Improvements in detection, diagnosis and treatment hailed by World Health Organization as ‘a model for other countries’
Algeria and Argentina have been declared malaria-free by the World Health Organization, in what has been described as a “historic achievement” for both countries.
The declaration follows warnings that the global fight against malaria has slipped off track in recent years, with cases rising in many of the countries worst affected by the disease.
Continue reading...In a country where dirty water and poor sanitation jeopardise the lives of millions, moves are afoot to improve health facilities
It was midnight when Kalpana and Rohit Agri had to take their three-day-old daughter, Kritima, to Bardiya hospital in western Nepal. She was listless and, despite the antibiotics she’d been prescribed, had developed a high fever. Hearing her struggling to breathe, they woke a neighbour to take them.
Kritima was admitted with life-threatening neonatal sepsis, probably an infection she had picked up in the hospital where she was born.
Continue reading...Attacks on health clinics provoke concern that disclosing details of funding might ‘put a target on the head’ of medical workers
The UK has agreed not to publicly disclose how much funding has been allocated to the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following warnings this might put those responding to the outbreak at risk.
Harriett Baldwin, minister of state for Africa, said the Congolese government had asked for these details not to be made public over fears this will put “a target on the head of some of the responders”.
Continue reading...Struck by failings in the implementation of health projects, a Mozambican entrepreneur has turned to tech for a solution
The limited success of foreign-backed projects to fight diseases in Africa is down to basic misunderstanding about how to communicate even the simplest messages, a Mozambican education entrepreneur has said.
Dayn Amade, founder of Maputo-based technology company Kamaleon, is calling for the World Health Organization and aid groups to reassess how people on the African continent are educated about disease prevention.
Continue reading...Key facts about the second largest outbreak of the disease in history
With more than 2,577 confirmed cases and more than 1,803 confirmed deaths, the outbreak in the eastern DRC is the second largest in history. It has a 67% fatality rate and 11 months after it began, the case numbers are still escalating. It is disproportionately affecting women (55% of cases) and children (28%).
Continue reading...More than 1,600 people infected in North Kivu province since outbreak began in August
An Ebola epidemic in a conflict-riven region of Democratic Republic of Congo is out of control and could become as serious as the outbreak that devastated three countries in west Africa between 2013 and 2016, experts and aid chiefs have warned.
New cases over the past month have increased at the fastest rate since the outbreak began last year, as aid agencies struggle to enact a public health response in areas that have suffered decades of neglect and conflict, with incredibly fragile health systems and regular outbreaks of deadly violence involving armed groups.
Continue reading...Overcharging for life-saving medicines costs lives, yet the UK seems reluctant to support efforts to encourage fairer pricing
In a year when the British government should be working to secure progress towards universal health coverage, they are failing to champion access to life-saving medicines globally.
The Italian government has put forward a draft resolution to improve the transparency of markets for drugs, vaccines and other health-related technologies, to be discussed at the World Health Assembly in 10 days’ time.
Continue reading...Visually impaired women in Colombia are using their enhanced sense of feel to improve early breast cancer detection
As a child, Francia Papamija started progressively losing her eyesight due to a retinal detachment. Today, everything is darkness for the 36-year-old – except for the job she holds in a clinic in Cali, Colombia, where she contributes to the early detection of breast cancer.
Papamija is a medical tactile examiner (MTE), a role created especially for women who are blind and have higher sensitivity in their fingertips.
Continue reading...Women and children fare worst as efforts to contain outbreak are undermined by health centre attacks and local mistrust
The number of people killed by the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is expected to exceed 1,000 on Friday, the World Health Organization has warned.
Weekly infections have been rising since late February, with attacks by armed groups and a failure to win community trust undermining the response to the epidemic.
Continue reading...Deaths follow wave of rumours and a hoax video intended to derail final push to eradicate the disease
A federal government campaign to vaccinate more than 40 million children under five against polio in Pakistan has been suspended following a series of attacks on workers and police over the past week.
On 23 April a police officer responsible for protecting polio workers was gunned down in Bannu. The same day, a polio worker was injured with a knife in Lahore by a man refusing to allow his child to be vaccinated, citing a recent hoax video that claimed children were becoming ill after the immunisations.
Continue reading...Up to 600 flights expected daily as largest service of its kind in the world targets country’s remote areas
Twelve million people in Ghana are set to benefit from the launch of the world’s largest drone medical delivery service.
Up to 600 drone flights will be made each day, delivering vaccines, blood supplies and life-saving medicines to 2,000 health centres in remote areas around the country.
Continue reading...Attacks on health centres are impeding efforts to contain an epidemic that has claimed nearly 900 lives in nine months
Archippe Kamuha knows the signs of Ebola well: diarrhoea, bleeding, persistent fever. But if the 25-year-old developed such symptoms, she would not contact specialist health workers.
“I know that if I go [to a treatment centre], I’ll die. All my friends who go there don’t come home, they die,” said Kamuha, whose home town, Butembo, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, is at the centre of the country’s escalating Ebola outbreak.
Continue reading...Immunisation gives partial protection against the killer disease, and lessens the severity of other cases
Malawi will begin immunising young children against malaria today, in a landmark large-scale pilot of the first vaccine to give partial protection against the disease, the World Health Organization said.
Although the vaccine protects only a third of children aged under two years from life-threatening or severe malaria, clinical trials have found those who are immunised are likely to have less severe cases of the disease. Earlier, smaller trials also showed the vaccine prevented four in 10 cases of malaria overall, in babies aged between five and 17 months.
Continue reading...After reports of transgender people being refused treatment, a new centre offers specialised services – and respite from discrimination
Vivek Sharma has travelled 20km from his home to the congested eastern suburb of Mumbai for his HIV treatment. But the journey is no hardship for the 23-year-old student.
“My file was shifted to this clinic. I am so happy that this has finally happened.”
Continue reading...Almost two decades ago the World Health Organization declared leprosy eliminated, but millions of cases go undiagnosed
One summer’s morning Paniya Sardar noticed a strange mark on her leg. It was the size of her palm, light in colour and felt numb to touch. She had no idea what had caused it.
The family took Paniya, then 14, to a private clinic near their home on the outskirts of Biratnagar, a city in southern Nepal, where they were sold lotions and pills and told not to worry. Three months later, a deep wound appeared on her foot. “This particular blister was pretty big and wouldn’t heal,” her father, Sita Sardar, says through an interpreter. Six months later, it was still there.
Continue reading...More than 2,000 new cases reported every day, with 25% of those affected being children under five
Yemen is facing a massive resurgence of cholera in what was already one of the world’s worst outbreaks, with more than 137,000 suspected cases and almost 300 deaths reported in the first three months of this year.
With well over 2,000 suspected cases being recorded every day – a doubling since the beginning of the year – aid agencies fear they could be facing a major new health crisis.
Continue reading...Jaundice affects 60% of babies. Left untreated it can be life-threatening. But treatment has always been difficult to access in rural Peru
Health workers in a remote province high in the Peruvian Andes are trialling a revolutionary method to treat babies with jaundice – with nothing more than a colour-coded ruler, blood reader and carrycots.
Their goal is to screen, diagnose and treat jaundice in 12,000 newborns over the next two years in a country where 90% of the public health facilities lack the capability to adequately diagnose or treat it in newborns.
Continue reading...Faltering national response to epidemic prompts experts to consider official announcement of public health crisis
Experts will convene for an emergency meeting on Friday to determine whether the recent escalation of Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo should be declared a global health crisis.
More than eight months into the epidemic, which has killed 751 people, agencies warned the disease is still not under control. The response to the outbreak has been complicated by conflict, political instability, and distrust of Ebola services.
Continue reading...Four years into the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis, three Yemeni women ask – exactly what is required of people living in warzones?
A news report from December 2018 lays bare the depths of the crisis gripping Yemen. Mothers watch doctors measure the arms of their children. “When the tape shows red,” the TV correspondent narrates, “it means they’re severely malnourished.” After more than four years of a civil war and proxy conflict, these Yemeni children, mothers, and doctors are trapped in what the UN has called “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis of our time”.
Continue reading...Researchers warn of rise in infectious diseases amid spike in levels of malnutrition and infant and maternal mortality
The UN must officially declare a full-scale humanitarian emergency in Venezuela after the “utter collapse” of the health system, experts have said.
Warning of the return of infectious diseases and rising levels of malnutrition and infant and maternal death, a report published this week by Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calls on the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to declare a “complex humanitarian emergency”.
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