Securing circulation pharmaceutically: antiviral stockpiling and pandemic preparedness in the European Union

Governments in Europe and around the world amassed vast pharmaceutical stockpiles in anticipation of a potentially catastrophic influenza pandemic. Yet the comparatively ‘mild’ course of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic provoked considerable public controversy around those stockpiles, leading to questions about their cost–benefit profile and the commercial interests allegedly shaping their creation, as well as around their scientific evidence base. So, how did governments come to view pharmaceutical stockpiling as such an indispensable element of pandemic preparedness planning? What are the underlying security rationalities that rapidly rendered antivirals such a desirable option for government planners? Drawing upon an in-depth reading of Foucault’s notion of a ‘crisis of circulation’, this article argues that the rise of pharmaceutical stockpiling across Europe is integral to a governmental rationality of political rule that continuously seeks to anticipate myriad circulatory threats to the welfare of populations – including to their overall levels of health. Novel antiviral medications such as Tamiflu are such an attractive policy option because they could enable governments to rapidly modulate dangerous levels of (viral) circulation during a pandemic, albeit without disrupting all the other circulatory systems crucial for maintaining population welfare. Antiviral stockpiles, in other words, promise nothing less than a pharmaceutical securing of circulation itself

ШЛЯХИ ПІДВИЩЕННЯ ЯКІСНОГО РІВНЯ ВИЩОЇ ОСВІТИ

The aim of the work – to consider the main ways of improving the quality level of higher education and the application of innovative pedagogical technologies during the preparation of future specialists in the system of higher medical education.The main body. The quality of education depends on training and teaching work. First, that there should be noted – a transition to new educational standards. Each high school academic council approved plans for educational and methodical, information and logistical support new standards of all specialties and directions.The final goal of education can be represented as the projected model professional. The main components of this model – professional knowledge and skills, social, psychological and spiritual personality creative professional that will determine its ability to operate under market conditions, achieving results that are adequate to the requirements of social and scientific progress.Speaking of professional models, in addition to qualification requirements, detailed in state standards, it should include characteristics such as intellectual competence, intellectual initiative, self-organization and self-regulation.Professional development model will provide scientific justification curriculum, strategies and methods of educational work, ways of integrating the educational process and educational work, demanding in itself the principles of humanism. Implementation of these principles in accordance with the model graduate will form the core of future specialists such qualities requires new century, a new millennium.Personality-oriented education aims at the development and self-identity of the learner, based on its individual characteristics, and gives him the right to choose their own path of study. This model of education is presented in a series of technologies and subjects.Personality-oriented education paradigm determines the development of new theoretical and methodological principles of educational construction systems. Their implementation requires special efforts on their technologizing. Structurally-technological form of education organization-centered concept can serve as a model on learning (developmental, productive, enriching, etc.).Conclusions. One of the main tasks at the present stage of modernization of higher medical education in Ukraine is the introduction of a competent approach. The solution of this problem is possible subject to the change of pedagogical techniques and the introduction of innovative pedagogical technologies.Мета роботи – розглянути основні шляхи підвищення якісного рівня вищої освіти та застосування інноваційних педагогічних технологій під час підготовки майбутніх фахівців у системі вищої медичної освіти.Основна частина. Якісний рівень освіти значною мірою залежить від якості навчальної та навчально-методичної роботи. Перше, що тут варто було б відзначити, – це перехід на нові освітні стандарти. У кожному вищому навчальному закладі затверджені вченими радами плани заходів щодо навчально-методичного, інформаційного і матеріально-технічного забезпечення нових стандартів із усіх спеціальностей і напрямів.Кінцеву мету освіти можна представити у вигляді проектованої моделі фахівця. Головні складові такої моделі – професійні знання й уміння, соціально-психологічні й духовно-творчі якості особистості фахівця, що визначать його здатність працювати в умовах ринкових відносин, домагаючись результатів, адекватних вимогам суспільного й науково-технічного прогресу.Якщо говорити про професійні складові моделі фахівця, то, крім кваліфікаційних вимог, детально розроблених у державних стандартах, вона повинна містити в собі такі характеристики, як інтелектуальна компетентність, інтелектуальна ініціатива, самоорганізація й саморегуляція.Розробка моделі фахівця дозволить забезпечити наукове обґрунтування навчальних планів і програм, стратегії і методів виховної роботи, способів інтеграції навчального процесу і виховної роботи, що втілюють у собі принципи гуманізму. Реалізація цих принципів, відповідно до моделі випускника, стане основою формування у майбутнього фахівця таких якостей, яких вимагають нове століття, нове тисячоліття.Особистісно-орієнтована освіта має на меті забезпечення розвитку й саморозвитку особистості того, кого навчають, виходячи з його індивідуальних особливостей, і надає йому право вибору власного шляху навчання. Ця модель освіти представлена низкою як загальнопредметних технологій, так і предметних.Особистісно-орієнтована парадигма освіти обумовлює і формування нових теоретико-методологічних принципів побудови освітніх систем. Їх реалізація вимагає спеціальних зусиль щодо їх технологізації. Конструктивно-технологічною формою організації особистісно-орієнтованої концепції в освіті може служити відповідна модель навчання  (розвиваючого, продуктивного, збагачуючого тощо).Висновки. Одним із основних завдань на сьогоднішньому етапі модернізації вищої медичної освіти України є впровадження компетентнісного підходу. Розв’язання цього завдання можливе за умови зміни педагогічних методик та впровадження інноваційних педагогічних технологій.

Peopling Global Health

The field of Global Health brings together a vastly diverse array of actors working to address pressing health issues worldwide with unprecedented financial and technological resources and informed by various agendas. While Global Health initiatives are booming and displacing earlier framings of the field (such as tropical medicine or international health), critical analyses of the social, political, and economic processes associated with this expanding field — an “open source anarchy” on the ground — are still few and far between. In this essay, we contend that, among the powerful players of Global Health, the supposed beneficiaries of interventions are generally lost from view and appear as having little to say or nothing to contribute. We make the case for a more comprehensive and people-centered approach and demonstrate the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in Global Health. By shifting the emphasis from diseases to people and environments, and from trickle-down access to equality, we have the opportunity to set a humane agenda that both realistically confronts challenges and expands our vision of the future of global communities

Motivations for seeking experimental treatment in Japan

In this article on innovative medical treatment for serious conditions in Japan we aim to revise two widespread notions: first, that people living with severe conditions are all waiting for a cure or are impatient to try out experimental treatment, in particular regenerative medicine. Showing that motivations for cure seeking are complex and linked to somatic identity, we argue that gaining a cure also means a new social normality, which for some people narrows the only normality that is meaningful to them; and, second, that people living with a serious (latent) condition necessarily define their lives as not normal in the light of normalization. People with a condition conceptualise normal life variously and multiply in the light of both individual and collective experiences. The two revisions are crucial to attempts at understanding what makes people seek experimental medicine. Comparing the narratives of people with four different conditions – spinal cord injury, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Diabetes Mellitus type 1 and cardiovascular disease – it becomes clear that the difference between seeking treatment or not largely depends on somatic identities; rather than through notions of (ab)normality, it is more adequately understood in terms of the experience of somatic lacking and wholeness

Enhancing innovation between scientific and indigenous knowledge: pioneer NGOs in India

Abstract Background Until recently, little attention has been paid to local innovation capacity as well as management practices and institutions developed by communities and other local actors based on their traditional knowledge. This paper doesn't focus on the results of scientific research into innovation systems, but rather on how local communities, in a network of supportive partnerships, draw knowledge for others, combine it with their own knowledge and then innovate in their local practices. Innovation, as discussed in this article, is the capacity of local stakeholders to play an active role in innovative knowledge creation in order to enhance local health practices and further environmental conservation. In this article, the innovative processes through which this capacity is created and reinforced will be defined as a process of "ethnomedicine capacity". Methods The field study undertaken by the first author took place in India, in the State of Tamil Nadu, over a period of four months in 2007. The data was collected through individual interviews and focus groups and was complemented by participant observations. Results The research highlights the innovation capacity related to ethnomedical knowledge. As seen, the integration of local and scientific knowledge is crucial to ensure the practices anchor themselves in daily practices. The networks created are clearly instrumental to enhancing the innovation capacity that allows the creation, dissemination and utilization of 'traditional' knowledge. However, these networks have evolved in very different forms and have become entities that can fit into global networks. The ways in which the social capital is enhanced at the village and network levels are thus important to understand how traditional knowledge can be used as an instrument for development and innovation. Conclusion The case study analyzed highlights examples of innovation systems in a developmental context. They demonstrate that networks comprised of several actors from different levels can synergistically forge linkages between local knowledge and formal sciences and generate positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is the revitalization of perceived traditions while the negative impacts pertain to the transformation of these traditions into health commodities controlled by new elites, due to unequal power relations

Bioprospecting the African Renaissance: The new value of muthi in South Africa

This article gives an overview of anthropological research on bioprospecting in general and of available literature related to bioprospecting particularly in South Africa. It points out how new insights on value regimes concerning plant-based medicines may be gained through further research and is meant to contribute to a critical discussion about the ethics of Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS). In South Africa, traditional healers, plant gatherers, petty traders, researchers and private investors are assembled around the issues of standardization and commercialization of knowledge about plants. This coincides with a nation-building project which promotes the revitalization of local knowledge within the so called African Renaissance. A social science analysis of the transformation of so called Traditional Medicine (TM) may shed light onto this renaissance by tracing social arenas in which different regimes of value are brought into conflict. When medicinal plants turn into assets in a national and global economy, they seem to be manipulated and transformed in relation to their capacity to promote health, their market value, and their potential to construct new ethics of development. In this context, the translation of socially and culturally situated local knowledge about muthi into global pharmaceuticals creates new forms of agency as well as new power differentials between the different actors involved

One step forward, one step sideways? Expanding research capacity for neglected diseases

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is general agreement, including from the pharmaceutical industry, that current market based methods of generating research into the development of pharmaceutical products that are relevant for developing countries do not work. This conclusion is relevant not just for the most neglected diseases such as leishmaniasis but even for global diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Stimulating research will mean overcoming barriers such as patent thickets, poor coordination of research activities, exclusive licensing of new technologies by universities and the structural problems that inhibit conducting appropriate clinical trials in developing countries. In addition, it is necessary to ensure that the priorities for research reflect the needs of developing countries and not just donors. This article will explore each of these issues and then look at three emerging approaches to stimulating research -paying for innovation, priority review sales or vouchers and public-private partnerships, - and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>All of the stakeholders agree that there is a pressing need for a major expansion in the level of R&D. Whatever that new model turns out to be, it will have to deal with the 5 barriers outlined in this paper. Finally, none of the three proposals considered here for expanding research is free from major limitations.</p

The race for Ebola drugs: pharmaceuticals, security and global health governance

The international Ebola response mirrors two broader trends in global health governance: (1) the framing of infectious disease outbreaks as a security threat; and (2) a tendency to respond by providing medicines and vaccines. This article identifies three mechanisms that interlink these trends. First, securitisation encourages technological policy responses. Second, it creates an exceptional political space in which pharmaceutical development can be freed from constraints. Third, it creates an institutional architecture that facilitates pharmaceutical policy responses. The ways in which the securitisation of health reinforces pharmaceutical policy strategies must, the article concludes, be included in ongoing efforts to evaluate them normatively and politically