Devex: Opinion: We must keep maternal health front and center of the UHC conversation Joyce Banda, former president of Malawi; Bineta Diop, African Union special envoy on women, peace, and security; Mary-Ann Etiebet, lead and executive director at MSD for Mothers; Pape Amadou Gaye, president and CEO at IntraHealth; Edna…

WHO: Ten threats to global health in 2019 “…2019 sees the start of the World Health Organization’s new five-year strategic plan — the 13th General Programme of Work. This plan focuses on a triple billion target: ensuring one billion more people benefit from access to universal health coverage, one billion…

Al Jazeera: World Food Programme cuts aid for Palestinians (1/13). Associated Press: Bare-handed surgeries as Zimbabwe’s health system collapses (Mutsaka, 1/12). Devex: How polio campaigners won €55M for their fight (Hargrave, 1/14). Inter Press Service: Shedding Light on Forced Child Pregnancy and Motherhood in Latin America (Jara, 1/14). NPR: Human…

Devex: Global Fund wants to raise $14B for next 3 years “The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria hopes to raise $14 billion for its sixth replenishment cycle, but with budget deficits facing some of its largest donors, questions hover on whether the multilateral health partnership will be…

Devex: Opinion: Achieving UHC in Africa requires focus and collaboration from the private sector Carla Kriwet, executive vice president and CEO of the Connected Care businesses at Philips and member of the Royal Philips Executive Committee, and Githinji Gitahi, group chief executive officer at Amref Health Africa and co-chair of…

WIRED: Machine learning can fix how we manage health on a global scale Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine “Harnessing machine learning to improve health is a major ambition for both medical practitioners and the health care industry. If the two can join forces…

Homeland Preparedness News: Increasing severity of pandemic trends spurred by urbanization, air travel (Galford, 1/4). New York Times: China’s Health Care Crisis (Kessel, 1/7). Thomson Reuters Foundation: Barred from bathing and banished from home — period taboos around the world (Banerji, 1/4). Thomson Reuters Foundation: How forgotten local plants could…

The Guardian: Venezuela crisis takes deadly toll on buckling health system “…[Activists say] at least 25 children … have died since late 2016 because of the serratia marcescens bacterium — fatalities they blame on a ‘perfect storm’ of unhygienic, resource-starved hospitals that lack even soap to clean their wards, malnourished…

Inter Press Service: United Towards Achieving Health For All in Kenya Sicily Kariuki, cabinet secretary at the Ministry of Health in Kenya, and Siddharth Chatterjee, U.N. resident coordinator to Kenya “…Of all the Sustainable Development Goals, few would rival good health as the definition of a country that has a…

ABC News: Scientists are getting ahead of Rift Valley fever after learning from the Zika epidemic (Strauss, 12/15). Al Jazeera: What’s being done to fight HIV/AIDS stigma in MENA? (12/17). CIDRAP News: Studies on transmission, vaccine bring focus back to Zika (Soucheray, 12/14). CNN: This app tells your doctor if…