Politics & Policies
A study shows a significant reduction in the India-Nepal drug trade due to the 2015-2016 Indian blockade and thus, potentially leading to shortage of medicines.
Since FY 2010, U.S. funding for global health has remained relatively flat. The FY 2018 President’s budget request proposes to reduce global health funding to $7.9 B, its lowest level since FY 2008.
Guided by the country’s oldest community-based health promotion project Nizwa Healthy Lifestyle Project (NHLP), businesses and communities in the Sultanate of Oman have joined forces to lead the charge against non-communicable diseases.
Yesterday, Global Health Council (GHC) applauded U.S. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Chris Coons (D-DE) who led a bipartisan group of 10 Senators to reintroduce the Reach Every Mother and Child Act (S.1730). This bipartisan legislation aims to accelerate the reduction of preventable child, newborn, and maternal deaths, putting us within reach of the global commitment to end these deaths within a generation
Programs, Grants & Awards
The WHO has launched the consultation of the draft global action plan to promote physical activity. The overarching goal is to get 100 million people more active by 2030.
Ethiopia will host an International Conference on Maternal and Child health on August 24th and 25th, the theme of which will be “Overcoming critical obstacles to maternal and child survival”.
Distance education graduate courses led by USC faculty are attracting students from around the world to virtual classrooms where they learn about global health leadership and ethics.
Hear from experts in the field, participate in collaborative exercises and network with colleagues at the 2018 UC Global Health Institute’s Women’s Health, Gender and Empowerment Center of Expertise annual retreat.
This year, five new trainees will join the Global Health Pathway for Residents and Fellows, administered by the Duke Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health, a part of the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI).
Research
In this study in French Guiana involving 12 men with ZIKV (Zika Virus) infection for whom semen samples were available, we determined the prevalence of ZIKV RNA, the duration of ZIKV persistence and potential intermittent ZIKV excretion.
Results from a new study shows that people who do not eat a Western diet (such as the Hadza people in Tanzania) have greater diversity of microbes in their guts. Additionally, Western diet seems to lead to a loss of certain bacterial species.
Diseases & Disasters
A woman’s body was discovered as Harvey’s floodwaters started dropping, while Texas says more than 48,700 homes have been affected.
Crews in Texas have found the bodies of 21 victims of Harvey’s wrath, and warned on Wednesday that the number of dead would almost certainly rise as water levels across much of the Houston area start to recede.
City officials in Houston imposed an overnight curfew to guard against opportunistic crimes as Tropical Storm Harvey continued to deluge southeast Texas on Tuesday, breaking the record for the most extreme rainfall on the U.S. mainland.
Emergency workers rescued many more soaked and frightened people in southeast Texas on Tuesday as floodwaters continued to rise and officials counseled patience, warning that conditions would not improve soon.
Tropical Storm Harvey is causing catastrophic flooding along the Texas Gulf Coast as the storm lingers and continues to drop record-breaking rainfall. Houston is experiencing unprecedented flooding, with shoulder-high water in some areas after a 20-plus-inch rainfall, and Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo calling it “a 500-year event.”
The cholera outbreak in Yemen is overwhelmingly affecting rebel-controlled areas due to Saudi-led air strikes and blockades, according to a letter by researchers from Queen Mary University of London, published in The Lancet Global Health.
Sierra Leone, a country that has been battered by Ebola, civil war and massive floods, suffered yet another tragedy this week, Government and international aid workers are racing the clock to find survivors after a mudslide struck capital city Freetown early Monday morning.
Of the many steps governments can take to prevent people from getting sick, none can save more lives than reducing tobacco use. Around the world, 1 in every 10 deaths is caused by tobacco. In the 20th century, tobacco use killed 100 million people, far more than World War I and II—and most of the other major wars of the past century—combined. In the 21st century, unless we act, tobacco could kill a billion people.
The Cholera epidemic in Yemen is on track to claim more than 2500 lives in the coming months. At the current rate, this easily treatable disease could kill more people than the 2013-2015 Ebola epidemic in Guinea.
Technology
Using a walkie-talkie app called Zello, volunteers in Houston and beyond (including a woman in New Jersey) have established a parallel emergency response network to supplement overwhelmed government agencies, according to The New Yorker. Volunteer dispatchers field desperate calls for help and coordinate volunteer boaters trying to reach the stranded.
Royal Philips, a global leader in health technology, today announced an agreement with Lakeland Health to integrate the Philips IntelliVue Guardian Solution with automated Early Warning Scoring (FWS) at all three of the Lakeland Health’s hospitals. The IntelliVue Guardian Solution contains software and intelligent clinical decision algorithms allowing caregivers to accurately obtain vital signs and seamlessly integrate validated patient data directly to the EHR – reducing human errors and saving time.
Environmental Health
Bad news for humans about the spread of mosquito-borne disease as climate change continues to worsen. New research from the University of Notre Dame, recently published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, proposes a new way that climate change could contribute to mosquitos’ capacity to drive disease epidemics. As climate change continues to rise, so could the speed of epidemics of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue and Zika.
Equity & Disparities
Adolescent girls living in neighborhoods with wide salary gaps and low-income households showed increased thinning in the brain’s cortical thickness, which could indicate higher levels of stress.
Violence, preventable diseases and traffic accidents are to blame for a widening of the youth mortality gap between the developed and developing world, according to a new Guardian analysis of the most recent World Health Organisation (WHO) data.
Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health
Globally, nearly eight out of every 1,000 children in the general population Iis estimated to have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and and Mental Health (CAMH).
Results from a large clinical trial of a specific combination of oral preparation of probiotics in newborns in India showed a 40% reduction in sepsis and deaths in the first 2 months of infancy. The trial ended early because it proved to be so effective.
Results from the secondary data analysis from the Child Health Epidemiology Reference Group (CHERG) shows that one in five infants are born small for gestational age and one in four neonatal deaths occur among such infants.
A global study reveals that nearly 8 in every 1000 babies are born with fetal alcohol syndrome.
IH CONNECT 