Politics & Policies
The UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), which will run through 18 July, brings together more than a thousand government, business and civil society leaders. They will discuss progress already made by dozens of countries towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – adopted by 193 Member States in 2015 – in an effort to find out what is and what is not working, based on the UN Secretary-General’s annual progress report.
The federal government’s top disease fighter, who built hs career battling the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, says the opioid epidemic will be even worse.
The U.S. opposed a World Health Assembly resolution to encourage breastfeeding because it called for limits on he promotion of infant formula, not because of objections to breastfeeding, President Donald Trump tweeted Monday.
Cannabis Science, Inc., a U.S. company specializing in the development of cannabinoid-based medicines, is pleased to announce Harvard Medical School’s Global Health Catalyst (GHC), American States University (ASU), and Elpasso Farms (South Africa), and Cannabis Science (CBIS) announce the signing of a historic collaboration agreement for development initiatives throughout Africa to strengthen its economic and healthcare infrastructure through education, agriculture, technology, and food security.
The Government of Liberia and partners have launched the National Action Plan for Health Security, the National Action Plan for Antimicrobial Resistance and the One Health Coordinating Platform meeting chaired by the Vice President of the Republic of Liberia, Mrs. Jewel Howard Taylor.
Programs, Grants & Awards
Poor quality health care services are hindering health improvement in countries at all income levels.
The world celebrates World Population Day on July 11th, day when family planning was affirmed as a human right 50 years ago. While it is central to women’s empowerment and achieving sustainable development goals, it is still not a guarantee given the poor access to reproductive resources.
Research
Zika virus (ZIKV) was discovered 70 years ago, and since then small isolated outbreaks occurred without major complications being reported. When ZIKV hot Brazil, however, a public health emergency was declared, given its link with microcephaly. Knowledge on ZIKV has advanced, but demographic impacts remain poorly understood.
A new study shows that taking insulin or metformin (most commonly used for type 2 diabetes) does no delay or effectively treat diabetes in children and teens ages 10-19.
Diseases, Disasters & Wars
Paraguay has eliminated malaria, the first country in the Americas to do so in almost 50 years, according to the World Health Organization.
If polio is near extinction, why do outbreaks still pop up in places where the disease was thought to be long gone? The answer is complicated.
Eating overripe mangoes, excessive heat, and arduous labor used to be some of the myths concerning the causes of malaria in Ghana’s Ashanti region. “I used to believe I fell ill because I worked for too many hours under the sun,” said Dina Serwa, a mother of five from the gold mining district of Obuasi.
Clinics for men, adolescent-dedicated sections in existing clinics, and increased support for community-based services are all needed to expand the reach of HIV testing in Lesotho, and offer hope of controlling the epidemic in a country where the virus is responsible for one of the shortest life expectancies in the world, according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last week, biologists reported the most detailed structure of the Zika virus to date, a finding that could help the effort to develop vaccines or anti-viral medicines. And Monday, a nationwide group of researchers reported in Nature Medicine that Zika causes miscarriages and stillbirths in a quarter of pregnancies in non-human primates.
Technology
Cryo-electron microscopy reveals how Plasmodium vivax (malarial parasite) invades human red blood cells.
An electronic self-management system to help with recovery after stroke is ready to be pilot tested, a new study reports.
Environmental Health
Maasai herding communities in Tanzania are at risk of being driven from their lands, to make way for luxury safaris for high-end tourists.
The city of Moradabad, once celebrated as the brass capital in India, has become a center for e-waste processing with more than nine metric tonnes arriving daily.
Equity & Disparities
The past two years have been a challenging time to live through in the United States. The Trump campaign and presidency themselves were founded on spreading racist rhetoric, and also can with a rise in reports of bullying and harassment based on race. All of these factors have impacted the mental health of millions of Americans.
Three in four children born in South Sudan since independence, the youngest country in the world, have known nothing but war.
Women, Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health
The Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to water down an international resolution supporting breastfeeding go against decades of advice by most medical organizations and public health experts. The American Academy of Pediatrics calls human breast milk the “normative standard” for infant feeding, and recommends that mothers breastfeed their babies exclusively for six months.
There’s a reason why a story about 12 boys gets more attention than the world’s 12 million refugees under the age of 18. The more people who are suffering in a crisis, the harder it is for people to become engaged with their stories, says Delafield.
That’s because of a phenomenon known as “psychic numbing,” which psychologist Paul Slovic has written about extensively.
A study reports that infants who were introduced to solids slept longer and woke up less frequently than those infants who were exclusively breastfed to around six months of age.
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