December 05, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
58,000 Indian newborns died last year of antibiotic-resistant infections, as reported in a New York Times this week. The article quoted director Ramanan Laxminarayan and cited CDDEP’s research on the global rise in antibiotic use and the need for global efforts to address it. [The New York Times]
Three new papers from CDDEP were published and made available online this week: a study on sex-selective abortion bans and newborn sex ratios in Illinois and Pennsylvania, an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of treatment and secondary prevention of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in India and a review on estimating the economic burden of antibiotic resistance.
On the CDDEP blog, Associate Director Hellen Gelband wrote about how “cheap” drugs are largely depends on where you sit and what you work on. [CDDEP]
Antibiotic resistance is one of four major global health threats of the 21st century, according to a story published this week in the International Monetary Fund’s Finance and Development Magazine. CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan wrote the article on antibiotic resistance as one of the four highlighted threats, alongside pandemic risk, environmental hazards and noncommunicable diseases and mental disorders. [Finance and Development]
The WHO’s Dec 1 goals for containing Ebola were mostly reached, but the year-end goals are not likely to be. Effective measurement of the disease’s spread, and response to the containment goals remains difficult. Administrators at the WHO say they’ve reached key milestones but caution that much work lies ahead to get to zero cases. [BBC, The New York Times]
The largest global cancer study ever undertaken—with data on over 25 million patients in 67 countries —was published this week in The Lancet. The study found that cancer kills more people in developing countries than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined, and that survival rates are several times higher in many developed countries for some types of cancer. Also launched this week: The Cancer Atlas, a fantastic map tool available online from the American Cancer Society. [The Lancet]
Failures in infection control have been linked to an uptick in MERS cases in Saudi Arabia, after several deaths from the virus occurred in early November and a study in Jeddah that found 97 percent of new cases were hospital acquired. Algeria recorded its first MERS death this week as the Middle East outbreak’s total has reached over 900 lab-confirmed cases. [WHO]
Reducing hospital errors saved 50,000 lives in US hospitals over a three-year period through 2013; roughly $12 billion in healthcare spending was avoided on the 17 percent reduction in hospital-acquired conditions. [HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality]
PET/CT lung scans can help select the best-choice TB treatment for a given patient, according to new research from scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The scanning strategy can successfully predict which drugs a case may respond to, and could help identify multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant (XDR) tuberculosis earlier. [Science Translational Medicine]
US painkiller overdoses are down, but heroin deaths are rapidly rising. The results of a CDC report published this week detailed trends in drug overdoses from 1999-2012, which found age-adjusted overdoses more than doubled in the US in that timeframe. [CDC]
New FDA agricultural antibiotic use guidelines may not work to appropriately curb use of medically necessary antibiotics, found a Pew analysis published this week. [Pew Charitable Trusts]
HIV’s ability to cause AIDS is becoming milder, and has slowly become less virulent as it adapts to human immune systems, found a paper published by researchers at Oxford this week. [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences]
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