Weekly News Roundup
News, Events and Observations about Health Markets in the Developing World
Program News
Congratulations to VisionSpring for opening their first fixed optical store in India! The store is located in Karnal, a town 2 hours north of New Delhi, and its inauguration was attended by over 200 people, with the store’s first customer being a 95 year old woman who had never received an eye exam before. Read about the full unveiling here on VisionSpring’s new blog.
The Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), creator of programs such as Aponjon, is a finalist in Fast Company’s 2012 Innovation By Design Awards. There were more than 1,700 entries in the competition, with MAMA being nominated in the “service design” category. Finalists will be featured in the October issue of Fast Company magazine, and finalists will be officially announced this Wednesday morning by Fast Company on their website. The winners will be announced on October 16 at a gala event in New York City. Click here to read more.
Riders for Health, a not-for-profit that provides reliable, cost-efficient and sustainable transportation for health care workers in the rural communities of sub-Saharan Africa, recently released a series of reports which show the impact they made in 2011. Click here to read their impact reports on the six different countries they operate in.
Nationwide Primary Healthcare Services, a retail chain of primary care clinics in India, has raised Rs 25 crore (~ $4,500,000 USD) in funding from US-based Norwest Venture Partners, a firm that manages more than $3.7 billion in capital, and has funded over 500 companies since its inception. This investment will help establish 120 clinics within the Nationwide chain in Bangalore over the next 18 months. Read the full story here.
General News
PSI, a global non-profit organization dedicated to improving the health of people in the developing world, recently asked global health experts around the world to Tweet what they think have been the Top Moments in global health so far in 2012. Read the responses here, and don’t hesitate to contribute your own perspective!
A new scheme called Heartfile Health Financing, is using philanthropy and high levels of mobile phone ownership to permanently change lives in the country. The program uses mobile phones to enable the lightning fast transfer of funds to patients that doctors identify to need instant financial help for urgent procedures. The system is still in its startup phase but it shows a lot of promise. Click here to read more about it in the “online first” publication, the British Medical Journal.
The 2012 AIDS Vaccine Conference, the largest and most diverse international meeting of researchers, advocates, clinicians, private sector partners and public health experts working collaboratively to advance HIV vaccine science, took place this week in Boston from September 9-12. Talks on all aspects surrounding the AIDS Vaccine were discussed along with hundreds of researchers' studies presented. Be sure to check out the site to see what you missed if you weren’t able to attend.
Opportunities
The Mini-University (Mini-U), an annual learning forum for Global Health professionals, is being held today at George Washington University’s Cloyd Heck Marvin Center . It offers a variety of presentations highlighting evidence-based best practices and state-of-the-art information, with programs such as USAID’s SHOPS holding presentations. The event is from 8:30am till 4:30pm and is free to the public. Click here to learn more.