Host country Canada has decided to make maternal and child health a priority at this year’s G8 and G20 meetings, starting Friday June 25. Also on the list of priorities are food security and institutional reform in Africa. Here’s to hoping that Canada’s initiative leads to more effective global health policy among the world’s leading economies.
More information on the global health policies of Canada and other G8/G20 countries from the Kaiser Foundation.
Tag Archives: childhood mortality
Vitamin A not the panacea it seemed?
Today’s NYTimes covered a study whose surprising results were recently published in The Lancet. It was conducted in Ghana, and seems to contradict a lot of good data on the positive results of Vitamin A supplementation: lower incidence of measles and diarrhea and, ultimately, reduced maternal and childhood mortality.
Writing in a Lancet commentary, Anthony Costello and David Osrin of the global health institute of University College London noted that the new study recruited an “astonishing” number of women — nearly 208,000 in more than 1,000 villages or family compounds. Half got a weekly low dose of vitamin A, and half got a placebo. Few in either group died, but the vitamin also did not reduce hospitalization for childbirth complications. Nor did it reduce stillbirths or deaths of newborns. Recent trials in Bangladesh and Indonesia had similar results.”
At this point, Vitamin A supplementation has practically become a truism in global health practice. What might be the consequences of this study, along with the trials in Bangladesh and Indonesia?
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/health/04glob.html
