Which intervention would do the most to improve the health of the ext...( Everything published by PLoS Medicin...),Health

Everything published by PLoS Medicine is Open Access: freely available for anyone to read, download, redistribute and otherwise use, as long as the authorship is properly attributed.

This week PLoS Medicine publishes a special collection of articles that aim to highlight the profound influence of poverty upon health, as part of the Council of Science Editors Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/globalthemeissue.cfm):

• Which intervention would do the most to improve the health of the extreme poor?

• Executive Director of UNAIDS discusses links between AIDS and poverty

• Can the international framework of children's rights be used to improve child survival rates?

Please mention PLoS Medicine in your report and use the links below to take your readers straight to the online articles:

FROM THE PLoS MEDICINE MAGAZINE SECTION:

Which intervention would do the most to improve the health of the extreme poor?

For PLoS Medicine's special issue on poverty and health, the journal asked thirty commentators, including some of the world's most respected global health experts, to name the one intervention that would improve the health of those living on less than $1 a day.

The collected responsesfrom health researchers and activists, journalists, academics, and communities living in povertyhighlight effective, low tech, and remarkably cheap ways to make a profound difference to the lives of the poorest people on the planet.

Paul Farmer (Partners in Health and Harvard University) chose training of village health workers as the most effective intervention. "If we train village health workers, and make sure theyre compensated," he said, "then the resources intended for the worlds poorestfrom vaccines, to bed
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