April 25, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
April 25th is World Malaria Day. Check out our collection of news and research on malaria from the last year. [CDDEP]
CDDEP s Drug Resistance Index, which provides an aggregate trend measure of drug resistance, was featured in this month s issue of Managed Care. CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan was also interviewed for the article. [CDDEP]
CDDEP talked with Dr. Adel Mahmoud of Princeton University s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs and Department of Molecular Biology about the Lancet Commission on Investing in Health s Global Health 2035 report. Dr. Mahmoud is a member of the Commission, of which CDDEP serves as Secretariat. [CDDEP]
The tsetse fly is known for spreading the deadly diseases African trypanosomiasis (commonly known as sleeping sickness ) and nagana to humans and animals, respectively. Over the last 10 years, researchers have analyzed the genome of the tsetse fly, identifying behaviours that enable the fly to pass on the disease and opening doors for the development of prevention strategies. [EurekAlert]
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this week announced that it would help fund a clinical trial for PaMZ, a drug regimen that would reduce the treatment time for drug-resistant tuberculosis from 24 months to six months and cost around $100. [WSJ]
Amplino, a low-cost, highly sensitive malaria detector created by three Dutch inventors, will soon go into field testing in rural Zambia. [The Guardian]
Twenty-nine global health experts, including CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan, discussed the potentially huge rewards of universal vaccination in The Lancet this week. [The Lancet]
The Guardian shows how a strong volunteer force and mobile technologies can improve disease surveillance in low-income countries, using the activities of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in South Sudan as an example. [The Guardian]
Twenty years ago this week, HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. Watch the original ABC broadcast, in which researchers refer to the virus as HTLV-3 , here. [ABC]
Thousands of antibiotic resistance genes have been identified in manure from dairy cows. While these genes have mostly been found in bacteria that aren’t harmful to humans, researchers are keeping an eye out for similar developments in more dangerous bacteria. [Infection Control Today]
Rates of foodborne illness, caused by bacteria such as Salmonella and Escherichia coli, have remained largely unchanged and in some cases increased over the past five years, according to the CDC’s latest annual study on the subject. WIRED s Maryn McKenna discusses the results of the study, as well as the potential dangers presented by the increased use of rapid diagnostic tests. [WIRED]
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Image via Enrique Dans/Flickr.
