-
Building public-private partnerships for better access to health products
Improving health outcomes for the most vulnerable people requires global funding and collaboration – but neither will have an impact without effective systems for delivering health products and care. Strong supply chains, while critical for improving lives, are rarely the focus of programmes that aim to achieve the millennium development goals or end deaths from preventable disease. As World Health Organisation director-general Dr. Margaret Chan has said, "All the donated drugs in the world won't do any good without an infrastructure for their delivery."
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Pakistan polio outbreak puts global eradication at risk
A Taliban ban on vaccination is exacerbating a serious polio outbreak in Pakistan, threatening to derail dramatic progress made this year towards wiping out the disease worldwide, health officials say.Health teams in Pakistan have been attacked repeatedly since the Taliban denounced vaccines as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims and imposed bans on inoculation in June 2012.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- public health
-
Oiling the Vaccine Supply Chain: Corporate expertise helps give more kids a shot at a healthy life
About 20 percent of the world’s children go unvaccinated, leading to more than 1.5 million avoidable deaths annually. Many are due to inadequate vaccine delivery systems. A new initiative aims to ease this problem by tapping into global corporations’ supply chain expertise.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Birth advice by text message: Phone medicine saving lives in Kenya
A young woman steals her way down darkened passages in Korogocho -- one of Kenya's largest slums. Crime, prostitution and drug use are rampant in the locality where a quarter of a million people reside and the young woman's eyes dart around erratically on the lookout for danger. It should be one of the happiest days of her life -- she is pregnant and has just gone into labor. She is also one of the fortunate few that can afford to go to hospital. Some women face a homebirth where, instead of medical equipment, they must make do with cotton wool and razorblades. But the journey to hospital leaves her vulnerable to opportunistic assault.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
-
Low-cost healthcare: US can take cue from India
The United States may be good at innovations in medicines, procedures and equipment. But it should learn from India how to keep health care affordable, says a new study. India's private hospitals provided world-class health care at a fraction of US prices using innovative ways to manage costs, personnel, equipment and even real estate.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
- Region
- South Asia
-
Bikes for Africa changing health care
When Andrea Coleman bought her first motorcycle six months before her 16th birthday, all she wanted to do was escape her “funny little suburb” outside London. Now, almost 50 years later, she is being credited with using motorcycles to revolutionise Africa's transport and health systems. The mother- of-three will receive the Barclays Women of the Year award at the 59th annual Women of the Year Lunch on 16 October.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
NewDigm: an example to be followed for improving healthcare in rural areas
Scientific paradigm is a recognized achievement which provides solution models to be followed by a specific community. That is exactly the role NewDigm is performing in the Indian rural healthcare landscape: by developing mobile-based Clinical Decision Support apps, real-time monitoring & tracking systems or training village health workers (VHW), they aim to be the new solution for democratizing access to quality and affordable healthcare through appropriate technology.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
- Tags
- public health
-
Disrupting The Pharmaceutical Industry To Save The World From Diarrhea
Pharmaceutical companies like to focus on developing two kinds of drugs: blockbuster drugs that lots of people use (like Lipitor), and more recently, extremely expensive niche drugs. Drugs targeted specifically for common afflictions that affect the developing world aren't as profitable and are often left out of the picture entirely. Global health nonprofit Path is trying to change that with an ambitious drug development program that targets diseases like kala-azar (also known as black fever disease), malaria, HIV, and diarrheal diseases, such as cholera.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health