. Wenn die jungen Frauen im Alter von 17 bis 20 Jahren ihren Abschluss machen, werden sie leicht Arbeit in privaten Krankenhäusern finden. Sie werden mit einem Einstiegsgehalt von 15.000 Indischen Rupien pro Monat (ungefähr 160 Schweizer Franken) – drei- bis fünffach so viel wie ein Tagelöhner oder eine Haushaltshilfe verdienen, so Tuli, die Ausbildungsleiterin von CR."

• Stiftung Calcutta Rescue
• Newsletter CR

"Der Broken Chair ist ein Denkmal mit grossem Bekanntheitsgrad. Aber was stellt er dar? Handicap International nimmt die Restaurierung zum Anlass, an seine Symbolkraft zu erinnern: den Kampf gegen den Einsatz von Explosivwaffen gegen die Zivilbevölkerung. Den ganzen Juli über wird am Broken Chair gearbeitet."

• Handicap International

"Als ich im März von einem Einsatz mit Handicap International in Gaza nach Genf zurückkehrte, war ich erschüttert: Die Situation ist katastrophal. Ohne eine konsequente und inklusive humanitäre Hilfe wird die Zahl der Menschen mit Behinderungen stark zunehmen. (...) Die Zahl der Menschen mit Behinderungen in Gaza wird zweifellos stark ansteigen. Selbst scheinbar kleine Verletzungen oder Knochenbrüche können zu lebenslangen Behinderungen führen, wenn sie nicht richtig behandelt werden oder sich aufgrund der schlechten hygienischen Bedingungen infizieren."

• Handicap International

Die COVID-19-Pandemie hat gezeigt, dass kein Land der Welt ausreichend auf eine Pandemie vorbereitet war. Die 194 Mitgliedstaaten der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) haben daher Ende 2021 beschlossen, aus den Erfahrungen der Pandemie zu lernen und ein weltweites Abkommen zu erarbeiten, dass grenzüberschreitend verbindliche Massnahmen zur Verhinderung von künftigen globalen Gesundheitskrisen vereinbart. Zentral ist die Verbesserung der internationalen Zusammenarbeit, Koordinierung und Solidarität sowie eine sektorübergreifende Kooperation. Dazu gehören insbesondere eine schnellere Analyse epidemiologischer Daten, eine verbesserte Risikokommunikation sowie die Stärkung der nationalen und lokalen Gesundheitssysteme. Lesen Sie in dieser MMS-Bulletin-Ausgabe welche Lehren aus der Covid-19 Pandemie gezogen und welche konkreten Massnahmen zur Vorbeugung von Gesundheitskrisen umgesetzt werden. Wir berichten ausserdem über einen Austausch zwischen Parlamentarier:innen und Schweizer Gesundheitsepert:innen zu Fragen der gegenwärtigen Gesundheitssicherung.

• Medicus Mundi Schweiz

"The Global Health Centre's Governing Pandemics Initiative just published its fourth Snapshot issue. Following the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA)’s endorsement of a delay of up to one-year for finalising a Pandemic Agreement, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) is set to resume its work with a two-day session on 16-17 July 2024. INB member states will be facing two potentially contentious procedural issues, as well as thorny debates over the resolution of substantive matters including: a system for Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS); references to One Health; and a formula assuring more equitable access to pandemic health products, where wide gaps remain. The debate around these outstanding issues is a focus of this latest issue, which also unpacks the WHA-approved amendments to the International Health Regulations and their meaning. Read!"

• Graduate Institute - Global Health Centre

"Following the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA)’s endorsement of a delay of up to one year for finalizing a pandemic agreement, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) is set to resume talks on 16-17 July 2024. INB member states will face contentious procedural issues and thorny debates over the resolution of substantive matters including a system for Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing (PABS), One Health; and a formula assuring more equitable access to pandemic health products, where wide gaps remain. Debate around these outstanding issues is a focus of this latest issue of the Governing Pandemics Snapshot."

• Health Policy Watch

Lange war geburtshilfliche Gewalt unsichtbar. Dabei übertrifft sie in der Dimension viele andere Formen genderbasierter Gewalt. Ein positives Geburtserlebnis und die Abwesenheit von Gewalt während der Geburt sind grundlegende Rechte von Gebärenden. Und sie sind essenziel für die Reduktion von geburtsbedingter Morbidität und Mortalität.

• Medicus Mundi Schweiz

"UNAIDS will launch a new report, The Urgency of Now: AIDS at a Crossroads just ahead of the 25th International AIDS Conference #AIDS2024 in Munich, Germany. The report will demonstrate that ending AIDS as a public health threat is achievable by 2030 but that success is being threatened by pushes to reduce funding and to restrict human rights."

• UNAIDS

"Girls’ education as a tool to prevent HIV infection has been centered at the 1st African Union Pan-African Conference on Girls’ and Women’s Education in Africa. This followed African leaders designating education as the 2024 African Union theme of the year. At a high-level side event hosted by the Education Plus Initiative on the first day of conference held at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leaders, girls’ and women’s networks and advocates called for greater investments in girls’ education. “Some people claim that providing girls with secondary education is too expensive. Such claims fail to consider the exponentially higher cost of not educating them,” said UNAIDS Executive Director, Winnie Byanyima. “We can get all our girls and boys to complete secondary education; that should be our legacy."

• UNAIDS

"None of the over 2,000 young women and girls injected twice a year with a new drug, lenacapavir, contracted HIV in one of the most important advances in HIV prevention. Gilead Sciences announced these results last Friday, reporting that its Phase 3 PURPOSE 1 trial, conducted in South Africa and Uganda involving 2,134 women and girls aged 16-25, had been so successful that it was terminating early. Its announcement has been widely hailed as a huge breakthrough in the HIV sector where a vaccine has been elusive, and a range of groups urged Gilead to priorise early access to lenacapavir."

• Health Policy Watch

"From a solar panel to a sanitary pads, these fully equipped waterproof bags are helping keep girls in school and address period poverty. Ugandan entrepreneur Jamila Mayanja has distributed 12,000 so far and hopes to reach a million soon. Watch her video message."

• BBC News Africa

"As a Non-State Actor in official relations with WHO, Women in Global Health attended the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA77) together with several of our Chapters. Our focus was on commitments towards gender-responsive health systems and a gender-equal health and care workforce. We continued to note challenges around commitments to gender equality, which we first reported on at the start of 2024 in our World Health Organisation 154th Executive Board newsletter."

• Women in Global Health

"Donors disbursed $14.2 billion for sexual and reproductive health and rights funding in 2022. Who were the biggest funders and how does it compare to total ODA? Plus, USAID localization stalls, and U.S. Republicans' plan for aid. (...) Sexual and reproductive health and rights are a big and growing area of development funding. In 2022, disbursements related to SRHR amounted to $14.2 billion, up from $12.7 billion the year before, according to a report from Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung, an organization that focuses on the health needs of young people."

• Devex

"This article, drawing from the "Too Southern to Be Funded" report and Transparency International's IDA21 report, underscores the critical need for GHIs to fund CSOs. Despite their essential role in delivering health services, advocating for policy changes, and ensuring accountability, CSOs face substantial funding challenges due to stringent donor requirements, lack of direct funding channels, capacity constraints, and perceived risks. Funding CSOs is not only equitable but also efficient, as local organizations often provide better value for money and enhance program sustainability. The article offers recommendations for GHIs, including creating dedicated funding channels, enhancing capacity building, promoting inclusive funding practices, fostering partnerships, increasing transparency, and supporting long-term funding. Addressing these disparities is vital for sustainable health outcomes and global equity, providing a clear roadmap for GHIs to better support CSOs and achieve more effective health interventions worldwide."

• Aidspan

"Health care providers play a crucial role in delivering quality family planning and reproductive health. By understanding and addressing the factors that influence providers, we can strengthen provider behavior change efforts globally. Breakthrough ACTION developed a suite of provider behavior change tools that can guide you and your team in identifying and prioritizing factors influencing provider behavior, designing effective provider behavior change interventions, and measuring their outcomes and impact. (...) The toolkit guides users through an empathy-focused, four-step process that supports providers, clients, and district health teams in identifying and prioritizing the root causes of provider behavior and generating local solutions."

• Breakthrough Action & Research
• Provider Behavior Change Toolkit for Family Planning
• Approaching Provider Behavior Change Monitoring and Evaluation With a Social-Ecological Lens brief
• Youtube video
• REGISTER TO JOIN Q&A SESSIONS: July 16,18,31

"Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer qu’Interface - Fonds de soutien à la recherche partenariat de l’UNIL - lance son premier appel à projet Volteface, sur la thématique de la Santé articulée aux enjeux de durabilité. Il est développé à l’UNIL par la Plateforme Durabilité et Santé de la Faculté de Biologie et de Médecine et le Centre de Compétences en Durabilité, et soutenu par Interface. Un workshop de préparation, qui réunira les (potentiel·les) partenaires de terrain et chercheur·euses est organisé le 3 septembre 2024, 9h-12h, au Vortex (Dorigny), salle Nucléo. Au plaisir de découvrir les initiatives riches, novatrices et originales que vous saurez proposer pour répondre à ces défis, nous vous adressons nos cordiales salutations. Pour Interface : Cléolia Sabot. Pour la Plateforme Durabilité et Santé : Julia Holguera Gonzalez. Pour le Conseil scientifique de l’appel à projet : Alain Kaufmann - alain.kaufmann@unil.ch

• UNIL
• Plateforme Durabilité et Santé

"Each year during the World Health Organization (WHO)’s World Health Assembly (WHA) happening in May, the Platform hosts a series of side events and discussions around critical global health issues, raising awareness among member states attending WHA meetings. Our annual Geneva Health Week took place from 26 to 29 May 2024 at the Geneva Graduate Institute, which included the Open Briefing to the 77th World Health Assembly and three WHA side events. Watch all our #WHA side events now available on our YouTube channel."

• YouTube
• Graduate Institute - Global Health Centre

“The series of crises and shocks the world has suffered in recent years – including disease outbreaks, financial crises, multiple conflicts and the deepening impacts of climate change – have raised fears that commitments to UHC will be seriously undermined. In 2022, in light of these concerns, Chatham House established the Commission for Universal Health to look at ways to support countries in maintaining and accelerating progress towards UHC. Drawing on the work of the commission, this report explores examples of where, and how, conditions of crisis and shock have had a catalytic role in driving universal health initiatives, and offers recommendations for leaders currently considering launching or expanding UHC reforms. (...) The report endorses the World Health Organization’s finding that investment of an additional 1 per cent of GDP for primary healthcare is a realistic target for countries transitioning to UHC."

• Chatham House Commission

"With just six years remaining to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), global progress is alarmingly insufficient, with a mere 17 per cent of the targets currently on track, according to a new UN report released on Friday. The 2024 Sustainable Development Goals Report highlighted that nearly half the 17 targets are showing minimal or moderate progress, while over a one-third are stalled or going in reverse, since they were adopted by UN Member States back in 2015 to bring peace and prosperity for people and the planet."

• United Nations
• The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024

"Malaria impacts millions of lives, mostly in continental Africa, and especially so in the WHO African Region, where 233 million cases accounted for about 94% of global cases in 2022. Progress in curbing malaria has somewhat plateaued since 2015, due to factors that include drug and insecticide resistance, poor availability of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs), and socio-behavior factors. The approval of two new vaccines against malaria—RTS,S/AS01 vaccine in 2021 and more recently the R21/Matrix-M vaccine [3, 4]—has reenergized the fight against malaria. These vaccines were developed with support from public sector and philanthropic partners, and with contributions from African scientists and communities. They have the potential for high impact and are remarkable additions to the toolkit of malaria control."

• Plos Global Public Health

"South Africa is ramping up its response against mpox after two people died from the infectious disease within a week this month. But as the country's government turns to donors to secure potentially lifesaving drugs, health activists ask why such requests are necessary when wealthier countries are sitting on large stockpiles. (...) "We probably have a few hundred cases that we don't know about," says Salim Abdool Karim, a Durban-based epidemiologist who played a leading role in the country's COVID-19 response. This prediction is safe to assert because none of the current cases have a recent history of travel, meaning that they acquired the virus locally, and do not appear to have infected each other."

• ThinkGlobalHealth

"In remote communities of Guyana, the introduction of new satellite technology is enabling freshly trained community health workers to get patients an accurate diagnosis and rapid, appropriate treatment in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. In Rwanda, meanwhile, the government’s achievement in getting the COVID-19 vaccine innovator, BioNTech, to set up its first mRNA manufacturing facility in Kigali is a success story that small island states in the Caribbean would love to emulate."

• Health Policy Watch

"Uganda’s National Medical Stores facility in Entebbe holds and distributes essential health commodities including medicines, diagnostics and 14 types of vaccines to more than 3,500 health facilities across the country. It is the beating heart of Uganda’s cold chain systems: the flow of temperature-sensitive medicines and vaccines from manufacturers to patients, including the tools needed to administer them. The Global Fund works with Uganda’s Ministry of Health and National Medical Stores to strengthen that cold chain, applying decades of expertise building systems to deliver HIV, TB and malaria medicines across countries and continents."

• The Global Fund

"Africa’s health worker shortage is projected to reach more than six million by 2030 – and the weaker the system, the more likely health workers are to leave as poor working conditions erode their morale. The non-profit organisation, Seed Global Health works to address this shortage by investing in long-term training and support for health workers in four countries – Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, and Zambia – via partnerships with health ministries. For Seed, long-term means “for as long as our partners will have us”, says CEO Dr Vanessa Kerry, who is also the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Climate Envoy. Seed launched its 2030 strategic plan last week, an ambitious programme that requires the organisation to raise at least $100 million."

• Health Policy Watch

"The global health workforce crisis is not just a matter of numbers but also a crisis of decent work and equity, according to Genevieve Gencianos from Public Services International (PSI). Speaking at the “Care for Care Workers” conference on June 29 in Brussels, Gencianos, alongside activists, trade unionists, and health officials, called for a new approach to tackle the problems facing public health systems worldwide, particularly the retention and recruitment of health workers."

• People's Health Dispatch

"In a first for healthier diets, WHO has issued a “strong recommendation” that countries tax sugar-sweetened beverages as part of a wider effort to combat the powerful health impacts of the industrial foods industry – whose marketing of sugar, sodium and fat-laced, processed foods is linked with millions of deaths annually. WHO also issued more “conditional” recommendations in favor of the taxation of unhealthy foods and the subsidizing of healthier options, in its new guidelines on “Fiscal Policies to Promote Healthy Diets,” launched Friday. The first-ever WHO recommendations on food pricing policies comes only days after a scathing report by WHO’s European Region, that found unhealthy foods amongst the top four commercial products that cause some 19 million deaths annually worldwide, including 2.7 million deaths in the WHO’s European Region."

• Health Policy Watch

"WHO has identified climate change as the greatest health threat of the 21st century. The 2015 Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission found that six of nine planetary boundaries had been breached, including land system change, freshwater depletion, and biodiversity loss, with ocean acidification approaching the boundary. These planetary boundaries interact with climate change and will also pose considerable challenges to health. (...) However, the complex relationships between climate change and NCDs are not widely understood. In this Comment, we explore the synergism between climate change and NCDs and also show how climate change mitigation and adaptation actions can also reduce NCD risks."

• The Lancet

"Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) account for 74% of all deaths and 86% of premature deaths in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Yet, the world is far from meeting the globally agreed targets for their control. Even in this unprecedented era for discovery of new therapies for NCDs, the ability to equitably deliver both old and new interventions is lagging. WHO has clear best-buys for prevention and management of NCDs, but policy and service coverage of these interventions is poor in many countries. NCD service delivery remains a crucial gap undermining efforts towards universal health coverage, which increases inequities in health, poverty, and economic losses. Implementation research is a crucial tool to bridge the know–do gap, focusing on understanding the adoption, integration, and sustainability of evidence-based interventions within real-world health systems."

• The Lancet

To run the secretariat of Medicus Mundi International (MMI) and to take care of its wide range of activities we are looking for an: Executive Secretary, 40% (or 60% in combination with G2H2 Secretariat). Place of work: Geneva (flexible). At the same time MMI and G2H2 are advertising a position as Executive Secretary for the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) hosted by MMI. It is possible to apply for both positions within a 60% post. Please do so separately, by responding to both vacancy announcements.For further information regarding the position of the MMI Executive Secretary, 40%, please contact Martin Leschhorn, President Medicus Mundi International, mleschhorn@medicusmundi.ch - Applications for the position of the MMI Executive Secretary (including motivation letter) should be sent by email to: Martin Leschhorn Strebel, Director Medicus Mundi Switzerland, mleschhorn@medicusmundi.ch, by 12 July 2024.

• Medicus Mundi International (MMI)
• Geneva Global Health Hub G2H2
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