Sunday, 11 May 2008

Global Health back on track! On 5 September history was made by 7 Ministers of Health from low-income countries together with serious politicians from West Europe and representatives from aid organisations that had learnt their lessons . The group launched the International Health Partnership. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/ihp/default.asp If aid from rich countries should effectively improve health of the poor, they said, the aid must be: 1. coordinated, 2. foucsed on improving health systems as a whole instead of one disease at a time, 3. and part of good national plans. These statements are evidance based, much needed but "un-sexy". So let me translate the 3 statements into blunt words: 1. It is mad that Ministries of Health in low-income countries each week must meet a growing number of aid delegations. 2. It is cruel to tell millions of poor mothers; "your child is dying from pneumonia for which our clinic have no drugs because Bush, Blair and rich activits did not know that pneumonia and diarrhea kill as many as do malaria, TB and HIV. 3. It is stupid to fund seprate clinics for each disease when there is not even staff and money e nough for one clinic in each village. So, 5 September 2007, is a happy day for global health. Fragmented health aid based on what is "sexy" in the media of the rish will be replaced by health aid focusing on what is needed in the clinic of the poor. Why is Sweden not yet part of the International Health Partnership? The Swedish Minister for Development Aid recently wisely focused Swedish bilateral aid too fewer countries. So hopefully she will soon join the Partnership of the wise. In these issues it seems more important if politicians are wise than if they come from left or right, so we can hope that Sweden will join. - Hans Rosling (noreply@blogger.com) [Hans Rosling] 8:55:19 PM

NASA Time Animation of Ionosphere For Google Earth. Last week, NASA announced the release of an amazing dynamic Google Earth resource which shows time animated condition of the Earth's Ionosphere. The ionosphere is used to bounce radio signals over the horizon for long distance communication. But, when storms occur on the sun's surface they can mess up parts of the ionosphere and disrupt ionosphere-based communications. The new NASA Google Earth data can be used to quickly understand where and when there may be radio communication issues. See for example their primary network link which shows the current condition of the ionosphere in the form of total electron content. Then, check out an animation of the total electron content for the past 24 hours . You use the time slider to see the animation, but note that it will take a while to load each image overlay which covers the entire Earth. Red means area of strong atmospheric disturbance where communications problems are likely to occur. Blue/dark means communications will be fine. You will notice that the night side of the Earth is the best time for radio communications. This NASA information not only makes for cool looking Google Earth visualizations, but is very useful to anyone with a profession or need for using short-wave radio (e.g. HAM radio operators, mariners, coast guards, etc.). Airliners are increasingly flying over the arctic regions to take shorter routes, but in this area they can't use satellite communications based on geosynchronous satellites. So, they resort to short wave radio over the poles. If the ionosphere is important to you, check out the full list of GE ionosphere visualizations from NASA here. NASA also has a communications alert and prediction system which uses this data. NASA has done many other Google Earth visualizations. Here are just a few: NASA Earth at Night Layer NASA Annual Lightning Flash Map NASA Sea Surface Temperature and more NASA Earth Day Top Photos By Frank Taylor of Google Earth Blog. [Google Earth Blog] 8:30:26 PM

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