Health

Meet Hortense Kossou, Principal Technical Advisor for the USAID-funded Integrated Health Services Activity (IHSA) in Benin. Hortense previously served as the national malaria coordinator for the Ministry of Health in Benin and today leads IHSA’s malaria-related activities on the ground. In this issue of Leading Voices, she presents the...

Many accounts of the history of pharmacovigilance take their root in the thalidomide disaster of the 1960s that led to thousands of babies born with phocolemia, a condition that adversely affects limbs. The babies’ mothers had used thalidomide to treat nausea and morning sickness during pregnancy. Thanks to the...

Nigeria is home to the world’s largest malaria burden: 27 percent of all malaria cases happen here, according to the 2020 World Malaria Report, as do 23 percent of the global malaria deaths. A lot of work is underway to get the mosquito-borne parasite under control. The United States President’s...

Their consensus was inevitable. As the 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) discussed a solution in May to contain the grave and growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one mandate emerged: any action must take a multisectoral One Health approach to human, animal, and environmental health.  Antibiotics are commonly used in animals – often without...

As the world takes action to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), we are reminded of the effectiveness of vaccination for many routine childhood diseases. According to the World Health Organization, routine vaccination prevents 4 to 5 million deaths each year, a testament to the success...

  Dairy farmer Tonny Kidega is passionate about his cattle and his country’s health systems – and has been championing the importance of limiting the use of antibiotics to curb the development of drug-resistant “superbugs” and antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Based in the Gulu district in northern Uganda, Kidega is a veterinarian and the Managing...

Monitoring patients who are taking a new medicine, including vaccines, is critical for patient safety. This type of monitoring, also known as pharmacovigilance (PV), helps detect, assess, understand, and prevent adverse effects of a medicine-related problem. PV is critical for determining the true safety and efficacy of a product,...

As COVID-19 began to spread around the globe in March 2020, drug supplies — ironically — shrank, because of the pandemic’s impact on global supply chains.  Chinese factories, which produce about 70% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) that Indian drug manufacturers use, were shuttered during China’s severe lockdown early last...

La résistance aux antimicrobiens (RAM) est une menace importante pour la Côte d’Ivoire et qui nécessite des mesures rapides pour la contenir. Pour ne citer qu’un exemple, la résistance moyenne à l’amoxicilline est passée de 73,7% en 2012 à 87,3% en 2017 , ce qui montre que la résistance...

Read this story on USAID’s Exposure page.    Tsiraiky Abotono has never taken a vacation.  Day after day, for 15 years, he has kept watch over his village, Andravindahy, in southwest Madagascar. Abotono, 56, is one of the thousands of community health volunteers who provide basic health care services to the country’s rural...