Global health leaders will gather in Abu Dhabi on 24 and 25 April for a vaccine summit to discuss recent accomplishments and seek ways to expand the impact of childhood vaccination under the decade of vaccines (DoV), an initiative for collective action announced by Bill Gates at the 2010 World Economic Forum. Promoting greater affordability […]
Category: MSF
Damien Brown: Working for MSF in South Sudan
My second day in South Sudan, the start of a nine month posting with MSF in this war torn, dustbowl of a town called Nasir, and I’m standing here in the medical ward, utterly lost. In every sense of the word. How did previous doctors manage the workload out here? I’ve got no idea. In […]
Charles Ssonko: Familiar enemies in conflict and tuberculosis
Amid the justified excitement surrounding the development of the first new drugs to treat tuberculosis (TB) in over 50 years it is worth remembering on World TB Day that in countries affected by conflict and instability the biggest challenges remain lack of access to diagnosis and treatment. Working as a doctor treating TB and HIV […]
Daniel O’Brien: Buruli ulcer in a brave new world
My recent visit to the Buruli ulcer ward run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Akonolinga Hospital, Cameroon, was both inspiring and disturbing. The care provided was state of the art, but the visit led me to imagine an ideal world in which we could close these wards and change the face of this disease dramatically. […]
Ian Woolley: Hepatitis E in South Sudan
Pestilence, along with war, famine, and death, is sometimes portrayed as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse of the Bible’s Book of Revelations, which describes, amongst other things, the coming of the end of times. It is a compelling image and indicative of the fear that plagues have engendered throughout history. Plagues are […]
Julien Potet and Katy Athersuch: WHO brokered global research and development action plan shelved
Ten years backwards—this was the journey through time that representatives from governments around the world took last week when they gathered at the World Health Organization (WHO) to discuss the recommendations of a 2012 WHO expert group report on how to address the medical research and development (R&D) system’s failures in meeting the needs of […]
Grania Brigden: Children with TB—global interest at last
At last, tackling tuberculosis (TB) in children is on the international agenda. This year, for the first time, an estimate of the extent of TB in children was included in the Global Tuberculosis Report. Although the report acknowledged that the figures were approximate and probably too low, their inclusion ends the paucity of global paediatric […]
Matthew Coldiron: Where the road ends—treating yaws in the Republic of Congo
We’re in Kpeta, a village of nearly 400 Aka pygmies in the Department of the Likouala in the northern Republic of Congo. Our team has driven five hours from the nearest functioning hospital, paddled an hour in a leaky pirogue to cross a river, trudged through a swamp in knee deep mud for half an […]
Nathan Ford and Philipp du Cros: Gathering the evidence to improve healthcare in developing countries
A couple of sample dilemmas faced recently in the clinical programmes of the medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). “This HIV positive woman in her first trimester of pregnancy is currently on an efavirenz-based regimen, what should we do?” “The patient I just saw in clinic has HIV infection and is hepatitis C antibody […]
Leena Menghaney: India’s patent law on trial
This month, two critical legal battles between multinational pharmaceutical companies and the Indian government are taking center stage in an ongoing struggle over India’s medicines patent law. The potential consequences could be dire for governments and people in developing countries that rely on affordable, quality generic medicines produced in India. For example, more than 80% […]