New research shows that interactive, mobile technology safely improves male circumcision care quality at lower cost than standard post-operative visits.
Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe says his story starts in 1973. He had just gotten his Ph.D. at the Rega Institute in Belgium. He could have stayed in Europe, but he decided to return to Congo, or what was then known as Zaire, which had only recently attained independence from Belgium. He took a job as a field epidemiologist. In 1976, he was called to an outbreak of a mysterious disease in central Congo.
Better vaccines, nutrition and disease control have cut the global death rate for children in half over the past 20 years. But even within countries that have made major progress, children can face greatly different fates.
"Where you're born substantially impacts your probability of surviving to 5," says Simon Hay, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who is the lead author of a new study on childhood mortality in Nature.
That a professor of epidemiology could take part in an odd competition like weightlifting was sure to leave Kenyans’ mouths agape.
Added to the fact that the mother of four and grandmother of two is a few days shy of her 58th birthday (she was born on October 26, 1961, like President Uhuru Kenyatta), the result was an internet sensation.
That is why a photograph of Prof Elizabeth Bukusi, chief research officer at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), has been doing the rounds on social media in the past week.
Predicting where Ebola might strike next could become easier, thanks to a new computer model. The model tracks how changes in the environment and in human societies could affect the deadly virus’s spread. It predicts that Ebola outbreaks could become as much as 60 percent more likely by 2070 if the world continues on a path toward a warmer climate and a cooling economy.
Analysis from leading researchers shows there could be significant benefits from a presidentially-led initiative focused on combatting pandemics. With the 2020 Presidential race under way, the researchers provide new evidence on the potential for a pro-active U.S. foreign policy effort to halt current pandemics, prevent new outbreaks from becoming pandemics, and address disease threats linked to climate change.
By Cyrill Engmann, Clinical Professor of Global Health
Ten years into China's multi-billion dollar investment in health-care reform, the country has made "spectacular" progress on some top public health challenges — including insurance coverage and deaths of children. But it's facing an uphill battle on others, including second-hand smoke and cancer, according to a special China-themed issue on September 28 of the journal The Lancet.
When mosquito season brought past dengue outbreaks to regions across the Asian tropics, Nepal hardly had to worry. The high-altitude Himalayan country was typically too chilly for the disease-carrying insects to live. But with climate change opening new paths for the viral disease, Nepal is now reeling from an unprecedented outbreak.
At least 9,000 people — from 65 of Nepal’s 77 districts — have been diagnosed with dengue since August, including six patients who have died, according to government health data.
In sub-Saharan Africa, many young women and adolescent girls are at high risk of HIV infection. In a new research paper published in the open access journal PLOS Medicine, Kenneth Mugwanya and co-authors report on a study aiming to investigate the feasibility of providing antiretroviral drugs via family planning clinics to prevent HIV infection in young women.