Plumpy’nut, Changing the Way the World Fights Famine

Plumpy’nut is a peanut-based paste in a plastic wrapper for treatment of severe acute malnutrition. It is made of peanut paste, vegetable oil, powdered milk, powdered sugar, vitamins, and minerals. This simple concoction manufactured by Nutriset, a French company, is changing the way malnutrition is dealt with in children, and by extension, changing the way the world deals with food shortages and famine.

Before the development of Plumpy’nut and supplements like it children needed to be hospitalized for extended periods of time to receive intravenous fluids. There are often hundreds and sometimes thousands of children suffering from malnutrition when food shortages occur. All of these children used to have to be crammed together with their families in hospitals and make-shift health centers. They all needed to be tended to by doctors. With the arrival of innovative solutions like Plumpy’nut only the most extreme cases of malnutrition require hospitalization. That means less doctors, less nurses, less beds, less tents, less medical equipment to transport and maintain. Overall, it means fighting famine just got a whole lot cheaper.

Take for example the current crisis in the Sahel belt of western Africa. A number of unfortunate factors have come together to create a devastating food shortage. It has not yet crossed into the realm of famine but is skirting that very thin line. Labels aside, this shortage is leaving thousands of young children suffering from acute malnutrition. With Plumpy’nut in hand aid workers can not only treat children at hospitals and aid centers but, since Plumpy’nut doesn’t require refrigeration and comes wrapped in foil parents are able to feed it to their children on their own. Because of this it’s possible that with enough support the various groups, governments, and NGOs may yet be able to head of another terrible famine in Africa.

If you are interested in joining the fight against famine you can give to World Vision’s hunger fund and your donation will provide 5 times its value in life-saving emergency foods like Plumpy’nut, along with seeds, livestock, and other items that combat food shortages and hunger.

Nicholas Kristof Talks At Willow Creek Community Church

In a wonderful instance of what Nicholas Kristof refers to as “bridging the God Gulf” – two people of different religious beliefs  (ie. liberal atheists and conservative Christians) working together for a common good – atheist Kristof and obvious Christian Pastor Bill Hybel of Willow Creek Community Church, one of the largest churches in America came together to discuss the plight of women and girls around the world.

Nicholas Kristof discussed his book Half the Sky with Pastor Bill Hybel and his congregation, and then Pastor Bill turned the tables and had Kristof preach a 3 minute sermon, which was very insightful.

The video clip is 30 minutes long, but they’re 30 minutes of gold. Kristof explains what he’s learned through years if experience, that there is no silver bullet for solving the worlds problems, but our hope for the future rests with women and girls. If women and girls can be educated, given rights, and protected the global population will shrink, become healthier, become better educated, and become more peaceable. Sounds good to me.

 

UPDATE:  I disconnected the link.  Willow Creek Community Church updated its media page and now, for the life of me, I can’t find the Kristof video anymore.  I’ll keep searching, but if anyone else runs across it before I do please, please, please, email me, or post it in a comment.

Gamers, The Future of Medicine. Why not?

In The Atlantic today there is an article about a video game where players help real doctors diagnose malaria. At UCLA gamers are on the brink of becoming the latest line of defense against malaria. UC researchers have developed a free, Internet-based pattern recognition game based on images of real life blood cells. The hope is that the online tool will cut down the amount of time it now takes to distinguish infected red blood cells from healthy ones. So far, the volunteer players have diagnosed malarial blood cells with about as much accuracy as a trained pathologist.

Gamers begin with a short tutorial where they first learn the characteristics of an infected blood cell. Next, they’re presented with a 6-by-8 grid of blood cells. The object of the game is to use one tool to neutralize bad cells and another to select all the remaining healthy cells. Once they’ve cleared a stage, players are presented with another grid to analyze.
In developing nations where malaria is rampant and doctors are scarce analyzing blood samples is a time-consuming process and often, time is of the essence. Having lots of unskilled gamers do the legwork not only speeds things up, but also improves the accuracy of the diagnosis, researchers say.

Similarly, at the University of Washington developers have created a game where players wrestle with ways that proteins can fold themselves into different configurations. They call it FoldIt.  Understanding the role that proteins play in a disease can help scientists crack a pathogen’s code, and can help in the creation of new synthetic proteins in drug research.
One of the results of this new hybrid between games and medicine is this:

A small group of enthusiastic gamers on a site called FoldIt recently solved the structure of a protein found in an AIDS-like monkey virus. The structure had stumped scientists for over a decade; the gamers, incredibly, cracked it in less than three weeks.

This concept of integrating gaming with medicine could possibly revolutionize medicine both in the developing world and at home. To think, maybe the next “time-waster” game you download could be literally saving lives.

World Immunization Week & Shot@Life’s National Launch

Saturday marked the beginning of World Immunization Week.  The WHO is uniting countries across the globe for a week of vaccination campaigns, public education, and information-sharing under the umbrella of World Immunization Week.  Immunization is one of the most successful and cost-effective health interventions and prevents debilitating illness, disability and death from vaccine-preventable diseases such as diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, measles, mumps, pneumococcal disease, polio, rotavirus diarrhoea, tetanus and yellow fever.  In fact, 2-3 million deaths are averted annually due to vaccination.  The goal of this worldwide collaboration is to boost momentum and focus on specific actions such as:

• raising awareness on how immunization saves lives;
• increasing vaccination coverage to prevent disease outbreaks;
• reaching underserved and marginalized communities ― particularly those living in remote areas, deprived urban settings, fragile states and strife-torn regions ― with existing and newly available vaccines; and
• reinforcing the medium- and long-term benefits of immunization, giving children a chance to grow up healthy, go to school and improve their life prospects.

Also happening this week, Shot@Life is celebrating their national launch on Thursday, and hosting a Twitter party from 9am to 12pm EST #vaccineswork.  From 9am-10am Learn about vaccines with @shotatlife, @unfoundation, & @amillionmoms.  Learn how to get involved with Shot@Life with the Champion hour hosted by @shotofprev from 10am-11am.  From 11am-12pm hear stories from the field hosted by @gatesfoundation.

Celebrating this awesome event with Shot@Life is a great way to take part in World Immunization Week.  Invite your friends to the Shot@Life Twitter party.  Many people don’t understand the value of vaccines or the distance a few dollars can go in giving children a chance at a lifetime of firsts.  World Immunization Week is a great opportunity to get involved with the global fight against devastating but preventable childhood diseases.

For a quick look at the devastating effects of childhood disease, and in turn, the world-changing power of vaccines, check out The Salk Vaccine Turns 57.