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'Remarkable alignment' of PEPFAR, Global Fund efforts is reason for continued support

Recent global health events -- including the release of PEPFAR's Blueprint for an AIDS-Free Generation (.pdf), the launch of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's new funding model, and the Institute of Medicine's evaluation of PEPFAR -- "mak[e] it clear; it is a time of transformation for global health," Deborah Derrick, president of the Friends of the Global Fight Against HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria, writes in the Huffington Post's "The Big Push" blog.

3 Apr 2013

U.S. agencies supporting fight against HIV/AIDS in Malawi

"U.S. agencies that work to fight HIV this week began a five-year effort with Malawi's government to improve health care for Malawians infected with the virus," VOA News reports.

3 Apr 2013

Media outlets examine reaction to India's Supreme Court ruling on Novartis patent case

"In a decisive victory for India's pharmaceutical industry, India's Supreme Court rejected Novartis' patent application for the cancer drug Glivec on Monday, ending a seven-year battle by the Swiss drug maker to get a patent in India on its powerful leukemia drug," Time reports (Mahr, 4/1).

3 Apr 2013

LSUHSC researchers study common STI

Research led by David H. Martin, MD, Professor and Chief of Infectious Diseases at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has found that a common sexually transmitted infection-causing parasite "cultivates" bacteria beneficial to it, changing thinking about which comes first-infection or bacteria.

3 Apr 2013

New device to improve patients' hearing

Around 17 million people in Germany suffer from impaired hearing. For many of them, their hearing is so damaged that a standard hearing aid is no longer enough.

3 Apr 2013

Peace Corps volunteer plans to change others' lives

The two years Andrea Torre spent in Dimbwe Village in southern Zambia changed her life. Now she has come to the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing to learn the skills she needs to spend the rest of her career helping to change others' lives.

3 Apr 2013

IRIN examines British plan to improve health care services in DRC

IRIN examines Britain's new $270 million plan to improve health care services in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

2 Apr 2013

India's Supreme Court rules against Novartis AG in 'landmark' patent case

"India's Supreme Court on Monday rejected drug maker Novartis AG's attempt to patent an updated version of a cancer drug in a landmark decision that health activists say ensures poor patients around the world will get continued access to cheap versions of lifesaving medicines," the Associated Press reports.

2 Apr 2013

Scientists get inside look at how AIDS virus grooms its assault team

A new study by Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Pennsylvania scientists defines previously unknown properties of transmitted HIV-1, the virus that causes AIDS.

2 Apr 2013

Post-2015 development agenda must address global health

"A proliferation of complex challenges to development, such as political conflict, economic austerity, and environmental degradation, all demand attention, but should not deflect from recognizing that good health is central to advancing global prosperity," GAVI Alliance CEO Seth Berkley, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria Executive Director Mark Dybul, World Bank Sector Manager for Health in Latin America Keith Hansen, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin, and UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé, write in a Lancet opinion piece examining the post-2015 development agenda.

30 Mar 2013

New technique for vaccine design could prove useful against HIV, other viral strains

A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has unveiled a new technique for vaccine design that could be particularly useful against HIV and other fast-changing viruses.

30 Mar 2013

The Lancet examines goals, challenges of U.S. Office of Global Health Diplomacy

The Lancet reports on the role of diplomacy in U.S. global health efforts, highlighting a recent appearance by Ambassador Eric Goosby, head of the U.S. State Department's Office of Global Health Diplomacy and the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, at a town hall forum at the Kaiser Family Foundation in Washington, D.C. Goosby "said the Office of Global Health Diplomacy will work to sustain U.S.-funded health programs in partner countries," according to the journal.

30 Mar 2013

UNAIDS reports on Russian G20 Sherpa visit

"In her first visit to Geneva as Russian G20 Sherpa, Ksenia Yudaeva" -- Chief of the Presidential Experts Directorate -- "visited UNAIDS Headquarters for a broad-ranging discussion on global issues that are priorities for the Russian Presidency of the G20, including civil society participation, youth empowerment and development for all," UNAIDS reports in an article on its webpage.

30 Mar 2013

Washington Post examines HIV, TB epidemics in Russia

The Washington Post examines how the HIV and tuberculosis epidemics are affecting Russia, where "HIV/AIDS was the third-largest cause of premature death," according to recently released data in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2012.

30 Mar 2013

Global Coalition of TB Activists lends voice to international discourse

"The Global Coalition of TB Activists came together at a February Stop TB Partnership meeting in Geneva, [an] announcement says, with the aim of closing gaps that leave those most affected by tuberculosis out of decision making at local, national, and global levels," the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog reports.

30 Mar 2013

Experts discuss inclusion of HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation in post-2015 development agenda

"As a U.N. high-level panel completes worldwide consultations to pick development goals for 2015 and beyond, PlusNews consulted experts to see how HIV/AIDS might fit into this new agenda," according the news service.

30 Mar 2013

Jacob Landis to make cross-country bicycle tour to raise funds for people with hearing loss

A 24-year-old hearing-impaired baseball fan from Annapolis, Md., hopes to raise $1 million to help others facing hearing loss, so they too can experience in what he calls his "miracle," the cochlear implant performed at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1999 that restored much of his hearing when he was 10 years old.

30 Mar 2013

Oklahoma dentist called 'menace to the public health'

Dr. W. Scott Harrington faces an April 19 hearing over unsanitary conditions that may have exposed patients to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV infection.

30 Mar 2013

Religion, religious leaders have been central to health, development improvements in Africa

"After decades of doom-and-gloom news about AIDS in Africa, optimism is finally in the air," Jenny Trinitapoli, an assistant professor of sociology, demography, and religious studies at Penn State University, and Alexander Weinreb, an associate professor in the department of sociology and a research associate at the Population Research Center of the University of Texas, Austin, write in a Slate opinion piece.

30 Mar 2013

Preventing 4.4M child deaths in next 1,000 days is possible

"To reach the goal of decreasing deaths of children who have not yet reached their fifth birthday to four million in 2015, we estimate that 4.4 million children's deaths must be averted in the next 1,000 days," U.N. Special Envoy for Malaria Ray Chambers writes in the Huffington Post's "The Big Push" blog, in the first of what he says will be a series of entries discussing successes, challenges, and actions.

30 Mar 2013