“Less than a year after Colombia eliminated onchocerciasis from its borders, its neighboring country, Venezuela, is making similar strides in the fight against neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). … The People’s Ministry of Health of Venezuela (MPPS) and the PAHO country office will now begin the three-year surveillance stage. If no…

On World Malaria Day, which takes place each year on April 25, media outlets discuss efforts to control the disease. VOA News: Trial: Malaria Chemoprevention Protects Children “The non-governmental organization Doctors Without Borders, or Medecins Sans Frontieres, has launched a new malaria prevention campaign in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa…

New York Times: Even a Few Pills Can Put a Dent in the Malaria Rate “A new way to prevent malaria in areas where it waxes and wanes with the weather appears to be working in West Africa, the medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders said last week. The tactic,…

Writing in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog, Sema Sgaier, a program officer with the foundation, discusses a collection of research studies on the role of voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) in HIV prevention in sub-Saharan Africa published this week in PLOS ONE and PLOS Medicine. “…By…

Huffington Post: Where Has All the Money Gone for Fighting Tuberculosis? Shelly Batra, founder and president of Operation ASHA “…Huge amounts of funds have been poured into a bottomless pit [in the name of TB elimination]. … This funding should have led to better outcomes, i.e. improved case detection and…

Huffington Post: Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision for HIV Prevention Finds Success at Scale Ariel Pablos-Mendez, assistant administrator for global health at USAID Noting a new collection of studies on voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) “published by the PLOS Collection and funded by [PEPFAR] through [USAID] and the Bill & Melinda…

At a congressional briefing hosted Wednesday by the Coalition for Life Sciences, Anthony Fauci, director of the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, discussed the importance of federal funding for research and development, the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” notes (Aziz, 5/8).

New York Times: Advocating Pill, U.S. Signals Shift to Prevent AIDS “Federal health officials recommended Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of Americans at risk for AIDS take a daily pill that has been shown to prevent infection with the virus that causes it…” (McNeil, 5/14).

News outlets report on Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Law, enacted in February, and a bill passed earlier this week by the country’s parliament that would criminalize HIV transmission. BBC News: Uganda’s HIV-prevention law ‘flawed’ “A bill passed by MPs in Uganda which criminalizes the transmission of HIV has been criticized by the…

Al Jazeera: HIV on the rise in Guatemala “Guatemala is facing a growing HIV epidemic. And towns bordering Mexico are transmission hot spots for the virus. Human trafficking, sexual abuse, prostitution and drug use in these towns create the kind of high-risk behavior that leads to HIV transmission…” Al Jazeera…