Seventeen-year-old South African Amanda Nkosi* is already a mother and living with HIV – thanks to what she describes as “doing things that teenagers do” without access to accurate health information or contraception. She discovered her HIV status recently when a youth-friendly clinic opened near her home in the coastal city of Durban and offered […] Continue reading ->
NEW YORK – Global health leaders and experts urged nations to improve their preparedness and ability to respond to global pandemics in ways that go well beyond the health sector, even as political will to handle the COVID-19 pandemic and other health crises seems to be lagging. “Pandemic issues go far wider than health,” former […] Continue reading ->
Ugandan health officials have announced an Ebola outbreak following the confirmation of the relatively rare Sudan strain in the country’s Mubende district, while the government of Ghana has declared the end of the country’s first ever Marburg outbreak. According to the health authorities in Uganda, the Uganda Virus Research Institute confirmed Ebola in a 24-year-old […] Continue reading ->
DIGYA, Ghana – Local farmer Precious Amewornu nearly died just before she could give birth to her second child and had to travel almost 500 kilometres for hospital care because her local clinic was not equipped to deal with her high blood pressure – one of the most common non-communicable diseases (NCDs). A nurse at […] Continue reading ->
Children with type 1 diabetes living in rural parts of the world’s poorest countries often struggle to get life-saving insulin as programmes addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) tend to be urban-based and adult-focused. But an initiative to address life-threatening NCDs affecting children and young adults – particularly type 1 diabetes, rheumatic and congenital heart disease, and […] Continue reading ->
TEL AVIV – When Belgian Ann Li got sick with COVID in March 2020, she did not know that the disease would follow her for years. “Even though I’m standing here in front of you looking seemingly healthy, I still suffer the consequences of the initial infection,” she told the audience of a panel devoted […] Continue reading ->
As the push for adequate funds to address HIV, tuberculosis and malaria reaches its climax with next week’s replenishment meeting of the Global Fund, the fund’s latest report reveals it has saved 50 million lives between 2002 and 2021. The Global Fund raises money in three-year cycles and seeks $18 billion for its seventh replenishment, […] Continue reading ->
Famine “is at the door” in Somalia, with “concrete indications” that parts of the south-central Bay region will be in famine between October and December this year without an urgent surge in aid, the United Nations (UN) warned this week. “This is the final warning to all of us,” the UN’s humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, […] Continue reading ->
Consumers in Argentina are getting help to identify unhealthy food, thanks to new food promotion laws that mandate front-of-package warning labels, the first phase of which started recently. Last year, Argentina’s president signed one of the world’s strongest and most comprehensive food policy laws, requiring ultra-processed products with excess levels of sodium, sugar, fats and […] Continue reading ->
Amber Huett-Garcia has struggled with obesity since she was in first grade. “Now in adulthood, despite reducing my BMI from 69 to 24 (245 lbs. lost), I still carry the expensive diagnosis of obesity,” she wrote in a recent blog for the Noncommunicable Disease Alliance (NCD Alliance). “I’ve used pharmacotherapy, surgical interventions, mental health care […] Continue reading ->