Abstract: The peoples of Burma/Myanmar have faced military rule, human rights violations, and poor health outcomes for decades. The country Is now undergoing a political liberalization, and multiple changes in political, social and economic life. The human rights and health situation of the country's many ethnic nationalities remain challenging, and represent one of the clearest threats to the prospect of successful transition to peace, and to democracy. We will explore the current health and human rights situation in the country, the ongoing threats to peace, and ways forward for this least developed nation as it emerges from 5 decades of military rule.
Chris Beyrer MD, MPH, is a professor of Epidemiology, International Health, and Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is the founding Director of the University¹s Center for Public Health and Human Rights, which seeks to bring the tools of population-based sciences to bear on Health and rights threats. Dr. Beyrer also serves as Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) and of the Center for Global Health. He has been involved in health and human rights work with Burmese populations since 1993. Prof. Beyrer is the author of more than 200 scientific papers, and author or editor of six books, including War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia, and Public Health and Human Rights: Evidence-Based Approaches. He has served as a consultant and adviser to numerous national and international institutions, including the National Institutes of Health, the World Bank, WHO, UNAIDS, the Open Society Foundations, the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research, amfAR The Foundation for AIDS Research, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. Dr. Beyrer received a BA in History from Hobart and Wm. Smith Colleges, his MD from SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY, and completed his residency in Preventive Medicine, public health training, an MPH and a Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He received an honorary Doctorate (PhD) in Health Sciences from Chiang Mai University in Thailand, in 2012, in recognition of his 20 years of public health service in Thailand
Building 200 (History Corner)
Room 205
Stanford University
Chris Beyrer
Director
Speaker
Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health & Human Rights
Abstract According to international human rights law, countries have to provide palliative care and pain treatment medications as part of their core obligations under the right to health. The failure to take reasonable steps to ensure that people who suffer pain have access to adequate pain treatment may also result in the violation of the obligation to protect against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The lecture will discuss Human Rights Watch’s research on this issue in India, Ukraine, Senegal, Kenya, and Mexico; our national and international advocacy efforts; and how we evaluate the impact of our work.
Joe Amon, PhD MSPH, is the Director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. Since joining Human Rights Watch in 2005, Joe has worked on a wide range of issues including access to medicines; discrimination, arbitrary detention and torture in health settings; censorship and the denial of health information; and the role of civil society in the response to infectious disease outbreaks and environmental health threats. Between January 2009 and June 2013 he oversaw Human Rights Watch's work on disability rights. He is an associate in the department of epidemiology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and a lecturer in public and international affairs at Princeton University. In 2012 he was a distinguished visiting lecturer at the Paris School of International Affairs of SciencesPo.
Building 200 (History Corner)
Room 205
Main Quad
450 Serra Mall
Stanford University
Joe Amon
Director of Health and Human Rights
Speaker
Human Rights Watch
Abstract Preventing tobacco addiction is one of the leading ways to prevent fatal disease, yet many nations have declined to take steps against it. In recent years an international legal effort has begun to fill this void. In this lecture Professor Koh, formerly Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, will review the various dimensions of the legal campaign that is now underway.
Harold Hongju Koh is Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. He returned to Yale Law School in January 2013 after serving for nearly four years as the 22nd Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State.
Professor Koh is one of the country’s leading experts in public and private international law, national security law, and human rights. He first began teaching at Yale Law School in 1985 and served as its fifteenth Dean from 2004 until 2009. From 2009 to 2013, he took leave as the Martin R. Flug ’55 Professor of International Law to join the State Department as Legal Adviser, service for which he received the Secretary of State's Distinguished Service Award. From 1993 to 2009, he was the Gerard C. & Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School, and from 1998 to 2001, he served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Building 200 (History Corner)
Room 205
Stanford University
Harold Hongju Koh
Sterling Professor of International Law
Speaker
Yale Law School
Children in rural Kenya are more susceptible to disease and death the farther away they live from clean drinking water, according to Stanford researchers.
In a survey of families in Asembo – a small farming community at the edge of Lake Victoria that has high rates of chronic diarrhea, child malnutrition and child death – a research team from the Center on Food Security and the Environment found that most people live just over a quarter-mile from clean water sources. About 200 feet closer to home are ponds and springs contaminated with E. coli bacteria. Sixty-six percent of families primarily use this contaminated surface water for drinking.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
While water is essential for farming, collecting it is time-consuming and physically exhausting in remote places like Asembo. Previous research has shown that when families must travel long distances for water, child health suffers. The harder it is to collect, the less of it a family will use. A shortage of water for cooking and drinking compromises children’s nutrition and hydration. And it limits hand washing and bathing, making children more susceptible to disease. Quality and availability of water also varies widely from source to source, and the time required to collect water can force families to use dirtier, unimproved water sources that are closer to home.
In 2011, the FSE researchers partnered with the Centers for Disease Control Kenya Medical Research Institute (CDC-KEMRI), which was already conducting an extensive survey of household-level health indicators in the region. Combining resources with CDC-KEMRI allowed the team – led by FSE Director Rosamond Naylor, a professor of environmental earth system science, and Jenna Davis, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering – to use a robust set of data. The information covered about 3,000 households in a five kilometer radius and was collected on a bi-weekly basis for six months. In exploring the links between water, food and health in Asembo, FSE researchers first expanded the definition of water “access” to account for both physical distance and the quality of water sources.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
Researchers then mapped the distance of each household from its nearest water source, and recorded whether the source was improved (such as a deep borewell) or unimproved (surface water like a pond, spring or shallow well). To get the most precise possible data on local water quality, the research team collected samples from each household’s water source and sent them to a local hospital lab for testing. Surveyors then collected data on each household’s water management practices, including water treatment. They measured agricultural output, dietary diversity, and perceived food insecurity, then recorded the weight and height measurements of each child in the household. Respondents also reported the frequency of recent cases of diarrheal disease among children of the household.
Results of the initial survey highlight sobering realities about water access in Asembo. Households in the survey reported average per capita water consumption of only 31 liters per day, including water used for cooking, drinking, hygiene and agriculture. The average walk time to the nearest water source was approximately 15 minutes. The average distance to the nearest improved source was 428 meters, whereas the average distance to unimproved surface water was 374 meters. Water quality tests confirmed that these sources, used by the majority of families, were highly contaminated with E. coli bacteria, while improved water sources were significantly cleaner. Thirty percent of children showed stunted growth, and 11 percent were underweight for their age.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya. Photo Credit: Amy Pickering
Researchers found that close proximity to an abundant water source, regardless of quality, correlated with an increase in food production and diversity, as well as a lower hunger score. Having enough extra water for crop irrigation clearly improves children’s diets – particularly their access to the micronutrients essential for normal physical and cognitive development – and helps them resist disease. Households further from water sources reported lower and less diverse crop yields, as well as poorer child health indicators. Quality was also an important factor, as households with access to clean, improved water reported better child health outcomes than those relying on contaminated surface water.
The ultimate goal of the project, “Rural health and development at the food-water nexus” is to design interventions and policy incentives that help people absorb nutrients in environments where food and water are limited and disease is prevalent. In the next stage of the project, researchers will focus on links between water access and the progression of HIV, and will also investigate how improved diets from better water access can impact household income.
About the Stanford Research Team:
Jenna Davis is Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Higgins-Magid Faculty Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and an affiliate of the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Rosamond Naylor is the Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, Professor of Environmental Earth System Science, and the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute. Eran Bendavid is an infectious diseases physician and Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine, as well as an affiliate of the Center on Food Security and the Environment and the Stanford Health Policy center. Amy Pickering is a lecturer in the School of Earth Sciences, and a research associate in Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Glwadys Gbetibouo is a postdoctoral scholar at the Center on Food Security and the Environment. Katrina ole-MoiYoi is a Ph.D. student at the Center on Food Security and the Environment.
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Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
You are cordially invited to a special event to celebrate the tenth year that the Beijing International Committee for Chinese Orphans (BICCO) has brought distinguished pediatric orthopedic surgeons from the U.S. to perform pro bono surgeries for orphans and poor children in China.
Each year the medical mission includes pro bono surgeries for orphans, free medical consultations and exchanges of medical knowledge with Chinese doctors at professional symposia. In prior years at hospitals in Tianjin, Beijing, Yantai, Linyi, Ningbo, Chongqing, Lanzhou and Dunhuang the doctors have given nearly 2,300 free consultations and lectured to over 1,200 Chinese doctors and have performed over 450 surgeries and procedures, including complicated surgeries for scoliosis and, for the first time in China, surgeries to treat a rare and crippling condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease. The doctors coming to China this year are Dr. James Gamble, Dr. Lawrence Rinsky, Dr. Jaime Lopez, and Dr. Ivan Cheng from the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at the Stanford University Medical Center. During their stay in Yantai the doctors will collaborate with the Yantai Hospital to perform surgeries for 30 – 40 orphans and other children suffering from scoliosis and other orthopedic conditions.
This reception is being kindly supported with a donation from the Stanford Hospitals and Clinics.
CISAC co-director David Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor and professor of microbiology and immunology and chief of infectious diseases at the VA-Palo Alto, and Susan Holmes, the John Henry Samter University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and professor of statistics, will share a $6.2 million federal grant to examine the effects of perturbations in humans' microbial ecology.
Relman and Holmes will monitor the microbial ecosystems of healthy humans before, during and after several types of planned disturbance, such as changes in diet or antibiotic administration. They will apply novel mathematical methods to the data generated from these clinical experiments and identify features associated with future stability or recovery from these disturbances, with the goal of predicting disease and restoring health.
Health risks from poor malaria control, unsafe water, and indoor air pollution are responsible for an important share of the global disease burden—and they can be addressed by efficacious household health technologies that have existed for decades. However, coverage rates of these products among populations at risk remain disappointingly low. We conducted a review of the medical and public health literatures and found that health considerations alone are rarely sufficient motivation for households to adopt and use these technologies. In light of these findings, we argue that health education and persuasion campaigns by themselves are unlikely to be adequate. Instead, health policymakers and professionals must understand what users value beyond health and possibly reengineer health technologies with these concerns in mind.
A child in Asembo, Kenya sits next to her family's water storage containers.
Researchers take a child's measurements in Asembo, Kenya.
A researcher collects a sample of stored water at a household in Asembo, Kenya.
