Politics & Policies
Given the collective threat posed by certain highly pathogenic infectious diseases – whether through naturally occurring outbreaks or deliberate or accidental release – the governments of the United States and Australia have formed a multi-sectoral partnership to strengthen health security in the Indo-Pacific Region. This partnership advances the goals of the U.S. National Security Strategy and the Australian Foreign Policy White Paper and strongly supports implementation of the Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA), which endeavors to create a world safe and secure from infectious disease threats.
The Trump administration is resisting the World Health Organization’s effort to sharply limit antibiotic use in farm animals, a move intended to help preserve the drugs’ effectiveness.
Since the 2016 United States elections, immigrants from Latin America with HIV have become more anxious about the possibility of being deported to their home countries and losing access to medical care, according to a recent Viewpoint published in The Lancet HIV.
Programs, Grants & Awards
Tuesday’s Global Disability Summit in London yielded 170 commitments to increase disability inclusion and tackle stigma in lower-income countries, according to the United Kingdom government, from financial pledges, to in-kind devices and technology, to new or amended action plans and charters.
On July 17th, NTI | bio of the Nuclear Threat Initiative partnered with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, PATH, and the Global Health Council, with support from the Open Philanthropy Project, to bring together congressional staff across committees to highlight the challenges of detecting and responding to an outbreak caused by a novel pathogen.
Research
Seven out of 10 middle-aged people in India have poor muscle health, key to an active lifestyle and can impact health and wellness, finds a survey.
Duke faculty have been partnering with colleagues in Sir Lanka since 2005, but their research collaboration recently entered new territory: outbreak response.
Diseases & Disasters
Twelve cases of human infection with Angiostrongylus cantonensis, otherwise known as rat lungworm, have been identified in the continental United States, with possible sources including raw vegetables from local gardens, according to study results from the CDC.
With the recent outbreak declared over in little more than two months, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s health minister explains how a major crisis was avoided.
Advancements in health and science and a sea change in policy priorities over the past decade have made it possible to believe that an end to the HIV epidemic might be in sight.
A report by UNAIDS, “Miles to go—closing gaps, breaking barriers, righting injustices”, warns that the global response to HIV is at a critical point. Eastern and Southern Africa remain the regions most affected by the HIV epidemic, accounting for 45 percent of the world’s HIV infections and 53 percent of people with HIV globally.
Technology
Medical devices are essential to health care systems however, health systems in low-income countries (LICs) often have limited access to them. As a result, these countries rely heavily on donations, with some LICs receiving donations making up 80% of their supply of medical devices. While good intentioned, there is often a mismatch between the types of equipment needed or usable and those that are received.
Chinese state media say a total of 15 people have been detained in a growing scandal over the faking of records by a vaccine rabies maker.
Environmental Health
In June of 1988, a time when most experts treated global warming as a future issue, NASA’s leading climate scientist James Hansen announced on Capitol Hill that Earth’s atmosphere was already warming and that it was getting worse. Hansen told the Associated Press that he wishes that his forecast about global warming had been wrong, but unfortunately it was right.
Researchers think that temperature increases could lead to a 1.4 percent increase in suicides in the United States and a 2.3 percent increase in Mexico by 2050. That would add up to an additional 21,000 suicides in the two countries. The effects of rising temperatures on suicide rates are about the same as that of economic recessions effects, according to the study authors.
Equity & Disparities
More than 800 delegates representing government, civil society and the development community are convening today for the first Global Disability Summit, hosted by the British and Kenyan governments and the International Disability Alliance with the goal of generating new commitments toward implementing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
India has scrapped its 12% tax on all sanitary products following months of campaigning by activists.
Women, Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health
A major new study has shown that rotavirus vaccination reduced infant diarrhea deaths by 34% in rural Malawi, a region with high levels of child deaths.
In 1968 at the International Conference on Human Rights, family planning was declared a human right. Today, we mark the 50th anniversary of World Population Day and we celebrate this watershed moment when the global community asserted the right of all individuals to plan their families.
IH CONNECT 