Global Health Progress

Malaria kills one million people a year, most of them children in Africa’s so-called Malaria Belt (the sub-Saharan region). In partnership with the Gates Foundation, pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline is preparing an ambitious clinical trial there, which promises to vaccinate 16,000 African children in seven countries with an experimental treatment. The challenge: How do you build a clinical infrastructure that can transmit x-rays and data into GSK’s network in places that have no electricity and no phones?

The Ministry of Health of the Government of Southern Sudan, backed by UNICEF and other partners, today will unveiled a further effort to reduce child and maternal mortality tomorrow with the launch of the Accelerated Child Survival Initiative (ACSI) in Eastern Equatoria state that will and eventually roll to the other nine states of Southern Sudan.

Bindura — A lack of understanding about cholera and a failure to adapt social customs in rural Zimbabwe to curb the waterborne disease is ensuring that the death toll will keep rising.Cholera has rampaged through Zimbabwe since August 2008, killing more than 4,000 people and infecting over 91,000, and although the World Health Organization (WHO) recently said reports of new cases were slowing, it warned that the “the risk of the outbreak restarting” was “real”.

The burden of transmission of the Wild polio Virus (WPV) which causes poliomyelitis decreased by over 80 per cent in Nigeria between January and March 2009.Representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Nigeria, Dr. Peter Eriki who announced last week that the number of children in the high risk states in Nigeria paralyzed by the wild polio virus in 2009 declined by the stated margin when compared to the same period in 2008.

One-quarter of all deaths from tuberculosis are in patients also infected with the AIDS virus, twice as many as previously thought, the World Health Organization said last week. In its annual Global TB Control report, the organization said that being infected with the virus can increase the risk of developing tuberculosis by 20 times.

Male circumcision, already shown to reduce the incidence of H.I.V. infection in men, also reduces transmission of both herpes simplex virus Type 2 and human papilloma virus, a study has found.

PBS’ “News Hour With Jim Lehrer” recently aired a three-part series examining various issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in South Africa. Summaries of the three segments appear in The Kaiser Network’s Daily HIV/AIDS Report.

To celebrate Mother and Child Health Week in Rwanda, Global Health Progress held a roundtable discussion with a variety of maternal and child health-focused organizations operating in Rwanda to learn more about ongoing projects promoting the health of women and children.

WASHINGTON –The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and EngenderHealth announced today that 10,000 women have received surgery for fistula with U.S. support since 2005. Fistula, a devastating vaginal injury affecting millions of women in developing countries, can be surgically repaired, but most of those with the condition lack access to a skilled surgeon or health center, making treatment out of reach.

CAPE TOWN, Mar 26 (IPS) – Despite repeated calls for integrated HIV and tuberculosis (TB) health services from medical experts and AIDS activists, most of South Africa’s public health facilities continue to treat the diseases independently. Co-infection presents a major risk to the lives of people living with HIV.