The Guardian has just published an excellent opinion piece that uses the film Bright Star as a way of highlighting the current dreadful impact that tuberculosis still has today.

In the article the link between this ancient killer and the modern situation is laid bare. While it’s quite long for an opinion piece, there is still plenty of scope for adding additional information about TB in the comments section, so by all means write an intelligent and thought-provoking comment to fuel the debate and get people talking about TB.

In particular, you may want to mention more details about how TB kills 5,000 people per day, as opposed to the 8,000 deaths total from swine flu, another airborne infectious disease. Or, perhaps you could comment in more detail about the Global Fund and how making sure it is properly funded in 2010 is vital as it’s the single biggest funder of TB control efforts in the world.

Whatever you decide to write, don’t miss this chance to have your voice heard.

I was very grateful the other day for the messages of support and good vibes sent by people after I had written about the fact that I have not been particularly well in recent weeks. Things are moving slowly on that score now. I have had some TB tests results back which were negative (as expected) which means we can no go ahead with a new medication which might help prevent things getting quite so bad in the future. The chest specialist has also set things in motion so that I will soon be able to take part in some pulmonary rehab – basically spending time in the gym at the hospital, not only increasing my fitness by working out on certain machines, but also listening to some health care professionals talk through the ins and outs of certain respiratory conditions and ways of dealing with them and living as healthilty as possible under such circumstances. And today I go for my swine flu jab. Contentious, to some, I know, but for someone with underlying problems like mine it is the smart move to make. I shall let you know if it hurts as much as our neighbour reckons (she ought to know, she had it weeks ago as she is a paediatrician).

Anyway, this all seems pretty positive. And I have also found out that some of the chest pains I have been experiencing are nothing to do with respiratory problems at all. No apparently I have also been suffering with acid reflux, possibly caused by the plethora of anti-biotics which have been pumped through my fragile system in recent months. Had you asked me earlier in the year if I thought acid reflux was a serious condition I’d have said no, thinking it is just a bit of heartburn. I have changed my opinion. It hurts like hell and can send vicious spasms right across the chest and into the neck and throat too. So now I have yet more meds to take, but hopefully they will calm things down. I am also between antibiotics too, so that must also give my stomach acids a better chance of returning to some semblance of balance.

Sometimes the best medicine is other people, of course. Being unwell means I’ve not seen too many people, however, apart from my long-suffering and ever-wonderful wife, without whom I might just give up and go completely mad. I am also very grateful to the people who have been helping to take my mind off of things at times with their excellent blogs, foremost among them being someone who is known to me in the physical world and whose posts keep the grey matter churning: MDS. The others I want to mention today are part of a cyber community which has entertained me – thanks Paudie -  taught me much about sport and now about wider-ranging topics too – thanks Steve - and brought music, opinion and oddities such as yesterday’s kids TV swine flu jab song – thanks Jane. There are many others but these guys are the ones I return to again and again and am always so glad that I do. Check them out.

A group of mainly doctors from Berlin visited HOPE Cape Town today and it was very good to engage with them in a discussion about the situation here in South Africa and what it means to them in Germany. I hope once again to make it very clear that the HIV problem is not a charity matter but that it is in the interest of the people living in Europe  to avoid the building up of a resistant HIV strain here in South Africa or in East Europe.
The global village does not allow anymore for a kind of separation: with poverty it still is possible, with a virus it is getting more and more difficult and the panic with which people react to certain flu’s in the last year, be it the bird flu or now the swine flu could give an indication what would happen if a real resistant heterosexual HI virus would hit Europe and the rest of the so-called first world. Not sure about the “first” then anymore. And looking at TB with the multi- and extreme resistant TB strains, we have an idea how fast it can go in this direction.

Once again it was obvious how different the situation is in Europe and in South Africa – and as with all group talks, we learned from each other. And I am sure they go back as good ambassadors for the situation here in Southern Africa while still enjoying the beauty of this fabulous continent.

A gathering with a service at a family home ended this day which also saw a lot of preparation for tomorrow and the coming days.

Sweater: +KiiTos!! —– Long Knit Gown

Shirt: !tb —– Silky Blouse

Pants: *Fishy Strawberry* —– Equinox Jeans

Headband: =FT —– Large Flower Headband

Knitting Bag/Needles: (W) —– Rosalind Loves Knitting

Shoes: .:Periquita:. —– Funny Girl Flats

Hair: Mustache —– Sabrina

Today, ‘Bright Star’– the film by award-winning Director Jane Campion depicting the life of romantic poet John Keats – will be shown at a charity screening by the UK Coalition to Stop TB and RESULTS UK at the Hampstead Everyman (8.30 – 10.30pm).

Keats died of tuberculosis aged just 25. The film ‘Bright Star’ tells the story of his love affair with next-door neighbour Fanny Brawne, whom he met while living in Hampstead, nursing his younger brother Tom, who also had tuberculosis.

The UK Coalition to Stop TB and RESULTS UK will host a pre-film reception at Keats House (6.00 – 8.00pm), where Keats was resident from 1818 – 1820, for members of the political, health, media and acting communities.

Glenda Jackson MP will attend as well as actors who have appeared in television adaptations of Jane Austen – who was believed to have died of TB. They will be joined by members of the Department for International Development (DFID) which provides funding for TB, and people working in public health to control and eventually eradicate this ancient disease.

Speaking on behalf of the UK Coalition, RESULTS UK Executive Director Aaron Oxley said: “In 1821, John Keats died of consumption. In 2010 two million people will die from TB. There is more TB in the world today than ever before.

“This modern-day epidemic teams up with HIV – another of the world’s biggest killers – and has emerged in deadly drug-resistant forms, claiming the young lives of millions of men and women every year.

“It doesn’t take a miracle to stop TB. With the right funding and political will we can do it. The UK Coalition to Stop TB, a cross-sector network of NGOs, media, private sector and academia, is working with coordinated actions and one voice so that other ‘bright stars’ do not die prematurely from this disease.”

Much of ‘Bright Star’ is set at Keats House. It was here that Keats wrote some of his most memorable poetry including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

Tuesday, 11/17/09

On Monday night, I lightly longed Selena for about 10 minutes, mostly as a refresher for her. She tends to rush a little on the longe so I encouraged her to do a relaxed trot. She was great!

The weather was so spectacular today (Tuesday) that I took a vacation day and spent some quality time at the barn.

I rode Selena in the outdoor arena. The footing was still wet from the rain but the base was solid enough for some easy walk-trot work. We rode for about 30 minutes and my mom took pictures so I could track our progress and position. Selena was focused and very willing to work. We warmed up with about 10 minutes of walking, followed by walk-trot-walk-halt transitions. I threw in a few shoulder in exercises toward the end of the ride. Selena accepted contact willingly and we had a really nice ride.

Wizard and I rode for about 30 minutes on the trails and Mom hiked with us. He felt a little stiff throughout the ride and his right hind leg/hip was hitching just a bit. He also blew up for a minute on the final leg of the trail. He eventually relaxed, but my concerns are growing about his comfort. When we got back to the barn, a friend ran her fingers down his back and rump to check for soreness. He is not backsore at all but he is very tender all along his hip and croup on both sides. My hopes were that this trail walking regimen (1-2 days of walking on trails and light groundwork on other nights) would build muscle without too much wear and tear, but he is still not as comfortable as he should be. My friend has a therapeutic magnetic horse blanket and she put it on his back for a few hours. It will be interesting to see if it has any good results.

My mom was snacking on almonds while I tacked up. Selena seemed fascinated by the almonds so Mom gave her two. She loved them! She fed two to Wizard and he enjoyed them as well. Due to them not being part of a horse’s naturally digested food, we did not feed any more, but it was amusing to see them enjoying an unusual treat. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, delivered a forceful message on the need for a “storm” of attention and resources devoted to developing new TB treatment and prevention efforts.

“It is imperative that we transform the way we diagnose, treat, prevent, and control TB — through biomedical research and public health measures — to the same extent that we have done and will continue to do with HIV/AIDS,” Fauci writes in this commentary on MSNBC’s website today. “We are beginning to see the winds of change, but what we really need is a storm.”

In an echo of the speech he delivered this summer at the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle, Fauci, a powerful leader in infectious disease research, outlined the need for a robust new TB research agenda. “The TB research effort will require a sustained and long-term commitment from government, academia, industry and philanthropy.”

Click here to read the whole piece and here to read our earlier post on Fauci’s remarks in Seattle.

Nothing wrong with that. Just thought you should know that none of that should be part of this thing we call, FRIENDSHIP.

Today I came across a blog on wordpress “http://tinyurl.com/yg8la7d” about do we actually need so much of hard disk. Will this need for more ever end..It seems to me like a never ending demand. Back in 2002 we bought a Home PC with 40 GB of hard disk space and it never seemed to me that it will ever get filled up.. LOL

Today I have Laptop with 250GB hard disk and its already filled with only 70GB to spare. With the ever increasing demand I think this will never end…These days I’ am planning to get myself a 1 TB external hard drive and hope so it never gets obsolete…Now that’s pretty much space — but not for long…

Hitachi is known for making some of the worlds most popular SAN/NAS devices.  Click here to learn about this affordable guy.

Well I noticed that my computer’s HDD was starting to get filled up with school files, movies, games, music, and just junk, so I decided that I needed a external hard drive. I found a 1 TB iPro Drive at Future Shop for around $100. The drive itself is quite small, quiet, and runs off external power only… could be a small set back. It’s super fast too, so fast that I can actually run games right off the drive itself, no lag, or long load times. It’s perfect for back ups, and just freeing up some well needed space. And for $100, its probably the best deal you could get anywheres.

Saturday, 11/14/09

Before night fell, Wizard and I went for a trail ride with Mary the Morgan and her owner. We did not do the full loop, but we were out for about 45 minutes. Wizard was quite good. He had a few “oh boy!” moments, but was otherwise nice to ride.

When we returned from the trails, I tacked Selena up and ride in the indoor arena with Mary the Morgan and Miss Tuesday. In preparation for the upcoming hunter derby at my barn, there was a delightful array of creative and interesting jumps in the arena. I expected Selena to give them a good look when we walked into the ring. Instead, she almost seemed more comfortable with them in the ring. Of course, her two best barn buddies were in the ring as well, but there were also other horses who were coming and going.

I asked somebody to slam the arena door loudly to re-create the jumpy moment from the last ride. Selena did not bat an eye. She is not a spooky mare, so I think she was simply surprised (as was I!) when the door slammed on Thursday.

Selena was quite stretchy and ready to work. We did a long walking warmup, followed by large stretchy circles at the trot. We worked into transitions from walk to trot and back to walk. When she felt warmed up, I took advantage of all the jumps and we rode intricate patterns around the fences. She was fantastic. The chaos of the jumps seemed to work out nicely for her. Perhaps it reminded her of her jumper background.

Thursday, 11/12/09

Dressage Queen:

B: Yeah. She’s a total DQ. (Dressage Queen)

As a result of my trip to the Breeders’ Cup, Selena and Wizard had exactly two weeks off. When I started riding Selena, she had far more time off than that, but now she is fit, physically and mentally. When I mounted up, I could feel that she was ready to go. The horses had spent two days indoors due to all the rain we had in the area and they were all pretty fresh under saddle.

In the arena were more horses and riders than we usually encounter. I took the “herd” as a challenge and began my ride, starting with a very long walking warmup, followed by some simple trotting.

One of the boarders walked in and out of the ring a few times. The last time she left the arena, she accidentally S-L-A-M-M-E-D the gate really loudly. I’m not sure if the horse was more startled or if I was, but we both jumped. In an extremely uncharacteristic moment, I made a sarcastic and slightly snappy comment to the door-slammer. Immediately after I said it, I felt terrible and apologized. I took the encounter as a note to myself NOT to become a Dressage Queen. First of all, I prefer jumping and secondly, I cannot react negatively every time something startles me out of my riding moment.

I spent the rest of the ride working on rhythm and relaxation. It was not a very productive ride, but we’ll get back to where we were soon.

Wizard’s session, on the other hand, was very productive. I turned him loose in the arena and let him play for a few minutes before we worked. Then I saddled him up and we did just about three rotations on the longe line in each direction at the trot. i don’t want to stress Wizard’s joints but I do think it is important to continue our groundwork.

After we longed, I fastened my long lines to his bit and we did a little long line work. It was more like short lines, though, since I stood next to the saddle with my arm over the center. I held each long line like reins and did a little experimenting in each direction. We worked at the walk, doing figure 8s and serpentines in each direction. Interestingly, Wizard was far more tense to the right than he was to the left. I stood on both rides and he was a different horse when I was on his left. On his right, he was tense and mouthy with the bit. On the left, he was reasonably relaxed. The plot thickens :^)

A report issued today by the Stop TB Partnership finds that although important progress was made from 2006 through 2008 in reaching the milestones of the Global Plan to Stop TB many obstacles still remain.

DOTS, the cornerstone of WHO’s Stop TB Strategy, is available for 97% of the world’s population. Some 155 countries have adopted national strategic plans for TB control, including all 22 high-burden countries. The Global Plan’s treatment success milestone for 2008 of 83% has been surpassed — treatment success is now up to 85% worldwide.

Testing for drug resistance has increased almost threefold, and the proportion of people diagnosed with MDR-TB approved by the Green Light Committee increased from 7.3% in 2006 to 48% in 2008. Many countries have increased national collaborative activities to address HIV among people diagnosed with TB. Between 2005 and 2007 the percentage of TB patients tested for HIV in African countries with a high prevalence of HIV rose from 14% to 41%.

On the research front, nine vaccine candidates are in Phase I clinical trials, and by end 2008 three had entered Phase II trials. These are impressive gains, since the Plan calls for at least 20 vaccine candidates in Phase I trials by 2015. In diagnosis, new techniques have been introduced to referral laboratories that produce results in a few hours instead of weeks. On treatment, clinical trials by Stop TB partners on gatifloaxacin and moxifloaxacin may provide evidence for a shortened regimen for treating TB.

Despite these strides many obstacles remain. The detection of new smear-positive TB cases has slowed, suggesting that the 2010 milestone of a 78% detection rate will not be achieved unless countries take rapid and innovative actions. The great majority of people with multidrug-resistant TB are still not receiving effective treatment; and countries have not made sufficient progress in screening HIV-positive people for TB or increasing the numbers of people on preventive therapy.

Research efforts need to accelerate to develop and evaluate tests to detect active TB at the first point of care; to develop a robust pipeline of new drug candidates; and to reach the goal of a new vaccine by 2015.

Funding remains the most serious challenge. From 2006-2008, the financing needs for funding TB control worldwide was short by $US 1 billion per year.  The gap for research and development was approximately US$ 0.5 billion for 2007.

Has anyone noticed the cost of additional storage that Google charges?

What a simple calculation… $0.25 per GB. No volume discount and you have to pay in terms of 2 power x! Is a Geek in charge of setting the prices? For a company like Google, it might not be different from managing 10,000 customers with each subscribing to 16TB than 8 million 8192000 customers with each subscribing to 20GB. But for me it looks funny!

Western Digital is first in the world to create a 2TB hard drive. As they say, you can never have enough storage space. Somehow no matter how much space I have available it will get filled. I guess it’s the collector in us that like to keep stuff. Maybe one day I will need it? The other thing is that more and more people are becoming aware of the risk of loosing all the data. So not only do we want to store a lot of data, we also need to back it up.

Today 10 percent of the 3.5” hard drive sales are 1 TB or higher. These 2 TB drives will come handy and help many people out. The Western Digital Green 2TB hard drives come with many different advanced technologies. Everything from StableTrac that helps secures the motor and reduces vibrations to IntelliPower that helps the balance of the spin speed. The price for this disk has been set at $299.

Read more here

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s Board of Directors has made an overall approval of grants with a two-year commitment of US$2.4 billion.

It is the ninth time the Global Fund Board approved new proposals to support programmes fighting the three diseases. The total two-year value of the programmes recommended for funding was US$2.4 billion; the second largest ever approved by the Global Fund, following a US$2.75 billion round in 2008. The Global Fund has now approved a total funding of US$18.4 billion for 144 countries since it was created in 2002.

“These grants enable countries around the world to address some of the main problems they are struggling with every day,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Ethiopian Health Minister and Chair of the Global Fund Board. “These grants are based on the countries’ own needs and priorities and they are therefore a particularly effective source of financing.”

TB proposals did particularly well in Round 9 and received the highest level of funding to date – up to $US 1.5 billion over five years. A total of 34 new TB proposals were approved. Round 9 will provide for three times as much funding for drug-resistant TB as the previous round. The funding will support measures including securing adequate laboratory facilities and infection control measures and prevention of further emergence of drug resistance by ensuring that the essential elements of DOTS are in place.

The Global Fund Board decided to launch its next round of grants in May 2010. This round of funding will be considered for approval at a Board meeting to be held some time between November 2010 and January 2011.

“We are seeing a tremendous demand for funding,” said Michel Kazatchkine, the Executive Director of the Global Fund. “Countries are showing that they are able to effectively turn large amounts of money from donors into prevention, care and treatment of AIDS, TB and malaria, which in turn will save millions of lives. It also means that we need significantly more resources in the future. We may not be able to continue approving such amounts of financing and see continued progress in health in the coming years unless donor countries scale up their funding even further than what they have done so far. ”

WHILE governments in sub-Saharan Africa continue to dole out money on military hardware, teargas canisters and baton sticks etc., pregnant women in the region are dying in droves due to lack of proper healthcare. Paradoxically, women and girls are the main caregivers for the sick in the absence of proper health systems. Yet when they need care the most during pregnancy it is not available, a scenario made worse by gender inequities that put the lives of women and girls at risk.

The statistics are downright shocking. In sub Saharan Africa, 1 in 16 women is likely to die as a consequence of pregnancy and childbirth, according to a recently published report titled “Measure of Commitment: Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Risk Index for Sub-Saharan Africa”.

For many women in the region, particularly in underserved remote and rural areas, getting pregnant is akin to a death sentence.

“Pregnancy is dangerous business in Sub Saharan Africa where a woman is 100 times more likely to die from pregnancy related complication than in a developed country,” states the report.

The number of African women who died from pregnancy and childbirth in 2008was much higher than the number of casualties from all the major conflicts in Africa combined, says the report.

Despite the gravity of the problem, many governments in the region pay little to no attention to it. There is very minimal investment by governments in services that can reduce maternal mortality. One way to explain it is that many governments in sub Saharan Africa are dominated by men who simply do not care about what is happening to women.

According to the report, few countries in sub Saharan Africa have budget lines for reproductive health and those that do invest less than one percent of the total sector budgets. To make matters worse, health systems in the region are in shambles and already overburdened by other diseases such as AIDS and TB.

“Health systems are plagued by severe staff shortages, dilapidated and rundown infrastructure, frequent stockouts of essential RH supplies including contraceptives, inefficiency and mismanagement and inadequate financing for reproductive health,” says the report issued by the Center for the Study of Adolescence Population Action International.

Instead most governments prefer to spend money on defense, terrorizing their citizenry, instead of improving the state of maternal health.  It appears that there is simply appreciation of the importance of quality maternal care to building a strong-nation state.

Despite the fact that many of the countries in the region are signatories to agreements such as the International Conference on Population and Development, ICPD (the Cairo Agenda); and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) endorsed by the international community in 2000, the evidence on the ground clearly shows that there is a clear mismatch between policy priorities and financial commitment.   

According to the report, few countries will meet MDG 5 and even fewer will meet regional targets such as the Abuja commitment of ensuring that the health budget makes up 15% of the GDP.

It is unacceptable that so many African women are dying die from complications that can often be effectively treated if only governments commitment more resources to health systems.

Reversing maternal mortality in Africa will take a rethink on the part of African governments, civil society and international donors. Expanding health in the rural areas and training health care workers is a critical part of the equation. But most importantly, it will take individuals, like you and me, to speak out about this issue wherever and whenever we can. It is time to raise our voices to the cause of Africa’s pregnant women.

A retreat from international funding commitments for AIDS threatens to undermine the dramatic gains made in reducing AIDS-related illness and death in recent years, according to a new report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The report – Punishing Success? Early Signs of a Retreat from Commitment to HIV/AIDS Care and Treatment – highlights how expanding access to HIV treatment has not only saved the lives of people with AIDS but has been central to reducing overall mortality in a number of high HIV burden countries in southern Africa in recent years. In Malawi and South Africa, MSF observed very significant decreases in overall mortality in areas where antiretroviral therapy (ART) coverage was high. Increased treatment coverage has also had an impact on the burden of other diseases, for example tuberculosis cases have been significantly reduced in Thyolo, Malawi and Western Cape province, South Africa.

“After almost a decade of progress in rolling out AIDS treatment we have seen substantial improvements, both for patients and public health. But recent funding cuts mean doctors and nurses are being forced to turn HIV patients away from clinics as if we were back in the 1990s before treatment was available”, says Dr Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of MSF’s Access to Essential Medicines Campaign.

International support to combat HIV/AIDS is faltering as reflected in significant funding shortfalls. The board of directors of the Global Fund, a key financer of AIDS, TB and malaria programmes in poor countries is unable to respond to countries’ needs and will  vote this week in Addis Ababawhether or not to suspend all new funding proposals in 2010; and PEPFAR, the US AIDS programme, is flatlining funding for two more years.

“The proposed cancellation of the 2010 funding round and other measures to slow the pace of treatment scale-up are punishing the successes of the past years and preventing countries from saving more lives” says von Schoen-Angerer.

In 2005, world leaders promised to support universal AIDS coverage by 2010, a promise that encouraged many African governments to launch ambitious treatment programmes.

“What about the promise made to people with AIDS? We gave them hope and life. We have to be there for them, we all knew from the beginning that this treatment was for life,” says Olesi Ellemani Pasulani, MSF clinical officer in Thyolo District Hospital, Malawi. “Passing on the bill for treating AIDS to very poor countries would be a colossal betrayal.”

Reducing funding at this time will leave people in urgent need of treatment to die prematurely and can lead to dangerous interruption of treatment. In Uganda, cuts have already begun to hit home with some facilities forced to stop treating new patients with HIV. Other countries are backing away from their earlier treatment coverage targets. In Free State, South Africa, past funding problems that have now been resolved led to disruption of treatment and a moratorium on treating new patients which resulted in an estimated 3,000 deaths.

The report provides evidence that, particularly in high HIV-prevalence settings, treating AIDS has a positive impact on other important health goals, in particular maternal and child health.

“A stronger commitment to other health priorities must happen, but this should be in addition to, not instead of, continued, increased commitment to HIV/AIDS”, adds von Schoen-Angerer.

At present, over four million people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world receive antiretroviral therapy. An estimated six million people who are in need of life-saving treatment are still waiting for access.

MSF operates HIV/AIDS programmes in around 30 countries and provides antiretroviral treatment to more than 140,000 HIV-positive adults and children.

A new World Health Organization’s report on women’s health highlights the increasing toll HIV/AIDS has taken on women in the developing world. HIV/AIDS is “by far the leading cause of death among adult women in Africa,” the report says. It is also the leading cause of death globally among women of reproductive age.

“Of the 30.8 million adults liv­ing with HIV in 2007, 15.5 million were women,” according to the report, “Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda.” “The prevalence of HIV infection in women has increased since the early 1990s and is most marked in sub-Saharan Africa.”

The report details how women’s vulnerability to HIV infection “stems from a combination of biological factors and gender inequality.” Biological differences are “compounded” by cultural/societal restrictions that limit women’s power to have safe sex and to access to information about avoiding HIV infection.  

The WHO study also notes the heavy toll tuberculosis takes on women, as the second leading cause of death in the Eastern Mediterranean and South-East Asia regions and the fifth leading cause of death of women aged 20 to 59. The three leading causes of death in low-income countries are HIV/AIDS, maternal conditions and tuberculosis, which together account for one in every two deaths. This year, the report says, “a mil­lion women will die from HIV/AIDS, half a million from tuberculosis, and another half a mil­lion from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth.”

Click here to read the full report and associated documents.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown surprised anti-poverty campaigners this weekend by calling for greater taxation of banks. His announcement has brought hopes for a Currency Transaction Levy (CTL) for health one step closer to reality.Addressing the G20 summit, Brown said it was not acceptable that banking success was reaped by the few but failure was “borne by all of us”. He said a fund for future bank bailouts should be set up, possibly paid for by a tax on banking transactions.

Although Gordon Brown did not go as far as to specifically call for a CTL to generate new resources for global health, RESULTS UK welcomes the Prime Minister’s call to radically transform the international banking system to ensure that the wealth generated by the financial sector is not consumed by a small minority but goes towards the creation of global public goods.

RESULTS UK Executive Director Aaron Oxley said, “We are very pleased that Gordon Brown has joined countries like France and Germany in endorsing the idea of a financial transaction tax. The Prime Minister’s high-level support is crucial for making a CTL for global health a reality. If implemented, a CTL could generate billions of dollars for the fight against diseases of poverty such as HIV, TB and malaria. Gordon Brown and other leaders have the opportunity to save millions of lives as well as showing that something positive and lasting can come out of the banking crisis.”

Unser Travel Bug Pfedelbach ist unverhofft wieder aufgetaucht und setzt seine Reise nun fort. Nachdem ich ja gepostet hatte dass er gestohlen wurde ist nun mein kleiner Hoffnungsschimmer doch wahr geworden und der Travel Bug “lebt”. Ich hoffe nun dass er noch weit in der Welt herum kommt und noch viele schöne Orte und Weine besucht. Wen es interessiert wo sich der Travel Bug Pfedelbach gerade aufhält: HIER kann seine Reise verfolgt werden.

Man bin ich glücklich dass er wieder da ist!