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Heart disease and stroke burden every region of the world leading to increased inequalities in health

Heart disease and stroke are responsible for 17 million deaths each year, represent a major burden of disease in every region of the world and are contributing to an alarming increase in health inequalities, both within and between countries.

23 May 2005

Statement from The Lancet in response to Stephen Cox of The Royal Society

The statement from Stephen Cox published (May 19, 2005) is astonishing. He fails to address any of the arguments set out in The Lancet’s editorial of May 21, 2005. His deeply personal invective directed against me, in response to an editorial that avoided all direct personal criticism of individuals, does a disservice to his important role as Executive Secretary of the Royal Society. Here are the facts:

19 May 2005

World Health Assembly hears warning on avian influenza threat

The 58th World Health Assembly heard a warning from Dr. LEE Jong-wook, Director-General of the World Health Organization, on what he called the "most serious known health threat the world is facing today, which is avian influenza."

18 May 2005

The Gates Foundation approach to the world's health problems has its critics

A recent article in The Lancet criticized the premise that a Grand Challenge to scientific and technological know-how is the best route to combating malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and other diseases that kills millions of people each year.

16 May 2005

Bill Gates calls on world leaders to seize opportunity to improve health

In a major address today to international health officials, Bill Gates said the world now has a "historic chance" to achieve dramatic improvements in health, and called on governments, the scientific community, and the private sector to more aggressively fight the diseases that affect hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people each year.

16 May 2005

UK needs to end reliance on overseas doctors and nurses

Health bodies in the UK are warning that there is a "major emergency" in the developing world due to the the increasing migration of healthcare workers.

11 May 2005

Fragile US vaccine system needs improvement

A comprehensive system of vaccine development in the U.S. resulted in a reduction of 87 to more than 99 percent in illness from ten vaccine-preventable diseases during the twentieth century. These dramatic successes should not be taken for granted, however, as the vaccine system now faces numerous challenges in manufacturing and development, according to a review article in the May/June issue of Health Affairs.

10 May 2005

Burden of cardiovascular disease will shift to the developing world

In a paper published this week in the premier open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine, Majid Ezzati and colleagues from Harvard School of Public Health conclude that a large proportion of the world's population who live in low-income and middle-income countries should be the focus for intervention against risk factors for cardiovascular disease because major cardiovascular risk factors will increasingly be concentrated in these populations.

3 May 2005

Researchers benchmark the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, anemia, iodine-deficiency disorders and underweight children as measures of malnutrition in developing regions

International health advocates and policymakers still have work to do to meet the nutrition goals set by the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children in 2002, according to a survey of nutrition needs in developing regions published by Tulane University researchers.

2 May 2005

Schistosomiasis has a greater effect than previosly thought

Schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a parasitic worm, affects more than 200 million worldwide, most of them in Africa and many health workers believe the disabling effects of schistosomiasis have never been adequately quantified.

1 May 2005

Global Health Service needed to fight AIDS

A report by the non-partisan Institute of Medicine is calling for the creation of a U.S. Global Health Service comprised of doctors, nurses and other health care workers to help combat HIV/AIDS in the world's hardest hit countries.

20 Apr 2005

Call for a United States Global Health Service

The federal government should create and fund an umbrella organization called the United States Global Health Service (GHS) to mobilize the nation's best health care professionals and other experts to help combat HIV/AIDS in hard-hit African, Caribbean, and Southeast Asian countries, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

19 Apr 2005

Post-traumatic stress disorder common among refugees in western countries

Refugees settled in western countries could be about ten times more likely to have posttraumatic stress disorder than general populations in those countries, suggests a study published in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

7 Apr 2005

Integrating HIV prevention and care in Africa

On April 15, 2005 the UCLA AIDS Institute will host a full day symposium on AIDS in Africa entitled Integrating HIV Prevention and Care in Africa: Existing Challenges and Innovative Solutions.

6 Apr 2005

Tarvacin shows significant anti-viral activity

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals today announced that there will be two presentations, April 4 and 6, at the American Association of Immunologists (AAI) annual meeting in San Diego, California, indicating the anti-viral potential of its Tarvacin antibody. Dr. Melina Soares of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas will present pre-clinical data titled "Targeting inside-out phospholipids on viruses in a guinea pig model of Lassa fever."

4 Apr 2005

Inexpensive treatment stops multi-drug resistant TB in its tracks

A standard and inexpensive tuberculosis treatment regimen cut the overall TB rate in half and lowered the rate of drug-resistant cases even more dramatically in a remote Mexican health district with a high prevalence of the disease.

3 Apr 2005

Could NAADP/cholecystokinin-combo attack fat from inside and out?

One traditional approach to pharmaceutical design uses so-called “first messengers” – hormones, other natural facilitators or synthetic products – to initiate various cellular cascades for the desired physiological effect. To date, despite concerted efforts at all levels of research, this approach has failed to develop a truly successful obesity drug to address this major global health problem.

3 Apr 2005

Protecting children from industrial chemicals in the environment

American children are likely to face serious health consequences from new and existing industrial chemicals in the environment, argue a group of researchers in a report in this month's premier open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine.

29 Mar 2005

Marker for new blood vessel formation in tumors

In a paper in this month's freely-available online global health journal PLoS Medicine, Roland Haubner and colleagues describe how a compound they have developed can be used together with highly sensitive positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to measure the amount of new blood vessel growth in some tumors.

29 Mar 2005

Vaccine prevents deadly pneumonia in African children

Global health leaders today presented new research showing that vaccinating infants against Streptococcus pneumoniae -- a bacterium that causes deadly pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis -- could substantially reduce death and serious illness among children in the developing world. If used widely, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine could prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths each year.

28 Mar 2005