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The Blind Spot in Africa’s COVID-19 Response: Western Public Health Tactics Won’t Work – This Local Solution Might
The COVID-19 pandemic is primed to spread in Africa, and with just one doctor per 5,000 people, a major outbreak would overwhelm the continent’s health care systems. But as Anatole Manzi at Partners In Health points out, tactics like social distancing and hand-washing are not feasible in crowded slums and areas without clean water. He proposes a home-grown solution: training young people as community health workers.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Health Care
- Tags
- COVID-19, public health
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Data Around COVID-19 Is a Mess and Here’s Why That Matters
Aid organizations use data to help understand needs and target their interventions – but their analyses and responses are only as good as the data at hand.
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- Tags
- data, public health, public policy, research
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Chickens Are an Overlooked Risk to Child Health: Here’s Why We Have to Get Poultry Promotion Right
Bill Gates once wrote, “It’s pretty clear to me that just about anyone who’s living in extreme poverty is better off if they have chickens.” But despite the critical nutrition and income poultry can provide, Chris Prottas at the Water Trust raises a key concern: Chickens pose a significant threat to children’s health. He explores why the development community needs a better approach to poultry promotion.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care, WASH
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Report: Countries, Companies Risk Billions in Race for Coronavirus Vaccine
“The crisis in the world is so big that each of us will have to take maximum risk now to put this disease to a stop,” said Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at Johnson & Johnson, which has partnered with the U.S. government on a $1 billion investment to speed development and production of its still-unproven vaccine. “If it fails,” Stoffels told Reuters, “it will be bad.”
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Health Care
- Region
- North America
- Tags
- public health, vaccines
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Big Pharma’s Blindspot: Before COVID-19, Vaccine and Antiviral Research Went Neglected
Public health experts have warned for years that the world is at risk of a major pandemic, and advocates say Big Pharma showed little interest in developing vaccines — or even antibiotic and antiviral medications — until the latest outbreak offered an opportunity to rake in public funding and turn out massive profits with minimal risk.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Health Care
- Tags
- public health, research, vaccines
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Responding to COVID-19 in the Developing World
The mass social distancing strategy being used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in the United States and Europe doesn’t easily translate to a developing country like Bangladesh, which lacks the capacity to impose restrictions or provide a social safety net for the unemployed. We talked with Yale SOM development economist Mushfiq Mobarak about how he is repurposing his research infrastructure in Bangladesh to gather information and test approaches to spreading public health messages.
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- Region
- South Asia
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Gates Foundation’s Efforts to Fight Coronavirus, Explained
The Gates Foundation has emerged as a leader in the coronavirus response.
- Categories
- Coronavirus
- Region
- North America
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Viewpoint: How to Make a Faster Coronavirus Vaccine
Emergency funding, hard work and ingenuity could well result in a relatively speedy vaccine. But the amount of uncertainty in that outcome and the death toll that will mount even in a best-case scenario suggest a need for a far more ambitious intervention.
- Categories
- Coronavirus, Health Care
- Tags
- public health, vaccines