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Kenya launches campaign to increase tuberculosis screening among HIV-positive people

The Kenyan government on Tuesday launched a 60 million shilling -- or about $975,000 -- campaign to increase the number of HIV-positive people who are screened for tuberculosis at public hospitals, Kenya's Nation reports. The campaign also aims to educate health workers to test people with TB for HIV.

11 May 2008

Impact of environment and social gradient on Leptospira infection in urban slums

A study conducted in an urban slum setting in Salvador, Brazil has found that open sewers, accumulations of refuse, and inadequate floodwater drainage are acting as sources for transmission of the disease leptospirosis. The study is published in this week's PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

23 Apr 2008

Typhoid no longer an enemy of the past as study highlights risk for travellers to indian sub-continent

UK travellers visiting friends and relatives on the Indian sub-continent are carrying an unnecessary burden of typhoid and paratyphoid (also called enteric fevers), according to researchers at the Health Protection Agency.

24 Mar 2008

Sanitation investment in poor countries would yield $9-to-1 benefits in productivity, health and other benefits

Experts estimate that $9 in productivity, health and other benefits are returned for every dollar invested installing toilets for people in countries that today are off-track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

24 Mar 2008

Sixty-two per cent of Africans do not have access to a proper toilet

Sixty-two per cent of Africans do not have access to an improved sanitation facility -- a proper toilet -- which separates human waste from human contact, according to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation.

24 Mar 2008

New choices bring wider range of women to family planning

A study appearing in the March 2008 issue of the journal Contraception reports that the Standard Days Method, a natural family planning method developed by researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center's Institute for Reproductive Health, brings new women to family planning.

19 Mar 2008

Young children bear the brunt of cholera

A new study of the burden of cholera in three impoverished regions of the world, published February 20 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, found that young children bear the brunt of the disease.

20 Feb 2008

Sanitation paper shortlisted for Lancet Paper of the Year

A paper reporting on two cohort studies which looked at the effect of a city-wide sanitation programme on rates of childhood diarrhoea in northeast Brazil has been shortlisted for the Lancet Paper of the Year Award 2007.

18 Feb 2008

Health inspectors took bribes for food health certificates

At a time when consumers confidence has been repeatedly shaken by an almost continual series of food scares often involving contaminated food, two former Chicago Public Health Department inspectors are facing charges by federal authorities in the United States for allegedly taking bribes for food-service sanitation certificates.

6 Dec 2007

Health officials should consider mass vaccination in their efforts to control endemic cholera

A vaccine used to protect travelers from cholera, an infection characterized by diarrhea and severe dehydration, could also be used effectively among those living in cholera-prone (endemic) areas, according to a research study by Ira Longini and colleagues published in PLoS Medicine.

27 Nov 2007

Post hurricane skin disorders in clean up workers

Four distinct skin disorders were found in construction workers who helped repair buildings after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Dermatology.

20 Nov 2007

Is it pancreatitis in acute abdominal pain in acute viral hepatitis?

Hepatitis viruses have a strong tropism for hepatocytes; viral antigen also has been detected in pancreas and gallbladder.

1 Nov 2007

Interventions that improve nutrition and environmental conditions can help decrease child deaths worldwide

Interventions that improve nutrition and environmental conditions can also provide substantial gains toward the goal of reducing child mortality, especially when the interventions prioritize the poor, according to a study in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on poverty and human development.

22 Oct 2007

Beneficial bacteria in the appendix aid digestion after infection

Long denigrated as vestigial or useless, the appendix now appears to have a reason to be – as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.

9 Oct 2007

Caribbean health authorities promise to reduce healthcare-associated infections

Health authorities from the Caribbean say they will work to reduce healthcare-associated infections through a series of actions that include getting healthcare providers to improve hand hygiene.

2 Oct 2007

The benefits of a clean and healthy environment for children: what is the UK doing?

The Health Protection Agency has published a report summarising current initiatives which address children and young people's environment and health issues in the UK.

18 Sep 2007

Forces unite to tackle latest outbreak of Ebola in the Congo

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says another outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed at least five people.

12 Sep 2007

How does Listeria monocytogenes survive with nothing to live on?

Try going for a couple of weeks without food and see what shape you're in, or if you're around at all by then. Let some dangerous bacteria do the same thing and there's a chance they may do more than survive; they can grow stronger and remain as virulent as ever.

29 Aug 2007

WHO says more killer diseases like AIDS on their way

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned the world to expect a new killer disease to emerge in the next few years which will threaten the lives of millions.

23 Aug 2007

New WHO report on environmental hazards and child health

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says millions of children die each year because of environmental hazards and one in five children in the poorest parts of the world will not reach their sixth birthday, mainly because of environment-related diseases.

30 Jul 2007