Article to be published in The Lancet on Friday
calls for five specific interventions
by PIH
Dr. Paul Farmer, a co-founder of Partners In Health (PIH) and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Louise Ivers, PIH's Chief of Mission in Haiti and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Dr Fernet Léandre of PIH's Haitian partner organization, Zanmi Lasante, will host a press conference call on Friday, December 10 at 2PM EST to discuss the cholera outbreak in Haiti and call for a more aggressive and comprehensive strategy to combat the disease.
Dr. Farmer, Dr. Ivers, and Dr. Léandre are co-authors, with Dr. Charles-Patrick Almazor, of a piece to be published in The Lancet on Friday entitled Five complementary interventions to slow cholera: Haiti.
These interventions include several that have been deliberately excluded or severely underfunded in the response to date - use of oral cholera vaccines, antibiotic therapy, and large-scale investments in infrastructure to improve access to clean water. The authors argue that an integrated model of prevention and care - similar to the model that has halved the size of Haiti's AIDS epidemic in the past 15 years - is essential in this dire and deadly emergency.
They call on global health authorities and funders to move swiftly and aggressively, and to move beyond age-old divisions over roles of "prevention" and "care" to save lives.
PIH has rapidly strengthened cholera treatment capacity at all of our sites in the rural Lower Artibonite and Central Plateau where the outbreak began. We are also carrying out intensive education and prevention campaigns and have set up a separate Cholera Treatment Unit (CTU) to provide care for patients in Parc Jean-Marie Vincent, the largest of the settlement camps where we work in Port-au-Prince.
On Friday, 12/10 at 2 pm EST (11 am Pacific Time): Dr. Paul Farmer,
Dr. Louise Ivers and Dr. Fernet Léandre Call for a Change in Strategy
and Increased Resources to Slow Cholera Outbreak in Haiti and Beyond
* Paul Farmer, Co-founder, Partners In Health, Chair, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
* Louise Ivers, Chief of Mission in Haiti, Partners In Health, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
* Fernet Léandre, Senior Physician in Haiti, Zanmi Lasante and recipient of the Global Health Delivery Fellowship awarded by Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Haiti's Ministry of Public Health
What:
Press conference call to discuss the cholera epidemic in Haiti and their call to action that will be published on Friday in The Lancet
When:
Friday, December 10 at 2PM EST
RSVP:
To RSVP contact Meredith Eves at meves@pih.org or 617-998-8945
For Immediate Release
December 9, 2010
MEDIA ADVISORY
DIAL: (US) 1-800-640-0097 or (International) 1-847-944-7321, then give the Confirmation Number: 28624089
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