Adopt Draft Code Of Health Personnel Recruitment At WHA, Lancet Comment Says As the 193 WHO member states gather at next week’s World Health Assembly (WHA) “a draft global code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel will be on the agenda. Negotiation and adoption of a WHO…

Representatives from the U.S. and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Tuesday signed an agreement to expand PEPFAR programs to 12 other Caribbean nations during a gathering in Georgetown, Guyana, Agence France-Presse reports (5/11).

WHO Bulletin Editorial Reflects On Health-Related MDGs Progress, Challenges After highlighting successes and failures of efforts to reach the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an editorial appearing in the WHO Bulletin reflects, “[t]he variable progress achieved begs the question of the feasibility of the MDG goals and targets. … The MDGs…

IPS Reports On Stigma, Discrimination Among People Living With HIV/AIDS In China  In follow-up coverage of the news that China lifted a decades-old HIV/AIDS travel ban, Inter Press Service reports that “erasing the stigma attached” to the virus is difficult in China.  “‘What we are lacking now is in-depth HIV and AIDS…

Automatic TB Diagnostic Technology To aid with tuberculosis diagnostics, Guardian Technologies, a company that originally worked with airport X-ray scanners, “has developed a system that automatically scans microscope slides for the [TB] bacillus,” the New York Times reports. “The company’s software algorithms can spot distinctive shapes, colors and densities that…

Better Living Conditions Can Improve Health Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Habitat for Humanity CEO Jonathan Reckford write in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution opinion piece about the need to “address the constant crisis families face daily in deplorable living conditions.” The authors reflect on several health problems associated with unsanitary and crowded living…

Global Life Expectancy Is Up, U.N. Report Says “Global life expectancy increased sharply from 47 years in 1950-55 to 68 years in 2005-2010, the U.N. has said in a report,” the U.K. Press Association reports. According to the report, “people are living longer mainly because of improvements in nutrition and…

“U.S. officials have asked some AIDS clinics overseas to stop enrolling new patients in a U.S.-sponsored program that provides lifesaving antiretroviral drugs, in a bid to stem the rising costs of one of the most ambitious US assistance programs, according to interviews with doctors and official correspondence,” the Boston Globe reports.

Partners In Health Co-Founder Lectures On Global Health Topics The Dartmouth reports on a recent talk by Dartmouth College President Jim Yong Kim, co-founder of Partners In Health. During his lecture, which touched on several global health-related topics, “Kim stressed the need to incorporate ‘health care delivery science’ into undergraduate…

CBS News’ 60 Minutes reports from Uganda about how PEPFAR has helped people living with HIV/AIDS throughout the country and the challenges Uganda still faces in fighting the spread of the virus. The show includes interviews with Peter Mugyenyi of the Joint Clinical Research Center in Kampala, Uganda, and other doctors on the ground, who discuss how HIV-positive children and adults are alive today as a result of PEPFAR and how the program has helped to improve the way Africans view the United States.