The AIDS Powderkeg
“I think [the government] decided it didn’t make sense to spend money on high risk groups, but in the coming years, we will see that this was a tragic mistake.”
Fighting Modern Plagues
In the right species, even harmless microbes sometimes turn deadly. SARS is a recent example, a benign virus in horseshoe bats and civets that sparked a 26-country human pandemic in 2002
A Change of Heart Disease
“Penicillin is cheaper than water. It’s utterly and completely cost -effective for countries to do this.” —Bongani Mayosi
The Art of the Message
Mass-media public health communication programs deliver lifesaving messages to millions, often for pennies a person. The best endeavors compare with anything from the advertising industry, but their messages are so much more important. Here are six very different but equally memorable and effective campaigns from around the world.
It Never Rains but It Pours
“We’re living long enough to develop not just one or two of these chronic diseases, but three, four – sometimes even 10.”—Alejandro Jadad
Whatever Doesn’t Kill You...
In the battle against infectious disease, the widespread use of antibiotics has inadvertently created superbugs that are impervious to many of medicine’s first-line defenses.
Human rights with a doctor’s touch
Douglas Shenson “There was an absolute structural need for some organization to create a clinic that was specialized around these sets of issues and could respond to this significant need.”
What ails us
The DALY (disability-adjusted life year) is a measure of overall disease burden. It extends the concept of potential years of life lost due to premature death to include equivalent years of ‘healthy’ life lost by virtue of being in states of poor health or disability.
What kills us
Many thousands of people born in 2000 will live through the 21st century and see the advent of the 22nd century. For example, while there were only 200 centenarians in France in 1950, by the year 2050, the number is projected to reach 150,000 —a 750-fold increase in 100 years.
