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Doctors Struggling to Fight ‘Totally Drug-Resistant’ Tuberculosis in South Africa
In a patient's fight against tuberculosis—the bacterial lung disease that kills more people annually than any infectious disease besides HIV— doctors have more than 10 drugs from which to choose. Most of those didn't work for Uvistra Naidoo, a South African doctor who contracted the disease in his clinic. For those who contract the disease now, maybe none of them will.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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Obama in SOTU: Eradicate extreme poverty in 20 years
In a Feb. 12 speech focused on improving the lot of the U.S. middle class, Obama also vowed to help stabilize countries such as Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Mali, and help to spread democracy from the Middle East to South-East Asia.
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- Impact Assessment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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An Optimistic Era for Global Infectious Disease Control
The world has an "historic opportunity" to contain and end three of humanity's deadliest scourges by focusing on their "hot zones," according to Mark Dybul, the newly appointed director of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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EU budget deal freezes foreign aid spending
After tense negotiations in Brussels, European leaders reached a historic budget-cutting deal on Friday – but appeared to have spared foreign aid.The consensus reached today could have potentially negative consequences on the ability to achieve global anti-poverty goals, especially in Africa,” said Natalia Alonso, head of Oxfam’s EU office.
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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In Microsoft’s ‘4Afrika’ launch, a surprising game-changer
In the next three years, the Microsoft Afrika Initiative aims to “help place tens of millions” of smartphones in the hands of African consumers, bring 1 million small and medium-size African businesses and nonprofits online, train 100,000 African university graduates (and find jobs for 75,000 of them), and pilot low-cost wireless broadband in Kenya using “white-space” spectrum.
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- Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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‘Tsunami’ of Diseases Waiting to Hit
A tsunami is looming on the horizon and the world is unprepared for it. This one won’t be a massive wall of water but a tidal wave of non-communicable disease – cancer, heart disease, diabetes and chronic respiratory diseases, among others – and experts say the international community needs to act fast to keep it from crashing.
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- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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TB vaccine trial disappoints
The first tuberculosis (TB) vaccine to be tested for efficacy in infants in more than 40 years has proved ineffective as a TB booster shot, but it may have laid the groundwork for the next phase in TB vaccine research.The world has relied on the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine against TB for over 90 years, despite recent controversy over its efficacy. In clinical trials, effectiveness estimates have ranged from 80 percent protection to none at all; the reasons for these differences are not yet understood.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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Healthcare Initiative to Train 1 Million Health Workers for Rural Africa
Across sub-Saharan Africa, community health workers using mobile phones and broadband access to sophisticated medical resources are delivering health care to where it is most needed, among the rural poor. A new campaign aims to greatly expand that effort by training, equipping and deploying one million health care workers by the end of 2015, reaching millions of underserved people.At the World Economic Forum today, Rwanda President Paul Kagame and Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez joined Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs in announcing the campaign, which will be overseen by a steering committee at the Earth Institute and will be run through the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (www.undsdsn.org) as part of its Solutions Initiative.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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