Politics & Policies
The President of Malta said that maternal health care for refugee women is much needed. One in 10 women in EU have no access to maternal health and refugee women are particularly vulnerable.
The WHO is supporting South Sudan’s Ministry of Health of roll out a new community health service delivery called Boma Health Initiative aimed at improving access to primary care services.
Programs, Grants & Awards
At GlobeMed’s 5th Annual Benefit Dinner, Dr. Adams discussed the importance of partnerships rather than simply donor-recipient relationships, which is a founding tenet of GlobeMed’s framework and organization.
The week of April 4th is National Public Health Week and public health professionals are celebrating the power of prevention.
The Living Goods’ project was launched in Uganda in 2007 and in Kenya in 2015. It is one of 23 projects in 43 countries that were selected by the Social Innovation in Health Initiative, out of a total of 170 nominated in 2015, as promising new ways to improve healthcare delivery.
Research
Eating a high fat and high sugar diet when pregnant leads to metabolic impairments in both the mother and her unborn child, which may ‘program’ them for potential health complications later in life, a study in mice has shown.
A new study shows that about 21 million lives were saved due to the progress made during the MDG era.
Adults who become overweight or obese have a higher risk of dying from from heart disease, cancer or other illnesses, a new study suggests.
A new study shows that about 6.4 million deaths in 2015 can be attributed to smoking and half of these were in just 4 countries – India, US, Russia and China.
Seven months after Rio Olympics, Zika continues to plague babies in urban slums.
Diseases & Disasters
2017 is shaping to be a bad year for the measles worldwide, says Dr. Seth Berkley, who leads the nonprofit Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, devoted to vaccinating children worldwide.
Heart disease kills more people than all types of cancer combined. Every year, nearly 450,000 Americans die suddenly from cardiac arrest. Nearly 88 percent of cardiac arrests occur at home, and the survival rate for an out-of-hospital sudden cardiac death is only 7 percent but can be significantly increased with prompt activation of the 911 emergency system and bystander intervention.
Direct Relief has contributed $32 million in medical resources for Colombia and Peru, where historic flooding and mudslides have killed hundreds of the region’s most vulnerable people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
Sleep deprivation may be linked to a gene mutation. According to researchers at The Rockefeller University, there’s a variant of a gene called CRY1 that slows the internal biological clock (also known as the circadian clock) – which normally is what tells the body when to feel tired at night and when you’re ready to wake.
Cancer death rates in the United States are continuing to fall and the five-year survival rates of those diagnosed with the disease have risen, research shows.
For the first time, doctors can determine which medication is more likely to help a patient overcome depression, according to research that pushes the medical field beyond what has essentially been a guessing game of prescribing antidepressants.
Aid agencies have warned that self-harm and attempted suicides are on the rise among refugees in Greece.
A series of interviews and investigations shed light on how Syrian military hospitals have been used as sites of torture since 2011.
As part of a collaborative project with the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Eijkman Oxford Medical Research Unit, Jakarta and J. Kevin Baird, PhD, photos taken by photographer Pearl Gan were meant to increase awareness of the plight of people affected by malaria in the Asia Pacific.
Technology
Institut Pasteur Shanghai-Chinese Academy of Sciences (IPS-CAS), a partner of the ZIKAlliance consortium, announced that it has entered into a collaborative research agreement with Chongqing Zhifei Biological Products Stock Co., Ltd. (Zhifei) for the clinical studies and commercialization of a recombinant Zika virus subunit vaccine developed by IPS-CAS.
Since their advent in the early twentieth century, antibiotics have saved countless lives, curing human beings of diseases caused by harmful bacteria. But from the beginning of the antibiotics era, in the middle of the twentieth century, scientists warned that misuse or overuse of the drugs would render them less effective, or even useless as bacteria evolved into drug-resistant forms.
Environmental Health
Gov. Jerry Brown declared an end to California’s historic drought Friday, lifting emergency orders that had forced residents to stop running sprinklers as often and encouraged them to rip out thirsty lawns during the state’s driest four-year period on record.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — toxic air pollutants produced by fuel combustion – are typically treated as a local issue in places with smog and bad air quality. A recent study suggests, however, that these pollutants may actually travel long distances and affect people across the globe.
An alliance of green groups has warned that the UN-backed hydro-projects will have serious environmental consequences and has condemned the use of climate fund for large dams.
Equity & Disparities
Since its inception, the Yale-UKZN Collaborative has expanded dramatically. Today, the collaborative focuses on addressing public health priorities in at-risk communities, while simultaneously advancing research programs and supporting the education of trainees at both Yale and UKZN.
US President Donald Trump’s recently released 2018 budget blueprint proposes deep cuts in US foreign aid, prompting a discussion on the role of such spending in improving the health and well being of the world’s most vulnerable people.
Smoking rates in the US have been falling for decades. Yet, about 15 percent of adults – more than 36 million – continue to smoke cigarettes.
At the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s 4th Annual State of Global Health Symposium, entitled “Urban Evolution: Optimizing Women’s Health in the World’s Cities,” Lynn Freedman, professor of population and family health at Columbia University, talked about the “deeply vulnerable” population of poor women and girls who are hidden from view in the world’s cities.
Maternal, Neonatal & Children’s Health
Pregnant women who have gotten their booster vaccine against whooping cough (pertussis) have reason to cheer: their newborns are far less likely to get the disease than any other babies.
Many women in sub-Saharan Africa face high risks of dying from cervical cancer. Here the chances of getting diagnosed and treated for cancer are extremely slim, unlike in developed countries that have well-funded, sophisticated cancer programs.
IH CONNECT 