http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. The United Nations launched a campaign Friday to lift a deadly taboo on talking about toilets and to turn the world into an "open defecation-free zone." http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-toilet-taboo.html Health Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:00:01 EST news283167896 Pit latrines are one of the most common human excreta disposal systems globally, and their use is on the rise as countries aim to meet the sanitation-related target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Strong evidence supports the use of these basic toilets as a way to improve human health. However, improperly designed pit latrines can actually allow disease-causing microbes or other contaminants to leach into the groundwater. The contaminated water puts people, and especially children, at risk of developing potentially life-threatening diarrheal diseases. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-additional-safety-pit-latrines.html Health Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:01 EST news283106474 In Africa, issues of vaccine supply, financing, and sustainability require urgent attention if the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, according to African experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-african-immunization-fall-short-experts.html Health Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:00:06 EST news282927597 In low-income countries a substantial challenge in planning and delivering healthcare is the accurate assessment of disease burden. In this week's PLOS Medicine, Miguel SanJoaquin from the University of Malawi College of Medicine and colleagues describe their experience of implementing an electronic patient record system in a large referral hospital in southern Malawi. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-e-health-malawi.html Health Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:00:06 EST news282323152 A novel global trading system based on the cost effectiveness of health interventions, similar to the market on carbon permits to help control climate change, could provide the extra funding needed to reach the health targets in the Millennium Development Goals, argue experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-fund-global-health.html Health Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:00:02 EST news280514630 Bill Gates on Wednesday urged the world to take a page from his corporate playbook and link aid to measurable results, saying a harder-nosed strategy could dramatically reduce disease and poverty. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bill-gates-aid-tied-results.html Other Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:07:32 EST news278744842 Every 90 seconds, a mother dies in pregnancy or of childbirth complications—a tragic statistic, but one that may drive efforts to improve health care in developing countries, experts gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) said Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-mothers-peril-urgency-frustration-discussion.html Health Wed, 03 Oct 2012 07:22:56 EST news268467761 With the 2015 deadline to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDG) approaching, scholars and government officials gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on Tuesday to search for lessons in the dramatic progress that Brazil has made in recent decades. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-health-reform-brazil.html Health Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:50:26 EST news267699014 Insufficient progress has been made in most developing countries to meet the United Nations' target of halving the proportion of children who suffer from hunger by 2015 compared with 1990 levels, according to a systematic analysis of data on children's height and weight, published today in the Lancet. Although the nutritional status of children under five has improved overall since 1985, one in five infants and children in developing countries is still moderately or severely underweight, amounting to an estimated 110 million children worldwide. Another 148 million are mildly underweight. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-world-percent-chance-child-hunger.html Health Wed, 04 Jul 2012 19:00:01 EST news260626984 Preventable childhood deaths caused by illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea can be nearly eliminated in 10 years according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health. In a new commentary featured in the June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers outline a strategy and benchmarks for curbing childhood preventable deaths and recommend a new common vision for a global commitment to end all preventable child deaths. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-outline-child-deaths.html Health Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:51:30 EST news258911485 The Millennium Villages Project aims to co-ordinate improvements across multiple sectors in health, agriculture, the environment, business, education, and infrastructure in villages in sub-Saharan Africa. New research published Online First by The Lancet shows that, three years after implementation, mortality in children aged under 5 years in Millennium Villages has fallen by a third compared with matched control sites, showing that accelerated progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is possible with improvements across a range of sectors. The research is by Professor Jeffrey D Sachs and Dr Paul M Pronyk, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, USA, and colleagues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-millennium-villages-efforts-mdgs.html Health Mon, 07 May 2012 18:30:01 EST news255629056 An article in this week's edition of the Lancet tracks progress towards Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, that promote maternal and child health. It finds that skilled birth attendant coverage was the least equitable intervention, while the most the most equitable intervention was early initiation of breastfeeding. The study is by Dr Aluisio J D Barros, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil, and colleagues. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-countdown-early-breast-equitable-intervention.html Health Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:30:01 EST news252262286 The impact of unsafe water and sanitation on the death rates of children under five and mothers in the year after childbirth has been quantified for the first time by Canadian-based researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-quantifies-impact-unsafe-poor-sanitation.html Health Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:40:01 EST news248501729 A large regional hospital in Ghana saw a reduction in maternal and infant deaths after continuous quality improvement (QI) initiatives were put into place through a collaborative partnership. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-quality-moms-babies-africa.html Health Wed, 18 Jan 2012 16:16:01 EST news246125755 Estimates of malaria incidence derived from routine surveillance data suggest that 225 million episodes of malaria occurred worldwide in 2009. This estimate is lower than other published figures, such as those from the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), particularly for estimates of malaria incidence outside Africa. Richard Cibulskis and colleagues at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland present a critique of different estimation methods of the worldwide incidence of malaria in this week's PLoS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-global-malaria-incidence.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:00:03 EST news243621841 Sub-Saharan African countries that train and invest in their doctors end up losing billions of dollars as the clinicians leave to work in developed nations, finds research published on British Medical Journal today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-doctor-migration-nations-sub-saharan-africa.html Health Thu, 24 Nov 2011 18:30:01 EST news241362979 A global campaign to save new mothers and children under five in developing nations has made strong gains but is set to fall well shy of UN goals, according to a study released Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-mothers-children-fall-short.html Health Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:58:28 EST news235713494