: )

In response to a question last class, here are the disease funded by the B&M Gates Foundation.

Acute Diarrheal Illness

Acute Lower Respiratory Infections

Child Health

HIV/AIDS 

Malaria

Poor Nutrition

Reproductive and Maternal Health

Tuberculosis

Vaccine-Preventable Diseases

Other Infectious Diseases (possibly including some of the diseases we have covered).

Under other infectious disease falls:

• Sexually-transmitted infections
• Infections of multicellular organisms that include worms
• Infections of single-cell parasites transmitted by insects
• Human papillomavirus (HPV)
• Other diseases, including meningitis, dengue, and Japanese encephalitis

Thought people might be interested….. 

Tuesday, March 11, two times/places:
-UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson St., 5pm-7pm
-Michael Smith Laboratories Room 101, 5:30pm-6:30pm
According to the Global Forum for Health Research, only 10% of research dollars are spent on the diseases that affect 90% of the world’s population. We argue that universities have an opportunity and a responsibility to address this gap.
Patricia Kretz and Mike Gretes, UBC chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines

Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Access to Care
————————————————-
Thursday, March 13, 1pm-2:30pm (presentations), 2:30pm-4:00pm (exhibition and reception)
Royal Bank Cinema at the Chan Centre, 6265 Crescent Road
Presentations will be made around this theme from a variety of perspectives,
and will be followed by a photographic exhibition of malaria, trachoma and HIV/AIDS and their impact in Africa, by a local artist. Hosted by the Faculty of
Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Peter Klein, UBC School of Journalism
Rebecca Goulding, UBC chapter of Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
Thomas Bombelles, Director, International Government Relations, Merck & Co.

There is honestly nothing that green tea can’t do!

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6502399.stm

Hi everyone,

A few things to note:
1) Quiz questions and answers have now been posted.
2) All Powerpoint presentations have been uploaded – please check to make sure that you haven’t missed any extra information that may not have been on your handouts.
3) Pictures have been uploaded to the “Students” section. Email me for the password.
4) If you’d like to post on the blog, all you need to do is create a WordPress account (http://www.wordpress.com) and email me the username and email address that you’ve used to sign up. I will then add you as a contributor.
5) We will be forming groups for the next round of presentations and going over the marking rubric for papers on Monday, Feb 25th.

That’s everything for now. I hope you’re all having a relaxing reading break… see you soon!

Goldis

Hello everyone,I stumbled on an interesting animation that I thought I would share in case anyone is interested.  It outlines some immunologic responses to certain infections (the only one we have covered is the plague but the others are interesting too…) and gives some information about vaccines (why a particular type of vaccine is a good idea, what are some of the problems associated with other types of vaccines etc.)  Here is the link: http://www.whfreeman.com/kuby/content/anm/17_Vaccine_r7.swfEnjoy!Tamara 

I think in many of the Tropical Diseases we’ve covered so far, lack of cost-effective treatments has been a topic that was addressed several times. I found an interesting paper that (as we’ve already pointed out in our discussions) addresses the lack of commercial incentives that would encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in research of new drugs for use in the developing world. The mechanisms described that could resolve this problem and expand the innovative drug-discovery networks might be of interest to some you, too?

Cheers, Charis.

mission-possible-hopkins-et-al-nature-sept-2007.pdf

Hi everyone,

I thought this might be a good place for updates and important information.

– A few notes about the midterm: it will consist of mainly short answer questions, and may include some multiple choice. These questions will be based primarily on what has been presented in class, and the papers that have been provided for discussion but haven’t explicitly been reviewed in class. A number of these will be questions generated by the class. You will receive a list of approximately half of these questions generated by the class a week prior to the midterm, and may prepare for them. Some of these questions will end up on the midterm. We’ll be going over this in greater detail in class on Monday.
– I’ll be putting your marks to date together over reading break, and providing those for you on the day of the midterm.
– I’ll also post all the quiz questions & answers early on over reading break so that you’ll have them as study tools.

That’s all for now 🙂

An interesting invention showing a different approach to combating diseases.  Not sure how effective this is,  but it’s a great idea!

http://www.watercone.com/

I looked into the reactivation of malaria.  Reactivation is only seen with strains of P. vivax and P. ovale.  At the moment there is no information on what triggers reactivation.

There’s more information about the dormant phase at this website under the section “The hypnozoite”:

http://www.vivaxmalaria.com/template_disease.htm