Last Wednesday, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its annual State of the World Population report, in which it called family planning a “fundamental human right” and underlined the need for increased investment in and a “rights-based approach” to family planning. Citing studies that show improved health, societal, gender, and economic outcomes when family planning […]
This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a new tool to address the growing health risks associated with climate change. The “Atlas of Human Health and Climate” explores the exacerbation of “diseases of poverty” (including those related to food and water insecurity), emergency medical situations related to extreme […]
Today, I’d like to share a few updates on HIV/AIDS. Uganda has backslid against the epidemic, according to advocacy organizations in the country. A review published in the British Medical Journal finds that methadone therapy for injecting drug users more than halves the risk of HIV transmission. And we are about to face a new challenge: […]
In a time of political, social, and economic turmoil, the focus on global health has blurred slightly. We’ve made great gains against polio, malaria, HIV, and a number of other diseases in the past decade, but there is, as always, much to be done. With tensions high across the Middle East and Europe, an election […]
For today, I’d like to share a few links to recent articles about global health. A New Whooping Cough Epidemic? : Slate examines the recent rise of whooping cough in the United States. Although parents’ failure to vaccinate their children is a major cause, Amanda Schaffer discusses the complexities behind the re-emergence of this disease. Remembering […]
Recently, researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT) announced that they had developed a single-dose treatment for malaria. As National Geographic reports, the drug developed at UCT kills malaria parasites in animal test subjects “instantly,” including those that are drug-resistant—and with no adverse side effects. Clinical trials will begin in 2013. South Africa-based eNews has a little […]
Clean Drinking Water: The Cure for Malnutrition? This week is World Water Week — which is timely, given the serious cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone and neighboring countries. The focus of this year’s conference is on food security, water scarcity, and their ties to food (and water) waste. As I’ve written before, up to 40 percent […]
In the past month, we’ve seen the United States’ worst outbreak of West Nile Virus, Ebola in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and cholera in Sierra Leone that’s spread to its West African neighbors. What lessons can be learned from these three epidemics? West Nile, which has only been endemic to […]
Recently, the European Union and India have been in the news for a near-final free trade agreement, as have the United States and the 10 other countries who are hammering out the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). While these agreements could bolster economies that were weakened by the recession or that are struggling to emerge, they also […]
The International AIDS Conference was held last week in Washington, D.C. This was the first time the conference was hosted by an American city in more than 20 years, a nod to President Obama’s 2009 lifting of the ban on people living with HIV from entering the United States. Although there is way too much […]
In global health news this week, I have updates to previously covered topics. World leaders have committed money and support to family planning, spearheaded by the Gates Foundation. The CIA’s fake vaccination program, part of efforts to ferret out Osama Bin Laden, has contributed to a ban on polio vaccinations by the Taliban controlling the […]
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration finally approved a rapid, over-the-counter, and at-home test for HIV. The test, called OraQuick and made by OraSure, allows people to check their serostatus in the convenience and privacy of their own homes and illustrates the change in perception around HIV ever since it became an epidemic […]
I’ve focused much attention this year on the rise of drug-resistant strains of diseases. There’s been a lot of panic in the U.S., for example, around MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and new discussions about how to combat multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. As I’ve written before, I believe drug resistance is going to be one of our greatest global […]
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that as many as one in ten cases of tuberculosis in China is multi-drug-resistant, with eight percent of those cases being extensively drug-resistant (XDR). One in four cases is resistant to at least one drug. Although China has a relatively low prevalence rate (108 […]
Last Friday, Stanford’s Policy Review published a feature written by global health luminaries Mark Dybul, Peter Piot, and Julio Frenk entitled Reshaping Global Health. The article reads as a call to action, urging the global health community to “give up a lot of turf” and assemble a Bretton Woods-style conversation to reshape the Global Health […]