-
Where the Opioids Go
The idea is that suffering isn’t always preventable, but a few cents’ worth of morphine can make an enormous difference. Some 45 percent of the 56.2 million people who died in 2015 experienced serious suffering, the authors found. That included 2.5 million children. More than 80 percent of the people were from developing regions, and the vast majority had no access to palliative care and pain relief.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health
-
Tenfold increase in childhood and adolescent obesity in four decades: new study by Imperial College London and WHO
The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London and WHO.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- nutrition
-
As Cancer Tears Through Africa, Drug Makers Draw Up a Battle Plan
Cancer now kills about 450,000 Africans a year. By 2030, it will kill almost 1 million annually, the World Health Organization predicts. The most common African cancers are the most treatable, including breast, cervical and prostate tumors.
But here they are often lethal. In the United States, 90 percent of women with breast cancer survive five years. In Uganda, only 46 percent do; in Gambia, a mere 12 percent do.- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Drug-resistant malaria is spreading, but experts clash over its global risk
The outspoken head of the Mahidol group, Nicholas White, has urged the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a designation reserved for the most serious outbreaks that pose a global threat.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
More trees help water sanitation, reduce child deaths: study
The study examined the health of 300,000 children and the quality of watersheds across 35 countries including Bangladesh, Nigeria and Colombia, and found that having more trees upstream led to healthier children.
- Categories
- Environment, Health Care
-
Plugging the Gap: What Are Funders Doing to Respond to the Global Gag Rule?
In March 2017, nearly 60 nations along with private funders and philanthropists from around the world attended what is being widely described as a “hastily convened” one-day She Decides family planning conference in Brussels, Belgium. She Decides is a global family planning initiative launched by Dutch minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Lilianne Ploumen, in response to the GGR reinstatement. The goal of the campaign is to fill the nearly $600 million funding gap that will likely be caused by the GGR.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- philanthropy
-
WHO launches bold plan to slash cholera deaths by 90 percent
The challenge is daunting. Three million people get cholera every year, in Asia, Africa and Haiti, and increasing urbanization and temperatures will put more people at risk. In Yemen, the biggest epidemic in modern times is now approaching 800,000 cases, and is growing. Emergency experts say a “catastrophic” outbreak looms in Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.
- Categories
- Health Care
-
Bad medicine: the toxic fakes at the heart of an international criminal racket
The recent news that another batch of fake meningitis vaccine had been discovered in Niger is just the most recent incidence of a particularly dangerous and cruel criminal racket. As many as 1,500 cases have been reported to a surveillance database launched by the World Health Organization in 2013, and that’s probably an underestimate, says Mick Deats, head of the substandard and falsified medicines group at WHO.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health, vaccines