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Burn therapy and reconstructive surgery are great
consumers of blood.
The MBC supports WHO's efforts in favour of safe blood.
BLOOD - THE FLUID
OF LIFE
 The life force in all human beings, regardless of
their colour, race or belief, flows through their arteries and veins: it is a red liquid
which - depending on whether they are well or ill - bears good and bad tidings. Its
various components form a highly developed defence and transport system which gives and
saves life.
Blood is a whole world in itself, each component having a specific job - red blood cells
transport oxygen throughout the body; plasma transports proteins, including antibodies and
clotting factors, and nutrients like glucose for energy around the body; white blood cells
constitute a defence mechanism against disease; and platelets ensure that bleeding stops.
Blood also carries waste products from all the organs to be evacuated from the body.
Blood is living matter, which can be transfused to save lives. Serious loss of blood due
to an accident or disease can cause shock. When oxygen is lacking, the brain cannot
function and the heart cannot pump.
Blood is also the first life link between a mother and a child. A person's health can be
determined by the state of his or her blood, which reveals the innermost workings of the
body. Scientists today can diagnose and investigate complex diseases by examining blood.
Blood can also transmit diseases from one person to another.
A healthy person has healthy blood. Healthy blood can and does save lives.
Some 40-45% of blood is made up of red blood cells which carry oxygen. The remaining
55-60% is plasma with a small proportion of white blood cells for defending the body,
clotting factors and platelets. All the different components of blood can be used and each
component plays an important role in saving the lives of different individuals in the
community.
PRESS RELEASE
WHO/2/2000
WHO LAUNCHES COMMISSION OF MACROECONOMICS AND HEALTH
The Commission on
Macroeconomics and Health, launched in Geneva by WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem
Brundtland, will over a two-year period produce a series of studies on how concrete health
interventions can lead to economic growth and reduce inequity in developing countries. It
will recommend a set of measures designed to maximize the poverty reduction and economic
development benefits of health sector investment.
The Commission, which is chaired by Harvard professor Dr Jeffrey Sachs, brings together 15
of the world's leading economists and economic policy makers. Among the members are
representatives from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations
Development Programme, the Economic Commission of Africa, and the Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development as well as leading economic development experts,
such as former Indian Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and Thai Deputy Prime Minister
Supachai Panitchpakdi.
"The World Bank's 1993 World Development Report showed us how important health is to
development," Dr Brundtland said at the launch. "Since then, issues such as debt
relief, trade negotiations, the AIDS crisis, essential drug availability and the
spiralling of health care costs have left no doubt that health plays a central role in the
world economy. Yet, few finance officials and development econornists have so far explored
the potential importance of health investment as an instrument for reducing poverty. The
goal of this Commission is to show once and for all that health must be at the heart of
development."
The Commission will assess
critically and generate further evidence on:
- The nature magnitude of the economic
outcomes (income and productivity growth, poverty reduction and social protection) of
investing in health;
- The economics of incentives for research
and development of drugs and vaccines that address diseases primarily affecting the poor;
- Effective and equitable mobilization of
resources required to deal with major disease problems of the poor and to develop and
sustain health systems more generally;
- Health and international economic relations
(such as trade related issues);
- Development assistance and health
(including consideration of efficiency in use of assistance oriented to improving health,
consequences of adjustment and stabilization policies for health and the health sector,
and debt relief); and
- Costs and efficiency in addressing major
diseases of the poor.
The five topics listed
above will each be examined by a working group consisting of several members of the
Commission, plus WHO staff and other experts. The Commission will produce a final report
by the end of 2001.
Work in the first area - the expected impact of health investments on poverty reduction
and economic growth - has already begun and preliminary results will be available by the
World Health Assembly in May 2000. Further interim products from the working groups will
be ready as early as September 2000.
"The availability of increasingly powerful and inexpensive measures to improve health
elevates the potential economic significance of public health measures from simply being
efforts to improve health, important as that is, to being a lever for economic growth and
poverty reduction," says Dr Sachs. "Yet there remains significant disagreement
as to what are the best investments in health in terms of poverty reduction and economic
development. This Commission is designed to provide some powerful answers to many of these
questions. The world must invest more, and more wisely, in public health." This
Commission will help to find effective ways to accomplish this urgent task.
WHO SPOTLIGHTS
SERIOUS INEQUALITIES IN HEALTH
"Inequalities in
health" is the theme of the January 2000 issue of the Bulletin of the World Health
Organization. In spite of tremendous progress in improving human health over the past
half century, the health gaps between different sections of society, particularly the rich
and the poor, remain wide. "There is much evidence that public subsidies - be they
for health, education, water, power, food or whatever - intended to promote equity and
benefit the poor are largely captured by the non-poor, especially by the middle
class," writes Richard Feachem in his editorial.
He is echoed by Donald Acheson, former Chief Medical Officer of England, who says that
"experience shows that a well-intended policy which improves average health in a
population may have no effect on inequalities. Indeed, it often widens them by having a
greater impact on the better-off. This has happened in some initiatives concerned with
immunization and cervical screening, as well as in some campaigns to discourage smoking or
promote breastfeeding."
In the main paper, "Health inequalities and the health of the poor: What do we know?
What can we do?" Davidson R. Gwatkin, Director of the International Health Policy
Programme, calls for "movement from analysis to action". Global opinion has
begun to shift towards an increased concern for the health of the poor and for a reduction
in health inequalities. As a first step, health objectives should take into account
conditions prevailing among the poor rather than in society as a whole. "Averages
typically disguise as much as they reveal." Health goals, now expressed primarily in
terms of population averages, should aim directly at improving conditions among the poorer
groups and at reducing the differences between those groups and others in society. For
example, instead of adopting a goal to reduce child mortality by two-thirds in the entire
population - as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has
called for - countries would be better advised, says Gwatkin, to aim to reduce infant
mortality by two-thirds in the poorest segment of society.
Elsewhere in the issue, Geeta Rao Gupta, President of the International Center for
Research on Women, points out that while women constitute 70% of the world's poorest
people, "poor women suffer the interactive consequences of two of society's most
persistent and damaging inequalities, of poverty and of gender. If the goal of health
policy is to reduce health inequalities, it is imperative to set explicit goals for
improvements in women's health."
Other examples of health inequality are seen among different ethnic groups in sub-Saharan
Africa: ethnic differences in child mortality are closely linked to economic conditions,
educational status of women, use of health care, and geographical setting. Health appears
poised for a significant move towards the centre of thinking about poverty. As WHO
Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland told the WHO's Executive Board "ill-health
is both a cause and a consequence of poverty (and) better health can offer a route out of
poverty." We must, she said, "move from a vicious to a virtuous cycle...
focusing resources on improving and protecting the health of the poor."
Press Release WHO/6/2000
NEW BOOKS FROM WHO
Among its many worldwide actions in
health, WHO is also an important medical publisher. Its latest publications can be found
in our Book Reviews section.
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