New Service: HealthWize
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A new weekly service is now available to provide you with expert
medical knowledge about a variety of public health issues to
help you design more effective communication programs.
HealthWise is a joint product of the Health Communication Part-
nership (HCP) and the INFO (Information and Knowledge for Opti-
mal Health) Project, both based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health's Center for Communication Programs
(CCP) and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Devel-
opment (USAID).
HealthWise will research and summarize answers to your questions
about public health problems in reproductive health, HIV/AIDS,
maternal health, child survival and tuberculosis, malaria. It
focuses on the medical aspects of these problems to help enhance
and inform health communication programs with expert health
knowledge. As HCP's Associate Director of Health Sciences,
Youssef Tawfik, MD, MPH, is responsible for facilitating Health-
Wise questions and answers in a brief yet thorough manner.
We hope you will benefit from having this credible source of
medical expertise based on state-of-the-art scientific informa-
tion and evidence provided in simple and easy to understand lan-
guage. Trying to find a simple answer to a medical question can
be time-consuming and confusing.
Please sign up to receive each week's installment of HealthWise
by visiting http://www.hcpartnership.org or writing directly to
mailto:healthwise-subscribe@hcpartnership.org. Your questions
can be sent directly to mailto:healthwise@jhuccp.org or you can
ask through the website. HealthWise is accessible at both
http://www.hcpartnership.org and http://www.infoforhealth.org,
and an archive of past questions and answers can be viewed at
http://www.hcpartnership.org/Healthwise/archive.php.
Sample initial questions include determining the health risks of
getting malaria when pregnant and the role of zinc supplementa-
tion in managing childhood diarrhea. Here's this week's ques-
tion:
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Q: What are the health risks of getting malaria while pregnant?
low birth weight or neonatal death, depending on the pregnant
woman's level of immunity. Pregnant women living in low and un-
stable malaria epidemic areas usually have less immunity and
tend to show more severe symptoms when infected with P. falcipa-
rum, the most common malaria species in Africa. They are also at
a two- to three-fold higher risk of developing a severe infec-
tion than non-pregnant adults in the same area. In these areas,
maternal death may result either directly from severe malaria or
indirectly from malaria-related anemia. In areas of high and
moderate (stable) malaria transmission, most adult women have
developed enough immunity that, even during pregnancy, P. falci-
parum infection does not usually cause clinical symptoms. In
these areas, infection can lead to malaria-related anemia in the
mother, poor nutrition for the fetus and low birth weight for
the infant. In areas of Africa with stable malaria transmission,
P. falciparum infection during pregnancy is estimated to cause
as many as 10,000 maternal deaths each year, 8-14% of all low
birth weight babies, and 3-% of all infant deaths.
For more information, visit Roll Back Malaria at
http://www.rbm.who.int
References:
Roll Back Malaria, 2001-2010 United Nations Decade to Roll Back
Malaria, 2002.
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Please sign up today to receive HealthWise each week by e-mail.
Thank you!
Peggy D'Adamo - Manager, Networking
The INFO Project - www.infoforhealth.org
111 Market Place, Suite 310 - Baltimore, MD 21202, USA
Tel: +1-410-659-6256
Fax: +1-410-659-6266
mailto:mdadamo@jhuccp.org
Subscribe to RHGNews, published in e-mail format twice monthly.
Look for the calendar of upcoming events and links to new web-
sites and resources related to reproductive health. Visit
http://www.rhgateway.org to sign up.