World Health Organization | Noncommunicable Disease
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has validated Kenya as having eliminated human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) or sleeping sickness as a public health problem, making it the tenth country to reach this important milestone. HAT is the second neglected tropical disease (NTD) to be eliminated in Kenya: the country was certified free of Guinea worm disease in 2018.”
World Health Organization | Communicable Disease
“The World Health Organization (WHO) has validated El Salvador as having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem. Trachoma is the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness…
Elimination of trachoma as a public health problem is defined as: (i) a prevalence of trachomatous trichiasis (TT) “unknown to the health system” of < 0.2% in ≥15-year-olds; and (ii) a prevalence of trachomatous inflammation – follicular (TF) in children aged 1–9 years of < 5%, in each formerly endemic district; plus (iii) the existence of a system to identify and manage incident cases of TT.
Other countries validated by WHO as having eliminated trachoma as a public health problem are: Algeria, Australia, Benin, Burundi, Cambodia, China, Egypt, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Islamic Republic of Iran, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Vanuatu and Viet Nam.
El Salvador is the first country in Central America and the second in the Americas to achieve this milestone.”
“Nigeria is close to eliminating trachoma as a public health problem, with only 11 Local Government Areas (LGAs) left to achieve elimination, the Director of the National Trachoma Programme at the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Nicholas Olobio, has said.
Olobio disclosed this on Thursday in Abuja during a learning event organised by Sightsavers to review progress under the AcceleraTE Trachoma Elimination Programme, which has supported Nigeria’s trachoma response since 2018.
He said Nigeria had made significant progress towards eliminating the blinding disease, revealing that mass drug administration (MDA) had been stopped in 116 LGAs, representing about 87 per cent of the country’s elimination target.”
From Nigerian Tribune.
“The SNAP trial, funded in the UK by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) found that a little used antibiotic, cefazolin, is as effective as and safer than the current UK standard therapy, flucloxacillin, for treating life-threatening staph blood infections. More than half of staph blood infections lead to sepsis and 15% to 25% of those who get these infections die within three months.
The researchers also found that a commonly used antibiotic, penicillin, can be used when the staph is treatable with this in the laboratory. And that similarly this is probably as effective as flucloxacillin, and safer.
The findings from the SNAP trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Lancet, challenge the long-held assumption that flucloxacillin should remain the default treatment and provide important new evidence to guide treatment strategy.”
From UCL.
“Despite decades of mass drug administration campaigns, schistosomiasis remains one of the world’s most widespread neglected tropical diseases. Rice farmers and their families are particularly at risk, as the parasitic worms that cause the disease are spread by freshwater snails found in the standing water of rice fields.
New research published in Nature Sustainability has explored how rice-fish coculturing – an intervention technique that introduces fish into the rice fields – could help reduce disease incidence and poverty along the northern Senegal River basin, a hot spot for schistosomiasis.”
From StanfordPreport.
