Universal Access and Human Rights
Written By: Hana Akselrod
December 1, 2009

 

On behalf of the entire editorial team, we would like to welcome you to this new (and improved) issue of AMSA's Global Pulse Journal. We want to give our thanks to you, our readers and contributors, as your support and overwhelming supply of quality submissions is what enabled us to publish GP for the second time this year - a practice we hope to continue and improve upon. What we do is rooted in your opinions and our commitment as AMSA's independent, international health journal, completely run by medical students.

Based on your feedback, our journal has markedly evolved from our previous issue. With our website redesign, we now feature a more advanced and modern layout, higher quality PDF versions of each article, and a smoother-operating blog, focusing on rich user experience and participation, the use of tags, the integration of online media, and information exchange with other global health blogs. Harnessing the full power of the web, we will continue to integrate our content with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, while working on ways for you to directly contribute content to our blog.

Call it Global Pulse, 2.0.

This issue features 3 interviews you should not miss. We are honored to have Leonard Rubenstein, J.D., past president and executive director of Physicians of Human Rights (PHR). The organization has been at the forefront against torture, documenting through various prominent reports how American doctors and other healthcare professionals have been involved in gross violations of human rights by assisting in systematic and purposeful torture of detainees during the War On Terror. Mr. Rubenstein addresses the structural factors behind the astounding level of complicity by health care professionals, and discusses the state of rights-based health advocacy in the U.S. today, and its implications for health care reform.

We also feature Ellen 't Hoen, LL.M., a Geneva-based expert on pharmaceutical intellectual property and spokesperson for the Access to Essential medicines campaign. She discusses the UNITAID Patent Pool for HIV/AIDS drugs, which may ingeniously solve some of the barriers to the development of affordable ARVs, pediatric AIDS drugs, and combined-dose formulations, while preserving existing frameworks of international intellectual property law. Lastly, we feature Anthony So, M.D., M.P.A. - an AMSA leadership alumni and founder of the Program on Global Health and Technology Access at Duke University - for an interview about the Affordable Medicines Now Campaign, and to discuss the various practices of the drug industry to eliminate competition from generic producers of "biologics", or treatments derived from living cells that could potentially unlock hundreds of cures. We are particularly proud of featuring an AMSA alum, a practice we will definitely continue in the future.

As excited as we are about the interviews, it is our submissions which form the essence of the journal. From intrusive state power to Prop 8 to health care reform, our current articles hold the promise of active leadership from a rising generation of physicians-in-training who are unafraid to tackle complex social issues. To wit, in "The Bioethics of Infectious Disease and Bioterror," Adam Deardorff tackles thorny questions of public good versus individual rights around the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act proposal, while in "Queering Access," Emily Antoon reflects on the ethics and politics of access to assisted reproductive technologies by non-nuclear family models in marginalized communities in the US. Meanwhile, Vasu Sunkara contributes to the health care reform discussion by challenging some of the reasons for the primary care physician shortage in the U.S., and offers unique insights through a comparison of perceptions related to residency choice in American versus Israeli medical students.

Pre-medical students also contribute heavily in this issue. In "Meningitis in the Sahel", pre-medical student Aaron Kofman presents a systematic case study of two competing vaccination strategies and dissects the ongoing failure to staunch the devastating, predictable, yet preventable bacterial meningitis epidemics in Burkina Faso. Another pre-med contributor, Jenssy Crystal Rojina, eloquently describes her own conflict and doubt experienced while conducting a sanitation awareness campaign in the Philippines, and finds her confidence and faith restored through the experience of student-to-student outreach across a wide cultural divide. The struggle between frustration and creative effort continues in the art section with three illustrated essays: a day in the life of a woman struggling to obtain medical care across the Gaza-Israel border, accompanied by photos of life across the divide in the West Bank; an unexpected approach to compassionate care through use of clowning and humor to bridge cultural gaps by the Gesundheit! Institute; and the use of pottery to battle intestinal parasites in Peru.

It is with great pleasure to share this work on World AIDS Day. We hope you find these contents both enjoyable and thought-provoking. As always, we are thankful for your readership and support, and welcome your feedback.

Hana Akselrod and Julio Bracero, MD
Editors-in-Chief

To learn about anti-torture advocacy opportunities through the AMSA Global Action Committee and to get involved, email Hana at hakselrod@globalpulsejournal.com. To learn more about the UNITAID Patent Pool and opportunities through AMSA, contact Sujal Parikh at sparikh@globalpulsejournal.com. For more information on biologics legislation and to contact your representatives in Congress, go to www.affordablemedsnow.org.