Read More - FGHL Blog: Milca Nunez - A Shared Mission to Improve Health for the World's Most Vulnerable
It’s been only a few days since we set foot on the beautiful islands of the Dominican Republic. I could not believe it finally happened; it was so surreal. Our preceptor, Mrs. Teresa Narvaez (who is the country director for Project HOPE and the clinics), picked us up from the airport and took us to eat some “sancocho”, which is a delicately seasoned stew with spices, meat, potatoes, lemon, and avocado.
Read More - FGHL Blog: Milca Nunez - This Experience Reinforces My Desire to Learn and Do More
During this week, we attended a forum on preventing youth violence and crime. Many organizations attended to hear about the results of a survey that was conducted on various municipalities to measure people’s perception of crime in their communities. Most of the findings showed prevalence of domestic violence, homicides, gender violence, dysfunctional families, etc - all of which are linked to lack of education and lack of community and family cohesion.
Read More - A Hard Look at the Ebola Epidemic and Barriers to Containment
This post was original published at One.org.

I was shocked to learn that the largest previous Ebola outbreak occurred in 1976 in Zaire: 318 confirmed cases and 280 deaths, but the current outbreak in West Africa has exceeded 4,200 cases with 2,200 deaths and growing. According to WHO estimates, 10,000 more lives will be lost before the virus is contained.
Read More - New Video from HTHH, and Upcoming Conference
Click here to watch our Mother & Child Project video.

The Mother and Child Project:
Helping Families in the Developing World
Keynote Speaker: Former US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD
Host: Senior Pastor Mike Glenn
Read More - An Ebola Turning Point: An Early Diagnosis?
Read my earlier Ebola primer and a look at what we know about how the virus behaves.

As the Ebola situation in West Africa progresses, we are dealing with increasingly complex medical and cultural challenges. I addressed some of the cultural issues in a Morning Consult column last month, and highlighted the importance of identifying infected patients:

The only solution is prevention, which relies on containment and isolation. The sick must be rapidly identified and contained. Their contacts must be followed for 21 days so they can be rapidly isolated, should they develop symptoms. Their care must be delivered in a hazmat suit. If the patient dies, and [50%] do, the body must be properly disposed of because a recently deceased Ebola victim is actively shedding the virus from his skin.

Ebola's Hard Lessons

Sep 08 2014

Read More - Ebola's Hard Lessons
As September opened, a striking consensus had emerged among global health leaders that the Ebola outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea has transmuted into a colossus that continues to gather force: It is "spiraling out of control" (Dr. Thomas Frieden, Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC); “We understand the outbreak is moving beyond our grasp” (Dr. David Nabarro, Senior UN System Coordinator for Ebola Disease ); Ebola is “a global threat” that “ will get worse before it gets better, and it requires a well-coordinated big surge of outbreak response” (World Health Organization Director General Dr. Margaret Chan); “Six months into the worst epidemic in history, the world is losing the battle to contain it. Leaders are failing to come to grips with the transnational threat” (Dr. Joanne Liu, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) International President).
Read More - Are donors properly funding faith groups for maximum impact in global health
Last November, at an event associated with the International Conference on Family Planning in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, I was struck by a public comment from a representative of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID): “With almost 90% of people globally professing a faith, it doesn’t make sense to do family planning without the faith community.”
Read More - HTHH
This faith-based conference will host dynamic speakers talking about the critical global health issues of maternal and child health, with a special emphasis on the benefits of healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies as a life-saving mechanism in the developing world. Local and national speakers will come together to talk about their special work as service providers in countries around the world, caring for mothers and children worldwide. We will lead a robust Q&A session with all the speakers encouraging further discussion. And the conference will close with practical, simple steps for how YOU can save lies and help families thrive in the developing world.
Read More - Contagious vs. Infectious
As the CDC treats the nation’s first two Ebola cases there are a lot of questions and concerns about the disease in America—Could it become an epidemic here? How contagious is it? How is it caught?

Although my medical specialty is cardiothoracic surgery, I have spent a good deal of time working on global health issues in Africa and elsewhere, and I have been in close contact with the CDC over the past week. I thought it might be useful to highlight some of the features of Ebola that make it more—and less—dangerous.

As a viral disease, Ebola follows a fairly predictable timeline.

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