USAID: Acting on the Call: Preventing Child & Maternal Deaths USAID released its 2019 Acting on the Call report, which provides an overview of U.S. investments in women’s and children’s health, examines how to best work with countries on their development journeys, and identifies four key principles to accelerate development…

The Hill: Health is in our hands Carolyn Moore, secretariat director of the Global Handwashing Partnership “…Preventing infections requires the availability of soap, water, and sanitation, and consistent and correct hand hygiene. … Prevention is cost-effective and Congress agrees on many issues of water and global health. The U.S. government…

Agence France-Presse: Sri Lanka in bold bid to flush out open defecation (3/5). Agence France-Presse: Survivor antibody clears path for new Ebola vaccine (3/4). Agence France-Presse: Niger launches campaign to protect 6 mn children from meningitis (3/5). Al Jazeera: Colombia border hospitals struggle with Venezuelan migrant influx (Grattan, 3/5). CIDRAP…

Thomson Reuters Foundation: Disease, hunger “alarmingly high” in drought-hit Pakistan: Red Cross “One of the worst droughts in Pakistan’s history has triggered ‘alarmingly high’ levels of malnutrition and disease in the hardest hit areas where people have been forced to drink salty or contaminated water, the Red Cross said on…

USA TODAY: If you’re safe from cholera, thank my dad, a plumber (and thank the ancient Romans) Lindsay Denny, senior public health program associate for the Center for Global Safe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at Emory University and health adviser for Global Water 2020 “…The singular effectiveness of clean water,…

The Guardian: Polio spreads in Afghanistan and Pakistan ‘due to unchecked borders’ (Ahmed, 2/20). The Guardian: Cervical cancer could be eliminated in most countries by 2100 — research (Boseley, 2/20). The Guardian: Condom handouts in schools prevent disease without encouraging sex (Ratcliffe, 2/15). Homeland Preparedness News: Potential bioterrorist use of…

U.N. News: U.N. and partners appeal for $920 million to meet ‘dire needs’ of Rohingya refugees “With more than 745,000 Rohingya having fled violence in Myanmar to settle in Bangladesh, joining roughly 200,000 others already sheltering there, United Nations aid agencies and partners launched an appeal on Friday to help…

World Economic Forum: We must stop turning a blind eye to the world’s health crises Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses the challenges of responding to humanitarian disasters, especially in conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of…

PATH’s “DefeatDD Blog”: Hospitals Without Water, Toilets, or Soap Make the Sick Even More Vulnerable to Infection Adam Drolet, program officer at PATH, discusses the importance of WASH services in health care facilities, writing, “Without clean and safe water, sanitation, and hygiene, patients and providers are at a much higher…

The Guardian: We’re in constant fear of armed attack as we treat Ebola patients in Congo Eric Mukama, health zone coordinator in the DRC with Care “I have been responding to different disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 18 years, yet I have never seen anything…