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Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine leads HIV/AIDS strategy for Libya

Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) is leading a project to provide technical assistance to the Libyan government to finalise the development of a national HIV strategy and programme of support. The project is supported by a €1 million grant from the Delegation of the European Commission to Libya.

4 Aug 2009

Mathematical modelling to tackle influenza

Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin will participate in a $3 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to fight influenza and other diseases by creating models that simulate the complex interplay between human behavior and the spread of disease.

4 Aug 2009

Daytime temperature fluctuations may alter malaria patterns

Daytime temperature fluctuations greatly alter the incubation period of malaria parasites in mosquitoes and alter transmission rates of the disease. Consideration of these fluctuations reveals a more accurate picture of climate change's impact on malaria.

3 Aug 2009

Scientists discover original source of malignant malaria

Researchers have identified what they believe is the original source of malignant malaria: a parasite found in chimpanzees in equatorial Africa.

3 Aug 2009

New research helps explain why treated genital herpes sores boost risk of HIV infection

New research helps explain why infection with herpes simplex virus-2 (HSV-2), which causes genital herpes, increases the risk for HIV infection even after successful treatment heals the genital skin sores and breaks that often result from HSV-2.

3 Aug 2009

AFP examines debate over H1N1 spending, resource allocation

There is concern that as developed countries store away antivirals, face masks and vaccines to protect against the H1N1 (swine) flu virus, poor countries are being left empty handed. "Some critics say the spending is so imbalanced that it amounts to health apartheid, protecting rich countries against H1N1 but leaving poor nations to fend for themselves," the news service writes, adding, "Others argue gargantuan sums are being spent on a disease that is no more lethal than seasonal flu, which is grotesquely disproportionate when thousands die each day of less media-friendly diseases."

3 Aug 2009

Tanzania drug audit; WFP might suspend flights; acute HIV; HIV/AIDS in China

Global Fund audit reveals expired, missing drugs in Tanzania, funding shortfall may ground some WFP flights transporting aid workers, UNAIDS China Coordinator reflects on HIV/AIDS in China present, future.

3 Aug 2009

Nigeria, UNICEF launch first national child health week

UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman, who visited Nigeria to launch the country's first ever National Child Health Week, said an unacceptably high number of children in the country are dying from preventable diseases, and she called on Nigerian government officials to provide integrated healthcare, Xinhua reports (8/3).

3 Aug 2009

Washington Post examines health toll of Congo conflict

The Washington Post examines the devastating toll the conflict in the Congo has had on the health of the country's displaced civilians, as told through the death of a 36-year-old farmer, who succumbed to typhoid fever far away from the home he abandoned.

3 Aug 2009

IPS examines legislative measures to fight HIV/AIDS

Inter Press Service examines several civil society organizations' argument that legislative measures aimed at fighting HIV/AIDS, "hurt more" than they "help." There are 58 countries with laws in place to "prosecute HIV transmission" and 33 others where such legislation is being considered, according to the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

31 Jul 2009

Lancet examines leishmaniasis in east Africa

A Lancet world report examines the growing threat of visceral leishmaniasis on populations in eastern Africa. Each year, the parasitic disease affects around 500,000 people worldwide, killing roughly 50,000. Though "[t]wo-thirds of [leishmaniasis] patients are in southeast Asia … the second largest foci is east Africa: perhaps as many as 40,000 cases every year, and incidence is on the rise," according to the article.

31 Jul 2009

U.S. decision on use of adjuvants could reduce world supply of H1N1 vaccine, says Lancet editorial

"A U.S. plan to rely on swine flu vaccines without ingredients to stretch the supply [known as adjuvants] would reduce the number of available shots just when other countries need them most, the British journal Lancet said in an editorial," Bloomberg writes.

31 Jul 2009

Virulence of pandemic H1N1 virus analyzed

Laboratory studies at Kansas State University and the work of a K-State researcher are making headway in the effort to control the pandemic H1N1 virus.

31 Jul 2009

Malaria: Artemisinin resistance continues developing in western Cambodia

Artemisinin, the "basis of the most effective" malaria treatment recommended by the WHO, took nearly twice as long to clear malaria parasites in patients in western Cambodia than it did in patients in northwestern Thailand, according to a New England Journal of Medicine study, which shows the "drugs are losing their power against the disease in Cambodia," Bloomberg reports (Bennett, 7/30).

30 Jul 2009

New guidelines issued for H1N1 vaccine campaign by Federal Advisory Committee

During a meeting in Atlanta on Wednesday, a "federal advisory committee issued sweeping guidelines … for a vaccination campaign against the pandemic swine flu strain, identifying more than half the U.S. population as targets for the first round of vaccinations," CNN reports (Hellerman, 7/29).

30 Jul 2009

Pilot program to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis in South African communities examined by New York Times

The New York Times examines a Doctors Without Borders pilot program to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis in South Africa that allows patients to stay in their homes rather than be isolated in hospital during treatment.

30 Jul 2009

HIV/AIDS research initiative launched in South Africa

South Africa's Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor on Tuesday announced a government-sponsored research initiative that "aims to combat HIV and AIDS through scientific and technological research, the development of new drugs, diagnostic tests and vaccines," SAPA/IOL reports (7/28).

30 Jul 2009

Maternal mortality; health system strengthening, Opinions

Columnist Nicholas Kristof examines maternal health in developing countries in his latest New York Times opinion piece. Kristof describes a Pakistani woman's birth experience to illustrate the sort of "dramas" that "play out constantly in poor countries" where one "woman dies a minute from complications of pregnancy or childbirth somewhere in the world, and 20 times as many suffer childbirth injuries," he writes.

30 Jul 2009

Expanded testing reveals 2000 percent increase in number of HIV-positive Indian children

"Expanded testing across India in the past three years shows a 2,000 percent jump in the number of HIV cases among children, [Ghulam Nabi Azad] the country's health minister announced Wednesday," CNN reports.

30 Jul 2009

Higher drug doses needed to defeat tuberculosis in overweight and obese

The typical dose of a medication considered pivotal in treating tuberculosis effectively is much too low to account for modern-day physiques, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers said.

30 Jul 2009