The Safe Motherhood Program at the University of California, San Francisco is looking for two interns: one office intern to be based in the San Francisco office and one field intern to be based in the Copperbelt region of Zambia.
1.) UCSF Safe Motherhood Office Intern, San Francisco – Summer 2012
The focus of this internship is to prepare presentations for an upcoming international conference in order to effectively show the latest data on the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) for obstetric hemorrhage clinical trial. The intern will also gain some experience in handling and cleaning a large data set.
For more information on the trial please visit www.lifewrap.org and http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00488462.
Duties:
- Assist with data cleaning and analyses for the international trial for the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) for obstetric hemorrhage
- Prepare multiple Power Point presentations to include data for an upcoming international conference
- Other light administrative duties as required
Qualifications:
- Excellent Power Point and writing skills are a must!
- Knowledge of STATA, SPSS, Word, Excel.
- Experience with online data systems is a plus.
Start date: June 1, 2012.
Duration: 12 weeks, 40 hrs/week
Note: This internship is unpaid.
Please send CV, cover letter and a writing sample to Jennifer Clark at jclark@globalhealth.ucsf.edu.
Please apply by 2/15 to be considered for initial screening.
2.) UCSF Safe Motherhood Zambia Field Intern – Summer 2012
The focus of this internship is to support the Zambia team of the non-pneumatic anti-shock garment (NASG) trial. The study aims to reduce maternal mortality and morbidities in Zambia and Zimbabwe caused by obstetric hemorrhage. This is a cluster randomized control study which compares outcomes based on evidence from intervention and control clinics. The intervention clinics in this study are the clinics that are using the NASG as a first aid device for patients suffering from hypovolemic shock caused by bleeding during pregnancy.
For more information on the trial please visit www.lifewrap.org and http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00488462.
Duties:
- Provide logistical support for the local Zambian team – distributing supplies, copies, etc
- Review data collection forms
- Encourage protocol adherence
- Conduct training with local hospital and clinic staff
- Visit the study clinics
- Follow up on cases
- Liaise with the San Francisco office and the in-country staff
Qualifications:
- Experience in international settings
- Interest in maternal health
- Research experience
- Familiarity with clinical environments
- Must be highly detail-oriented, organized and have excellent follow-through skills
Start Date: May 30, 2012
Duration: 12 weeks, 40 hours/week
Note: Candidates are expected to secure outside funding to cover roundtrip airfare and living expenses for the duration of the internship.
Please send cv, cover letter and a writing sample to Jennifer Clark at jclark@globalhealth.ucsf.edu.
Please apply by 2/15 to be considered for initial screening!
View past intern experiences on our intern blog: http://lifewrapinterns.wordpress.com/.
IHME Report Says that Malaria Interventions are Working, but the Problem is Bigger than We Thought
Friday, February 3rd, 2012 by KateMitchA newborn sleeps under a bed net in rural Jharkhand, India. Photo by Kate Mitchell
“You learn in medical school that people exposed to malaria as children develop immunity and rarely die from malaria as adults. What we have found in hospital records, death records, surveys, and other sources shows that just is not the case,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and lead author of a new study on global malaria mortality.
A new report from IHME published in the Lancet yesterday, Global malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010: a systematic analysis, shows that malaria is responsible for almost twice the number of deaths worldwide than previously believed.
According to the press release about the new study, “IHME researchers say that deaths from malaria have been missed by previous studies because of the assumption that the disease mainly kills children under 5. IHME found that more than 78,000 children aged 5 to 14, and more than 445,000 people ages 15 and older died from malaria in 2010, meaning that 42% of all malaria deaths were in people aged 5 and older.”
The study did not look specifically at the number of pregnant women dying of malaria or the relationship between malaria and maternal morbidity and mortality, but it did show that far more adults are dying from malaria than we previously believed. It is safe to assume that the number of pregnant women dying from malaria is likely also largely underreported.
The good news from the study is that the number of malaria deaths has fallen rapidly in recent years—likely due to the ramping up of efforts to combat the disease. Researchers pointed to the scale-up of insecticide-treated bed nets and artemisinin-combination treatments (ACTs) as major factors in the drop of malaria deaths.
Unfortunately, malaria prevention, screening and treatment among pregnant women remains low, despite clear evidence of effective interventions and significant investment in this area—and it is not clear whether malaria deaths are, in fact, falling for this segment of the population.
The Maternal Health Task Force is exploring opportunities to bring together maternal and newborn health professionals with malaria experts in order to discuss the challenge of low coverage of malaria prevention for pregnant women and how we might work together to ensure that malaria deaths are on the decline for pregnant women as well as the general population.
As our work in this area develops, we will keep you posted here on the MHTF Blog.
Related reading:
Check out the data visualizations that accompany the new study–and explore global trends in malaria mortality between 1980 and 2010.
Read the Washington Post coverage of the new study here.
In an Op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, Paul Farmer shares four reasons why it is imperative that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria continues to get the support it needs.
This study, An Autopsy Study of Maternal Mortality in Mozambique: The Contribution of Infectious Diseases, showed that in a tertiary hospital in Mozambique, at least half of maternal deaths were linked to an infectious disease—and highlighted the importance of implementing malaria prevention strategies such as intermittent preventive treatment and insecticide treated bed nets.
For more information on malaria in pregnancy, visit the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium website. Be sure to check out their interactive map of research projects relating to malaria in pregnancy, here.
[Translate]
Tags: artemisinin-combination treatment, Dr. Christopher Murray, global malaria mortality, IHME, insecticide-treated bed nets, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, malaria, malaria in pregnancy
Posted in Announcements, Commentary, Evidence, News | No Comments »