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The PIH Vision: Whatever it takes At its root, our mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone. When a person in Peru, or Siberia, or rural Haiti falls ill, PIH uses all of the means at our disposal to make them well—from pressuring drug manufacturers, to lobbying policy makers, to providing medical care and social services. Whatever it takes. Just as we would do if a member of our own family—or we ourselves—were ill.

The World Bank Launches Private-Public Initiative to Empower Adolescent Girls Author: World Bank Dated: 10 Oct 2008 The World Bank joined governments and the private sector today to launch the Adolescent Girls Initiative (AGI) to promote the economic empowerment of adolescent girls in poor and post-conflict countries...The AGI is being piloted in Liberia through a partnership between the Bank, the Nike Foundation...It will be expanded in the coming year to include Afghanistan, Nepal, Rwanda, South Sudan...“...Every global company should invest in the girl effect. Economists have demonstrated that it is the best possible return on investment,” said Mark Parker, President and CEO of Nike...Public and private sector partners pledged today around $20 million to fund the Initiative, including: The Nike Foundation $3M. [also refers to Cisco, Standard Chartered, Goldman Sachs]

Sastry endorses David Kolb’s “learning loop” model: concrete experience, observation and reflection, forming abstract concepts, then further implementing and analyzing. She ponders if this cycle can transcend classroom learning to engender change in the world. Her own research and consulting in health care delivery are based on such a stepped method. She stresses that an integrated, holistic perspective is also required. For instance, a malnourished patient will be unable to absorb drugs administered for AIDS; medicine is insufficient without food. As to the larger picture, she says “obviously we’ve got to tackle global warming and carbon emissions, but we also need to tackle poverty.”

How powerful is a light-weight tool in the right hands? During a six month pilot in Malawi, our partner doubled the number of people being treated for Tuberculosis.

Driven by local ownership and appropriate technology. In the developing world, lack of infrastructure prevents health workers from delivering efficient healthcare to rural areas. As health workers travel from clinics to reach isolated patients, they are often as disconnected from central clinics as the patients they are trying to serve. The mission of FrontlineSMS:Medic is to advance healthcare networks in the developing world by building and distributing innovative, appropriate mobile technologies. The centerpiece of our system is FrontlineSMS, a free, open-source software platform that enables large-scale, two-way text messaging using only a laptop, a GSM modem, and cell phones. We are also developing several applications for the FrontlineSMS platform that will enable better patient management, electronic medical records via the cell phone, cheap mobile diagnostics, and mapping of health services.

McKibben saw the way ahead as harnessing the Internet’s multiplicative power. In 2007, with the help of six students and email’s exponential impact, 1,400 simultaneous demonstrations took place countrywide. “The thing just went viral,” McKibben exclaims, “…the biggest day of grass-roots environmental activism since the first Earth Day in 1970.” Social networking and cell phones proved most effective tools for mobilization.

From Martin Luther King, Jr., McKibben absorbed principles of righteous activism. The good fight must be “creative…determined…joyful.” In closing, McKibben cautions “nature does not grade on a curve.” Global warming “is the morally urgent question of our moment.”

U.S. falls behind other developed countries in infant mortality The United States ranks 29th. The rate has not improved because of an increase in premature births, health officials say.

A rise in twins and triplets, driven by the use of infertility treatments, contributed somewhat to the rise in premature and low-birth-weight births, Petrini said. But even accounting for those trends, premature births are increasing, possibly tied to rising rates of obesity, diabetes and hypertension.

"We as a nation place less emphasis on primary care and prevention than a lot of these other industrialized democracies do that have lower rates than we do," said Dr. Ann O'Malley of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington-based research group.