Bloomberg Examines Global Rise In Obesity, Efforts To Reverse Trend April 7, 2016 News Summary Bloomberg: The World Is Getting Fatter and No One Knows How to Stop It “…Economic forces are conspiring to cause the great global weight gain. Countries grow wealthier and increase consumption. People move from rural areas to cities, where they have ready access to inexpensive, processed foods. Machines do work…
Scientists Look To Rubella For Answers On Zika, While Vaccine Researchers Work To Respond To Polio, Zika, Other Diseases April 7, 2016 News Summary The Atlantic: What Zika Researchers Can Learn From the Rubella Outbreak of 1964 “…[P]ublic health officials in the United States are looking back to the history of the disease as they try to figure out what to do about a threat unlike anything they’ve seen in decades. The Zika virus,…
Amid Multiple Crises In Brazil, Recife’s Officials, Doctors Respond To Zika With Few Resources April 7, 2016 News Summary NPR: How To Fight Zika When Your Country Is In Trouble: Improvise “[Recife Health Secretary Jailson Correia] asked for $7 million to fight Zika. He got a few hundred thousand dollars. … Why so stingy? Because Zika isn’t the only emergency in Brazil. Two other mosquito-borne viruses are spiking: Dengue…
Philippines Launches First School-Based Dengue Fever Immunization Campaign April 7, 2016 News Summary CNN: World’s first dengue fever vaccine launched in the Philippines “…The Philippines’ Department of Health launched a school-based immunization program in highly affected areas, making it the first country where the vaccine is commercially available…” (East, 4/6).
Longer Maternity Leave Lowers Risk Of Infant Mortality In LMICs, Study Shows April 7, 2016 News Summary SciDev.Net: Longer paid maternity leave saves babies “More generous policies for paid maternity leave can save the lives of babies in developing countries, a study has found. The paper estimates that each extra month of maternity leave is linked to about eight fewer infant deaths for each 1,000 live births.…
South Sudan Faces Drug Shortages, MSF, Government Official Say April 7, 2016 News Summary IRIN: Major drug shortage hits South Sudan “South Sudan is facing a critical shortage of drugs and life-saving medicines, according to Médecins Sans Frontières and a government official. It comes at a time when humanitarian organizations have been placed in a near-impossible situation — increasingly relied upon to provide most…
International Coordination, Investment Critical To Mental Health Efforts April 7, 2016 News Summary Nature: Action on mental health needs global cooperation Pamela Y. Collins, director of the Office for Research on Disparities & Global Mental Health at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, and Shekhar Saxena, director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO “…The need and…
Using ‘Cleaner, More Efficient’ Cookstoves Can Improve Global Health April 7, 2016 News Summary Huffington Post: Five Ways Clean Cooking Improves Health Radha Muthiah, CEO of the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves “…Cooking over open fires and smoky stoves … leads to a wide range of noncommunicable diseases, such as pneumonia, lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The good news is it doesn’t have to…
Improved Data On Women, Girls Essential To Achieving SDGs April 7, 2016 News Summary The Guardian: Leaving women out of development statistics just doesn’t add up Mayra Buvinic, U.N. Foundation senior fellow working on Data2X, and Ruth Levine, director of the global development and population program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and co-chair of the Data2X technical advisory group “We have a…
Global Community Should Invest In Surgery To Improve Health, ‘Ease The Burden Of Human Suffering’ April 7, 2016 News Summary U.S. News & World Report: The Human Right to Heal Fizan Abdullah, division head of pediatric surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital, professor of surgery at Northwestern University, and founding member of the G4 Alliance “…[Achieving global surgery] will require us to break free of the toxic,…