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From Luxury to Economy: Segmenting Health Care to Reach the Poor
Should health care be segmented in much the same way as cars and other products? Our gut reaction is likely to be, “No!” After all, it seems unfair that those with money have access to care while the poor don’t. But health care already is segmented across a variety of social determinants, including wealth. What if health care was not segmented based on the quality of care provided? Instead, what if health care were segmented based on how the care was delivered?
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health
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Putting Vision into Focus: Lessons on Scaling Up a Social Enterprise
Out of everyone experiencing vision losses globally, 2.5 billion of them can have their vision restored with just a pair of eyeglasses. BRAC and VisionSpring are tackling this problem in Bangladesh through an innovative social entrepreneurship model: They sell low-cost reading glasses to low-wage earners through BRAC’s network of community health workers.
- Categories
- Health Care, Social Enterprise
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How the genomics revolution could finally help Africa
It took a public-health disaster for the Zimbabwean government to recognize the power of precision medicine. In 2015, the country switched from a standard three-drug cocktail for HIV to a single-pill combination therapy that was cheaper and easier for people to take every day. The new drug followed a World Health Organization recommendation to incorporate the antiretroviral drug efavirenz as a first-line therapy for public-health programmes. But as tens of thousands of Zimbabweans were put onto the drug, reports soon followed about people quitting it in droves.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- public health
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Microfinance for Water and Sanitation: Opportunities and Challenges for MFIs
Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) presents an opportunity for MFIs to meaningfully impact their customers’ lives and aid in their struggle against poverty. However, a variety of issues play a role in determining the suitability of a WASH finance product. To help MFIs navigate through these, MicroSave and Water.Org have developed a series of toolkits.
- Categories
- Health Care
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Energy Urgency: Why the Global Mining Industry is Embracing Renewables
November’s elections have given the 2015 Paris agreement unprecedented urgency, as 194 signatories race to keep temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius. Yet COP21’s enduring challenge for investors – scaling climate-resilient industries in the developing world – remains elusive. Meanwhile, according to Joseph Kirschke, mines around the world are innovation and energy-intensive ecosystems brimming with solutions just below the surface.
- Categories
- Energy, Environment, Investing
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CAMTech-X: Jugaadathon convenes India’s brightest minds to improve healthcare for country’s urban poor
Hundreds of global health innovators gathered in five cities across the country this past weekend for India’s largest multi-city healthcare hack-a-thon, hosted by The Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Global Health.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- South Asia
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Designing A More Efficient, Temperature-Proof Vaccine
If they're not stored within a narrow temperature range of 36 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, vaccines become unusable. Millions of doses are lost in the developing world each year for want of better-performing fridges and more storage space. The U.S. is not exempt from these issues.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Region
- North America
- Tags
- public health, research, vaccines
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Vaccine Makers Ranked on Pricing and Research
The pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi sell many doses of vaccines at high prices and do a lot of research with the profits, while the Serum Institute of India makes more doses than any other manufacturer and sells them at low prices, according to the first Access to Vaccines Index, which was released last week.
- Categories
- Health Care
- Tags
- public health, vaccines