May 09, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan told Nature this week that the overprescription and unregulated use of antibiotics is “essentially destroying a valuable resource.” CDDEP researcher Sumanth Gandra was also interviewed for the article, saying that the cycle of antibiotic resistance will continue unless we have new drugs and approach the way we use them differently. [Nature]
CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan emphasized the need for the standardized collection of data on antibiotic use and resistance in India and other developing countries in this post for the science and environment publication Down To Earth. [Down To Earth]
Sir George Alleyne s discussion of the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health s Global Health 2035 report, which was recently presented at the Pan-American Health Organization, is now available to view online. [YouTube]
A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that mortality among adults age 20-64 in Massachusetts in the four years following the institution of near-universal health insurance coverage in the state decreased by 2.9% compared to a control group of adults in other states without similar programs. [The Atlantic]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has called the international spread of polio in 2014 an “extraordinary event”, declaring it a global health emergency. [WHO]
Malaria is reemerging in urban Venezuela for the first time in half a century, with health officials fearing the rainy season will cause the disease to spread at a faster pace. [The Guardian]
Local transmission of chikungunya, an arthropod-borne virus transmitted through mosquito bites, was reported in Saint Martin in December 2013 for the the first time ever in the Americas. Since then, it has continued to spread throughout the Caribbean, with the latest update from the CDC reporting cases of transmission in 14 countries. [CDC]
A study published this week in the journal Current Biology revealed that antibiotic-resistant genes are abundant in nature. While most of these genes are harmless to humans, the results of the study raised questions about how they are transferred to harmful pathogens. [Washington Post]
American company Sanaria this week launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the construction of a robot that would extract malaria parasites from mosquitoes salivary glands a job that is currently done by hand with the help of microscopes. The parasites are a key ingredient in a malaria vaccine that has been developed by the company. [New York Times]
Operation ASHA Founder Shelly Batra this week called for for better supervision of funds dedicated to eradicating TB, saying that huge amounts of funds have been poured into a bottomless pit . [Huffington Post]
Belgian NGO Apopo has been training rats to detect tuberculosis with their sense of smell, enabling health professionals to diagnose patients more reliably. [Deutsche Welle]
Image via Aleksey Krasavin/Flickr.
