tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-187221552011-07-08T04:44:41.333+03:00Jeffrey's Tanzania Online Journal.Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comBlogger231100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-4916581825566665902010-04-18T20:10:00.005+03:002010-04-18T20:28:34.497+03:00

Noted author and thought leader Laurie Garrett has highlighted in her work that, “Moreover, in all too many cases, aid is tied to short-term numerical targets.” Arguments among pundits may vary, but not many deny the bottom-line; after decades of vertical programs traditional donor models need an infusion of new ideas and approaches to help reduce health disparities world-wide. Furthermore

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-59264297463943309672010-04-05T16:27:00.009+03:002010-04-05T16:39:12.466+03:00

2010 Olympus Innovation Award Blander AcceptanceNational Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) ConferenceFriday March 26th, 2010http://tinyurl.com/olympus2010Dear distinguished colleagues and friends,I have just a few minutes to make some remarks before they kick me off the stage. So I have tried to reduce these remarks to focus on 4 key words: Humbled, Asante, Challenge, and

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-71448203684200138942010-02-14T20:51:00.008+03:002010-02-14T21:56:29.862+03:00

In the Fall of 2005, while attending ward rounds one day at the National Hospital in Tanzania I met a 9 year old girl named 'Rosie' being treated for rheumatic heart disease (RHD). Some of you reading this might be wondering how a 9 year old girl acquires heart disease. Rosie is one of millions of children living in low income countries with RHD, a condition that was mostly eradicated in the US

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-36197184275231428832010-01-26T03:29:00.004+03:002010-01-26T07:58:07.881+03:00

Focusing on expanding health care access is a very noble social goal. But in a fiscally conservative leaning country plagued by debt and recession, access driven models are not winning strategic arguments for passing legislation, winning elections, or garnering public opinion.What seems to be a missing element from today’s dialogue on health care reform, is how enabling health technologies can

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-48613078049772623292010-01-03T19:47:00.007+03:002010-01-04T08:39:42.996+03:00

On May 25th, 1961 John F. Kennedy laid out a vision for the USA to land an American on the moon and safely return him/her back to earth. JFK realized that landing on the moon was not as important as setting a bold vision that would capture all America’s attention to strive for greatness and not settle for mediocrity. In his now famous “Man on the Moon Address”, JFK stated, “Now it is time to

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-54459451067582389242009-08-17T20:02:00.006+03:002009-08-17T20:45:55.774+03:00

There has been much debate regarding health care reform and the inclusion of a public option to provide needed competition to the private health insurance industry.While conceptually this sounds like a reasonable idea there are some potential flaws to this model that need a closer look.1) Who would use this plan? For most America’s currently using private health insurance, there is little cause

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-35031360545636190732009-06-15T19:00:00.017+03:002009-06-15T22:07:02.252+03:00

Dr. Atul Gawande (The Cost Conundrum, New Yorker Magazine, June 1st 2009) and New York Times (Editorial “Doctors and the Cost of Care”, June 14th 2009) provide very insightful, critical, and constructive commentary on what is potentially wrong with the US health care system. Primary reasons allude to overutilization that has created waste with questionable quality and impact.In other words we

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-38187706446063777032009-05-17T19:26:00.006+03:002009-05-19T03:57:49.781+03:00

I remember very clearly in March 2004 arriving into Kingston Jamaica. I was just tapped to be a Volunteer Country Director for the Clinton Foundation. The task was to work closely with a team of clinicians, business personnel, and ministry officials to help finalize the HIV/AIDS treatment and scale up country proposal for the Global Fund.I remember during the first week on the job driving past a

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-64333600205327254922009-05-10T17:35:00.015+03:002009-05-10T18:18:59.134+03:00

We wish you a very happy, wonderful, and happy mothers day.Appropriately Mr. Nicholas Kristof from the NYT has given us a gift of reporting on a condition that effects both mothers and children, yet remains largely under funded with few direct advocates. Mr. Kristof reports that childhood pneumonia is an illness that is easy to treat, yet more than two million children die each year in developing

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-74739210247500254852009-05-08T19:48:00.005+03:002009-05-08T20:11:13.726+03:00

In the last several years there has been an exponential increase in the number of graduate and undergraduate students working on social impact projects in developing country settings. Many of these programs are short term engagements that last between 2 – 8 weeks over winter, spring, or summer intersession. Often times many of these students have never traveled to the destination site and are

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-13923277516792617262009-04-29T20:37:00.010+03:002009-04-30T03:00:40.531+03:00

Not sure about you, but I’ve been a little bit on edge recently with all the announcements of swine flu and media sound bites using outbreak, epidemic, and pandemic. Over the last few days there has been a wide range of news coverage of the Swine flu outbreak. Responsible coverage has provided factual information regarding what is influenza and has distinguished between pandemic and seasonal (

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-88397385613142946542009-04-27T15:47:00.005+03:002009-04-27T16:09:15.226+03:00

By late morning of Saturday 25th April there were some ecstatic messages by World Malaria Day advocates that said. “Malaria is number one search term on Twitter.” But that lasted a very short while. By mid afternoon the media started to pick up on a new announcement by WHO regarding an outbreak of swine flu that claimed the lives of over 80 persons in Mexico City and the possibility of spread to

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-65833507221724758562009-04-23T19:36:00.004+03:002009-04-23T19:55:35.077+03:00

Thanks to herculean efforts by mainstream advocates such as Lance Laifer and his many colleagues, the generation X and post X are becoming much more aware of a deadly disease that takes the lives of over one million adults and children every year. What makes this infectious disease particularly frustrating is that experts, clinicians, and field workers agree that many of these deaths are

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-67732338662779243022009-04-22T04:27:00.003+03:002009-04-22T04:35:52.609+03:00

Dr. Gail Cassell, Vice President for Scientific Affairs and Lilly Research Scholar for Infectious Diseases, Eli Lilly and Company was our distinguished guest today in HST939. Dr. Cassell is heading up the Lilly initiative to fight the spread of multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The genesis for this program stems from a conversation that Dr. Cassell had with Paul Farmer and Jim Kim of

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-11039600043280976082009-04-20T05:45:00.006+03:002009-04-20T05:58:41.667+03:00

In an article written by Richard Stevenson of the New York Times, a discussion of re-thinking the current predominate economic model for the US economy is presented. Mr. Stevenson points out that, “In the two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American model of capitalism, largely unchallenged by ideological alternatives and increasingly dominant around the world, drifted toward what

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-91890800684639650812009-04-18T06:18:00.007+03:002009-04-18T06:41:47.886+03:00

Micro lending or banking for the world’s poor has been made especially famous by Professor Yunus. Professor Yunus and the Grameen organization have paved the way for new lending practices to reach millions of persons living in developing countries to help break the vicious cycle of poverty.Given the recent problems and blatant examples of corruption exposed during the recent financial crisis in

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-23763612103231686242009-04-15T07:24:00.013+03:002009-04-15T07:53:46.417+03:00

Today was another special day for our HST939 course. Inder Singh, Director of Drug Access for the William J. Clinton Foundation was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule and chat to our class about his teams experiences. Inder and his team at the foundation have done extraordinary work on the supply side to help reduce costs of anti-retroviral therapies (ART) for persons living with

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-50100848208436204012009-04-13T20:41:00.004+03:002009-04-13T21:09:49.275+03:00

Open source for global health is an area of great strategic importance in the international community. The promise of open source projects in global health is to facilitate the implementation of interoperable platforms responsible for storing and sharing electronic health information to improve quality of health care delivery. Pioneering organizations and champions in this area include the

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-13731683961727689452009-04-12T19:02:00.005+03:002009-04-12T20:12:54.353+03:00

Happy Easter Sunday. My wife Michelle and I sincerely hope and wish you all a wonderful and happy holiday.Holidays are a time to reflect, appreciate the gift of life, but also the possibilities of how we can extend ourselves to helping others in need.Today’s New York Times has an article entitled, “States Slashing Social Programs for Vulnerable” by Erik Eckholm. This article reports upon the

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-74117413061446207602009-04-11T12:48:00.009+03:002009-04-12T20:08:43.689+03:00

Recently, there has been a surge in awareness and action in recognizing the horrible toll malaria has on the developing world. From mainstream advocacy by groups such as 'madness for malaria' and less publicized day-to-day field worker initiatives, the battle to saves lives is taking place every day.In Tanzania, malaria still accounts for the highest all cause mortality among children. Reasons

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-85986692949654396192009-04-10T15:30:00.006+03:002009-04-12T20:09:41.647+03:00

Diabetes is increasing faster in the world's developing economies than in developed countries. Seven out of ten countries with the highest number of people living with diabetes are in the developing world. With an estimated 35 million people with diabetes, India has the world's largest diabetes population (http://www.worlddiabetesfoundation.org/).Unfortunately, due to lack of access to proper

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-29320494207172356242009-04-09T16:23:00.004+03:002009-04-12T20:10:29.507+03:00

Recently there has been in influx of interest in the development of low cost medical devices for resource poor and developing country settings. This has spurned a great deal of passion and interest by students, faculty, and partners to develop prototypes and send teams for short stays to document future requirements as well as tweak existing designs. Examples of ingenious devices/products from

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18722155.post-21261856790184069052009-04-08T22:37:00.003+03:002009-04-12T20:11:36.888+03:00

It was a thrill to participate in the recent Spring Symposium at the American Museum of Natural History on Exploring the Dynamic Relationship Between Health and the Environment. The conference was hosted and organized by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation's Fourteenth Annual Spring Symposium.I have the privilege for speaking on the final panel that focused on a way forward for

Jeffrey M Blanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12072531614835674331noreply@blogger.com