Drug-Shunning Patients Could Derail Zimbabwe’s AIDS Plan

Each month, scores of people living with HIV gather at Mpilo's Opportunistic Infections Clinic in Bulawayo for free antiretroviral medication that has improved their lives.

WHO Celebrates Major Progress in Fighting Malaria

Enhanced efforts to fight malaria have saved an estimated 3.3 million lives and nearly halved the disease's global mortality rate since 2000, according to the latest edition of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) annual "World Malaria Report", released Wednesday.

ARV Intolerance – A Growing Problem for AIDS Treatment in Africa

New research suggests that some AIDS patients are developing drug intolerance and severe side effects and will now have to switch to new, more expensive antiretroviral regimens.

Cameroonians ‘Dying’ for Fake Drugs

When Francois Biloa fell ill with malaria, his family did what they had always done in the past – they gave him anti-malaria drugs and antibiotics bought from the local market. Only when his condition worsened and he became bedridden and fell unconscious, did his family take him to a local clinic in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé.

The debate on doctors in Brazil – in maps and graphs

The controversy is on: the authorities in Brazil say there are not enough medical professionals, and to resolve the problem, they decided to import this “non-traditional product”. Doctors, on the other hand, are opposed to both the diagnosis and the treatment. But there is one thing everyone agrees on: the areas suffering from a shortage of health professionals are the poor suburbs and impoverished areas in the hinterland and remote border areas. The situation in Brazil as compared to itself and to other countries can be seen in this series of interactive maps and graphs.

Higher Temperatures, More Dengue

The spread of the virus that causes dengue fever has created an emergency situation for institutions, governments and scientists in Latin America seeking sustainable solutions for a health problem that could worsen as a result of climate change.

Mental Health an Overlooked Casualty of Disaster

Although Hurricane Sandy made her final sweep through the Northeastern United States nearly 10 months ago, for many people the stress caused by the storm lingers.

Running Away from TB Treatment

Twenty-three-year-old Haleema (not her real name) was not the first female patient at Srinagar’s Chest Diseases Hospital in the Indian state of Kashmir to try to run away.

WHO’s Iraq Birth Defect Study Omits Causation

A long-awaited study on congenital birth defects by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Iraq is expected to be very extensive in nature.

Kenya’s Mothers Shun Free Maternity Health Care

It has been a month since the Kenyan government waived the maternity fee at public health facilities, but Millicent Awino is still one of the many expectant mothers in favour of a home birth.

U.N. Downplays Health Effects of Nuclear Radiation

The United Nations has come under criticism from medical experts and members of civil society for what these critics consider inaccurate statements about the effects of lingering radioactivity on local populations.

Tackle Malnutrition Now

Between 2010 and 2012, 868 million people worldwide were deemed hungry by a conservative definition. This figure represents only a small fraction of the world’s population whose health and lives are blighted by malnutrition.

Good Health Lies Just Across the Border

Muzaffar Shah, a shopkeeper from Kabul, sits in a hospital waiting room, desperate for news. He has travelled nearly 300 km to get to the Khyber Teaching Hospital in Peshawar, capital of northern Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, where his wife is now in intensive care.

Sex Educators Struggle to Break Taboos

Liberian journalist Mae Azango says she spent a year living “like a bat, going from tree to tree” with her daughter in order to escape religious fanatics who were threatening to kill her for exposing the practice of female genital mutilation in her home country last year.

Failed Drug Policies Building Global Hepatitis C ‘Time-Bomb’

As a hepatitis C pandemic rages among drug users and threatens the lives of millions around the world, a group of high-level leaders called today on governments to reform their drug policies and raise awareness about the public health threat of hepatitis C.

Pakistani Doctors Earn “Only Gratitude” for Treating Fistula

Sherhshah Syed is a highly qualified doctor and president of the prestigious Pakistan National Forum on Women’s Health (PNFWH) but his income does not match his qualifications.

Dengue Outbreak Highlights Poor Waste Management

City and health authorities in the Solomon Islands, located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, are calling for effective and consistent urban waste management as they battle to control a serious outbreak of dengue fever, the world’s fastest spreading vector-borne viral disease, which was identified in the country in February.

Israeli Students Vow to Eradicate Malnutrition

At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.

Older Women in Cuba Take Steps to Improve Quality of Life

Paediatrician Grisel Navarro says she is "a different kind of retiree," because she still practises her profession, goes out and about and refuses to be "at the beck and call of her family's and everyone else's needs," something that diminishes quality of life for many Cuban women when they retire from work.

Global Health Plan Aims to End a Third of Childhood Deaths

The United Nations has unveiled a major framework aimed at, for the first time, coordinating worldwide efforts to work simultaneously to end childhood pneumonia- and diarrhoea-related deaths by 2025.

Urban Youth Go Back to the Land

Down the main road in Munda, a coastal town on the North Georgia Island of the Solomon Islands, past the wharf, the market and a small collection of shops, Patrick Arathe’s farm is reached by walking first across the runway of the local airport and finally along a dirt track that winds between residential buildings until it opens into a large clearing.