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The rural site had patients screened, tested and enrolled within a week. Testing remained a problem: only private laboratories offered the viral load tests that are necessary to track hepatitis treatment, and they charged several hundred dollars per test. Mr. Musah first began to feel ill as a high school student living in a small town in the north. After hundreds of dollars in tests, he was finally given a hepatitis diagnosis — but was told he would need a specialty hospital to help him. He traveled to Accra, where doctors said there were drugs, but he would have to pay for them.

Persons: Nartey, Musah Locations: Ghana, Accra

☆ Unvaccinated and Vulnerable: Children Drive Surge in Deadly Outbreaks
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-25 | by ( Stephanie Nolen | More About Stephanie Nolen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Large outbreaks of diseases that primarily kill children are spreading around the world, a grim legacy of disruptions to health systems during the Covid-19 pandemic that have left more than 60 million children without a single dose of standard childhood vaccines. By midway through this year, 47 countries were reporting serious measles outbreaks, compared with 16 countries in June 2020. Nigeria is currently facing the largest diphtheria outbreak in its history, with more than 17,000 suspected cases and nearly 600 deaths so far. Many of the children who missed their shots have now aged out of routine immunization programs. So-called “zero-dose children” account for nearly half of all child deaths from vaccine-preventable illnesses, according to Gavi, the organization that helps fund vaccination in low- and middle-income countries.

Locations: Nigeria, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe

Those diagnosed with drug-resistant TB receive medication to take for six months — a far shorter time than previously required. For decades, the standard treatment for drug-resistant TB was to take drugs daily for a year and a half, sometimes two years. Inevitably, many patients stopped taking the medicines before they were cured and ended up with more severe disease. Countries fighting TB are concerned about what may happen if that funding ends. “If our patients had to pay, we would not have one single person taking treatment,” Ms. Yahaya said.

Persons: ” Ms, Yahaya, John Green, Johnson Organizations: Global Fund, AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, United Nations Locations: Ghana, India

☆ What to Know About Dengue Fever as Cases Spread to New Places
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Stephanie Nolen | More About Stephanie Nolen | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It is unlikely that dengue will become a serious problem in the United States, “as long as people keeping living like they’re living now,” said Thomas W. Scott, a dengue epidemiologist and professor emeritus at University of California, Davis. Outside Puerto Rico and other territories where the disease is endemic, there are about 550 dengue cases each year in the United States, but they are imported by travelers who were infected abroad and passed the disease along to their close contacts. The case in Pasadena is a rare locally acquired case of dengue in the United States. But scientists say dengue will continue to spread to places that haven’t experienced it before. “But I think the general expectation that this is going to be a growing problem in the United States is reasonable.”

Persons: ”, Thomas W, Scott, Alex Perkins, Dr, Perkins Organizations: University of California, University of Notre Dame Locations: United States, Davis, Puerto Rico, Pasadena

Over the past few years, she has administered some 10,000 coronavirus vaccines in her community in eastern Ethiopia. “But I keep going because I value the work.”Ms. Yusuf is one in a legion of more than three million community health workers globally and is one of a small minority that are actually paid anything at all. Eighty-six percent of community health workers in Africa are completely unpaid. But now, spurred by frustrations that arose during the Covid pandemic and connected by digital technologies that have reached even remote areas, community health workers are organizing to fight for fair compensation. The movement stretches across developing countries and echoes the labor actions undertaken by female garment workers in many of those nations 40 years ago.

Persons: Misra Yusuf, ”, ” Ms, Yusuf Organizations: Ethiopian Locations: Ethiopia, Africa

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