Donor money for health care in developing countries could be spent more effectively if it were channeled through a single global fund

Donor money for health care in developing countries could be spent more effectively if it were channeled through a single global fund, experts said Friday.A steady flow of funds is essential for health sector improvements, Gorik Ooms from Belgium’s Institute of Tropical Medicine said.

Research by Ooms and other experts published in The Lancet medical journal Friday said the amount and regularity of international aid was often unpredictable, making it hard for governments to plan ahead.Another study, by Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington, found that in some recipient countries, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, foreign health aid was partly replacing — not supplementing — domestic health budgets.

In such countries, for every $1 given in aid, governments move between 43 cents and $1.14 of their own health funds to other sectors, such as education or sanitation.”Governments compensate for exceptional international generosity to the health sector by reallocating government funding to other sectors,” Ooms wrote in The Lancet.He said governments also compensated for the unreliability of aid by spreading it over several years.One way to make health aid more stable would be to disburse it via a common pool, similar to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria set up in 2002.

“If a young institution such as the Global Fund already stands out as delivering stable and predictable financing, it shows the potential advantage of pooling international aid,” Ooms wrote.In a news briefing, he said countries with high dependency on aid usually received pledges from donors for two to four years ahead.”When we in our own countries consider reforming health care, we make estimates for 20, 30, 40 years ahead: how much money will we have? what will happen with the population? what will be the health needs?,” he said.

Another issue is donors’ delivery on their promises.Madalo Nyambose, assistant director at the debt and aid division in Malawi’s Finance Ministry, said aid money was often disbursed later than promised, forcing recipient governments to borrow from financial markets and incur interest payments.

Ooms said a new global health fund could borrow ideas from the Global Fund, which pools donors’ money and allocates it in consultation with the countries in need and independent experts. Its board includes representatives of donors and recipient governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses and affected communities.The U.S. researchers examined data on 113 developing countries from 1995 to 2006.(Reuters)

Mobile apps help people track H1N1, prevent flu

Rumors of a disease outbreak a century ago probably would have left the general populace feeling frightened, wondering whether their town would be the next to be hit.Now the well but worried can download a flu-tracking application and find out where in their state an H1N1 outbreak has occurred and learn the best ways to avoid it. They also can learn when vaccines will be available nearby and get news on how some of the afflicted are doing.

Outbreaks Near Me, a new, free application developed by non-profit HealthMap, is among a slew of flu-themed applications available on the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch owners.A couple of dozen other flu-related apps have been created recently, including HMSMobile Swine Flu Center, by Harvard Medical School, which offers medical advice with animations. Others include flu games and jokes such as Swine Scan, which supposedly scans your body to detect infection.Outbreaks Near Me works like a GPS. It finds your location and tells you where H1N1 and other infectious outbreaks are occurring nearby with a display of pushpins on a map. Click on a pushpin and you can read news reports as well as personal accounts submitted by users. It also lets you set up an alert system, so if H1N1 arrives in your area, you’ll get a heads-up.

“Our app is all about giving people real-time alerts. We didn’t develop this to increase fear. It’s about helping people arm themselves,” says John Brownstein, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, who developed the app with colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab.H1N1, popularly known as swine flu, has infected an estimated 22 million Americans this year from April to October, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has reported that the outbreak is linked to almost 4,000 deaths, including 540 children.

Since Outbreaks Near Me launched Sept. 1, about 100,000 people have downloaded it, Brownstein says. Though the app also reports recent E. coli, malaria and other outbreaks, H1N1 has by far been the most-searched disease, he says.Brownstein says the app has received more than 2,000 submissions. “People take photos of themselves in bed sick, or e-mail in to say their school is closed, or that there’s a vaccine shortage in their area,” he says.Outbreaks Near Me co-developer Clark Freifeld, a graduate student in media art and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says developers are analyzing submissions now and say the information appears to correlate with CDC data. It suggests the iPhone may be a sensitive tool for monitoring early outbreak trends, Freifeld says.

For big-picture influenza news, most people probably get information the traditional way, from CDC reports, says influenza expert William Schaffner, chair of the department of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. Apps may be best when you want more focused information, he says. “Like what is happening in grandma’s town, where you’re going for Thanksgiving.”The CDC does not comment on products such as apps, spokeswoman Karen Hunter says. Hunter says the agency is in the prototype stage of several new flu apps for iPhone and the Google Android, and they’re already using mobile text messaging (to sign up, text HEALTH to 87000) and a mobile website (http://m.cdc.gov) to distribute flu updates to tens of thousands of subscribers.