November 30, 2012
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
An editorial in Nature notes the successes of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm) and shares concerns about the impact of the Global Fund’s decision to effectively end the program. [Nature]
AMFm has very little chance of survival at this point, says CDDEP director Ramanan Laxminarayan in an Economist article on the Global Fund s recent restructuring and its decision to roll AMFm into its general grant process. [The Economist]
USA Today reports on the rising threat of Carbapenem-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in the US. [USA Today]
According to new data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli are continuously gaining resistance to antibiotics in Europe. [CIDRAP]
England s chief medical officer warns that antibiotics are rapidly losing their effectiveness and issues a list of dos and don ts for a judicious use of antibiotics. [BBC]
Results from a survey looking at the prevalence of hospital-acquired infections and antibiotic prescribing in Ireland show that 5% of patients admitted to hospitals in the country acquire an infection. [RTE]
Consumer Reports investigation of pork sold in the US finds a widespread prevalence of the pathogen yersinia enterocolitica and other harmful bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and traces of the drug ractopamine. [HuffPo]
The annual report on healthcare-associated infections in Alabama hospitals during 2011 are available online.
Mark Kendall, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Queensland in Australia, is developing Nanopatches to replace the traditional syringe-and-needle method that will make vaccination painless, cheaper, safer and more effective. [National Geographic]
Results from research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) show that a potential new malaria drug is capable of killing malaria parasites rapidly in culture and significantly reducing malarial infections in mice. [Phys.org]
According to new research published in the journal PLoS Medicine, GeneXpert, a genetic tuberculosis and drug resistance screening tool, is better and more cost-effective at reducing the disease s spread than current methods recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). [Stanford News]
A newly established Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center (MaHPIC) will use systems biology to study and catalog the interaction of malaria parasites with their human and animal hosts in molecular detail. [Emory News]
An article in the BBC discusses concerns over the ways outsourced clinical trials are carried out in developing countries. [BBC]
An article in PLoS Blogs discusses how we might be contributing to increasing antibiotic resistance through our efforts to prevent it. [PLoS Blogs]
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