ipsf education monthly update april 2011

8/6/2019 IPSF Education Monthly Update April 2011

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IPSF Education

April 2011 update

UNESCO launches new Web portal on Education for Sustainable

Development

From climate change to teacher education to new green technologies, UNESCO's new Web portal on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) demonstrates how education helps

societies and individuals to achieve sustainability.

The web content has been entirely updated to set out UNESCO's priorities for the remaining

half of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014). It presents

the aims and focus of the DESD and highlights UNESCO's work in relation to major

sustainability themes like climate change, consumption and biodiversity. In addition, it

explains how education can bring about the societal change needed to build sustainable

societies. Also on the web portal is information related to the ESD work of DESD major

partners.

ESD is a key means through which education can engage people, as conscious consumers and

responsible citizens, in redefining their lifestyles to address current sustainability issues.

Related link

UNESCO's new Web portal on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)



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Get ready for Global Action Week! (2 - 8 May)

The 2011 Global Action Week (GAW) on Education for All (EFA) will take place from 2

to 8 May. This year, the campaign will focus on the theme of "Girls' and Women's

Education", a UNESCO priority. The core campaign activity will be "The Big Story"

around which many other activities will be organized. GAW is an opportunity to

galvanize strong political support to achieve gender-related goals in education.

GAW is an annual event organized by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), a coalition

of NGOs and teacher unions in more than 150 countries, in order to raise awareness of the

EFA movement. UNESCO has been an active supporter of GAW since its inception and

actively encourages its partners and networks to organize and participate in activities.

The 2011 GAW is part of a sequence of important international events for gender equality and

EFA in general, such as the 55th Commission on the Status of Women (22 February - 4

March 2011); the celebration of International Women's Day (8 March); the 10th meeting of

the High-Level Group on EFA (Jomtien, Thailand, 22-24 March 2011) and the 2011

ECOSOC Annual Ministerial Review (Geneva, Switzerland, 4 - 8 July 2011). World

Teachers’ Day (5 October) will also focus on gender.

Related Links

GCE website

Study: Virtual medicine as effective as physical doc visits

By Lucas Mearian

Computerworld - Results of a five-year study on telemedicine showed that patients can be

treated virtually by physicians as effectively as if the patients made physical visits to thedoctor's office. In another finding, the remote treatment also improved doctor-patient

communications.

The study highlighted the efforts of Hospital Clinic of Barcelona to treat 200 HIV-infected

patients remotely through its "Hospital VIHrtual" telemedicine program. The program used

virtual consultations through videoconferencing and delivery of medications to a patient's

home. The telemedicine program does not replace the traditional face-to-face visits between

doctor and patient but complements and enhances them, the hospital said. The study results

were published in the peer-reviewed journal PLos One.

In the U.S., many states are implementing telemedicine as a way to save costs, improve the

quality of time physicians spend with patients and cut down on commuting time.

For example, last year two BlueCross BlueShield insurance organizations in upstate New

York began offering their members and employers virtual physician visits, making New York

the fourth state to provide these types of services. The service allows patients to talk with

physicians in real time through a private online chat network or through a voice-over-IP

phone call. It also offers video chat and instant messages.



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Other medical facilities throughout the country are offering physician/patient communications

through Twitter.

Hospital Clinic of Barcelona's telemedicine program was coordinated by Dr. Felipe Garcia

and Dr. Agathe Leon, from the Hospital Clinic Service of Infectious Diseases, directed by Dr.

Josep M. Gatell.

"The study shows that the virtual hospital allows comprehensive control over the patient in

medical, pharmaceutical, psychological and quality of life aspects. The results are as

satisfactory as those obtained in a visit at the hospital," a press release by the hospital stated.

Meanwhile, a separate study, published in January, showed 85% of 87 patients who were

surveyed indicated that a virtual hospital improved their access to clinical data and that they

felt comfortable with the videoconference system.

Virtual office visits were also found to improve the amount of information patients could

receive about their illness, while reducing costs and the time spent traveling back and forth to

physicians' offices and waiting for physicians to meet with patients.

The Hospital VIHrtual telemedicine program offered patients teleconference consultations

that included medical, nursing, psychological, pharmaceutical and social care. The video

consultation sessions were set up through email.

The hospital's telemedicine program also offers two virtual communities, one for healthcare

professionals where they can share clinical cases and treatments, and another for patients

offering news, discussion forums and blogs with physicians and other patients.

Because so many HIV-infected patients are medically stable, they must maintain a normal

social and work life, which may require travel, business meetings and other important

scheduled events. Frequent visits to the hospital are a major investment of time and money for

the patients. The virtual system allows the patient to go to the medical center only for a physical examination and reduces the number of visits to the doctor from six or eight in the

current system to three or four, the hospital stated.

"This program allows patients to continue their treatment without altering their routine.

Medication is sent to their home, or other locations specified by the patient," the hospital

stated. "Telemedicine is emerging as a service appropriate for this treatment, and Hospital

VIHrtual as a safe and effective tool. This system, with variations, could become a model for

the control of chronic stable patients suffering other diseases."

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World Health Day 2011

WHO

Urgent action necessary to safeguard drug treatments

6 April 2011 | Geneva - Drug resistance is becoming more severe and many infections are no

longer easily cured, leading to prolonged and expensive treatment and greater risk of death,

warns the WHO on World Health Day. Under the theme "Combat Drug Resistance", WHO

calls for urgent and concerted action by governments, health professionals, industry and civil



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society and patients to slow down the spread of drug resistance, limit its impact today and

preserve medical advances for future generations.

On the brink of losing miracle cures

“The message on this World Health Day is loud and clear. The world is on the brink of losing

these miracle cures,” said WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. “In the absence of

urgent corrective and protective actions, the world is heading towards a post-antibiotic era, inwhich many common infections will no longer have a cure and, once again, kill unabated.”

Measures to combat drug resistance

Today, WHO is publishing a policy package that sets out the measures governments and their

national partners need to combat drug resistance. The policy steps recommended by WHO

include:

develop and implement a comprehensive, financed national plan

strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity

ensure uninterrupted access to essential medicines of assured quality

regulate and promote rational use of medicines

enhance infection prevention and control foster innovation and research and development for new tools.

The discovery and use of antimicrobial drugs to treat diseases such as leprosy, tuberculosis,

gonorrhea and syphilis changed the course of medical and human history. Now, those

discoveries and the generations of drugs that followed them are at risk, as high levels of drug

resistance threaten their effectiveness.

Drug resistance is a natural biological phenomenon, through which microorganisms acquire

resistance to the drugs meant to kill them. With each new generation, the microorganism

carrying the resistant gene becomes ever more dominant until the drug is completely

ineffective. Inappropriate use of infection-fighting drugs (underuse, overuse or misuse) causes

resistance to emerge faster.

Resistance detected in a number of diseases

Last year, at least 440 000 new cases of multidrug resistant-tuberculosis were detected and

extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis has been reported in 69 countries to date. The malaria

parasite is acquiring resistance to even the latest generation of medicines, and resistant strains

causing gonorrhea and shigella are limiting treatment options. Serious infections acquired in

hospitals can become fatal because they are so difficult to treat and drug-resistant strains of

microorganism are spread from one geographical location to another in today's interconnected

and globalized world. Resistance is also emerging to the antiretroviral medicines used to treat

people living with HIV.

Getting everyone on the right track

“On this World Health Day, WHO is issuing a policy package to get everyone, especially

governments and their drug regulatory systems, on the right track, with the right measures,

quickly,” said Dr Chan. “The trends are clear and ominous. No action today means no cure

tomorrow. At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential

medicines – essential cures for many millions of people – to become the next global crisis.”



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"WHO has established many initiatives to understand and address drug resistance over the last

decade, particularly in relation to some of the world's most deadly infectious diseases," said

Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of WHO Stop TB Department, who has been leading the

preparations for World Health Day 2011. "Those measures must now be further strengthened

and implemented urgently across many diseases and across many sectors. New collaborations,

led by governments working alongside civil society and health professionals, if accountable,

can halt the public health threat of drug resistance."

Everyone can make a contribution

Although governments need to take the lead and develop national policies to combat drug

resistance, health professionals, civil society and other groups can also make important

contributions. For example, doctors and pharmacists can prescribe and dispense only the

drugs that are required to treat a patient, rather than automatically giving either the newest or

best-known medicines. Patients can stop demanding that doctors give them antibiotics when

they may not be appropriate. Health professionals can help rapidly reduce the spread of

infection in health care facilities.

Collaboration between human and animal health and agriculture professionals is also vital, as

the use of antibiotics in food animal production contributes to increased drug resistance.Approximately half of current antibiotic production is used in agriculture, to promote growth

and prevent disease as well as to treat sick animals. With such massive use, those drug

resistant microbes generated in animals can be later transferred to humans.

Governments and partners need to work closely with industry to encourage greater investment

in research and development of new diagnostics that can help improve decision making as

well as drugs to replace those that are being lost to resistance. Today, less than five per cent of

products in the research and development pipeline are antibiotic drugs. Innovative incentive

schemes are needed to stimulate industry to research and develop new antimicrobial drugs for

the future.

ipsf education monthly update april 2011

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