News Round Up

Politics & Policies

Today, the field of “global health” strives to create equitable and just relationships between wealthy and impoverished regions, places and peoples. But it is still a field with markedly unequal power dynamics: racism, classism and many of the residual exploitations of a terrible colonial past.

In June, a public health professional serving as an International Health Specialist deployed to Iraq as part of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.

Global health, a field dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of the poor and most vulnerable, has quietly developed a penchant for highly-paid management consultants and their business world tools.

One of the greatest threats to public health today, in the United States and around the world, isn’t a new exotic hazard. It’s antibiotic resistance: the potential failure of one of our most important and well-known disease-fighting tools.

The world is not on track to reach the 2020 targets of the End TB Strategy, according to the World Health Organization’s latest Global Tuberculosis Report, published on Thursday.

The nation’s hospital groups sued the Trump administration over a new federal rule that would require them to disclose the discounted prices they give insurers for all sorts of procedures.

Programs, Grants & Awards

More people around the world than ever before led healthy, productive lives in 2018.  It was the year that transmission of wild poliovirus was cornered to the smallest area in history, the first new treatment for relapsing malaria in 60 years was approved, and the number of women in developing countries using modern contraceptives reached record levels. Innovations in sanitation, financial services and healthcare were brought to refugees, a billion people were treated for neglected tropical diseases, and 100 million mobile money accounts across Africa were made interoperable—allowing people to send and receive payments more quickly, safely and affordably.

Inaugural Nipah virus conference convenes leading experts to strengthen global collaboration, improve efforts to combat deadly virus.

Research

Many people under 60 who develop stomach cancer have a “genetically and clinically distinct” disease, new Mayo Clinic research has discovered. Compared to stomach cancer in older adults, this new, early onset form often grows and spreads more quickly, has a worse prognosis, and is more resistant to traditional chemotherapy treatments, the study finds.

Diseases & Disasters

The Samoas, an island nation of 200,000 was unprepared for the 300% increase in measles worldwide. While it had 90% measles vaccine coverage in 2013, that percent had fallen to 30% by 2018.

In 2019, the World Health Organization and partners have responded to 51 emergencies in more than 40 countries and territories and have investigated 440 potential health threats in 138 countries and territories. 

The future of global HIV response must be very different from today’s efforts. It must be youth focused and youth led. Otherwise, many of our successes against HIV may be endangered by the rapid growth of vulnerable youth populations in the highest burden countries.

More than two years after doctors in Jerusalem removed thousands of barklike lesions that had prevented Mahmoud Taluli from using his hands for more than a decade, he continues his battle with a rare, incurable skin condition.

New Zealand has ordered 1,292 square feet of skin to treat patients injured in Monday’s volcanic eruption on White Island, authorities said Wednesday.

Rising temperatures across Asia and the Americas have contributed to multiple severe outbreaks of dengue fever globally over the past six months, making 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

The Pacific island nation of Samoa will shut down government services for two days so that civil servants can focus on a nationwide immunization drive as the country struggles to end a measles outbreak that has claimed more than 50 lives, most of them children.

Technology 

After more than two decades of research, the world finally has an approved Ebola vaccine.

Researchers have developed a new tool to predict the global spread of human infectious diseases, like dengue, and track them to their source.

Environmental Health

At Boulder High, students are prohibited from smoking cigarettes or vaping electronic cigarettes anywhere on school grounds. But Lewis and other school employees still regularly pluck e-cigarettes from students’ hands or find the used pods scattered all around.

Equity & Disparities

The United Nations said on Tuesday it was procuring food assistance for 4.1 million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the population in a country where shortages are being exacerbated by runaway inflation and climate-induced drought.

Yemen’s civil war has exacted an enormous toll on people with disabilities, who find themselves on the margins of society and excluded from badly needed humanitarian assistance, Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday.

Women, Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health

Children continue to pay a deadly price as they succumb to a nearly three-fold rise in attacks over the last 10 years in conflict-ridden areas, the United Nations has said.

What does it mean that more seasoned pediatricians are also wanting to become more engaged in global health work?  We asked Dr. Suzinne Pak-Gorstein, a pediatric leader in global health efforts, to weigh in with an accompanying commentary.

As technology advances in the things we use every day, it’s generally accepted they also become safer. But according to one UBC engineer, that may not be true for a large portion of the population.

Eastern Ukraine has become one of the most mine-contaminated places on earth, despite recent developments aimed to protect the rights of girls and boys affected by more than five-year-long conflict.