How Vermont Is Winning the COVID Vaccination War

A novel way to help young men growing up in communities in which concentrated poverty, violence and unemployment are well-documented barriers to health and longevity: male youth of color are trained to be the emergency response team to help stabilize street victims before doctors or nurses begin procedures.

Tuberculosis is still a rampant problem in the developing world. Doctors are looking for even more advanced ways to test for TB beyond the GeneXpert tests.

The highest hospital costs come from preventable emergency room visits. A doctor in Camden developed a home visit program which gives better and cheaper care.

Slow test results make it difficult to stop the spread of tuberculosis. Using faster diagnostic technology and driving vans to rural areas in Tanzania, GeneXpert is making progress in treating this curable disease.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related mortality. Naxolone, a drug used to revive overdose victims, is only available by prescription. However, private organizations have distributed Naxolone kits nationally, showing that the drug can save lives when it is more readily accessible.

In Nepal, a controversial drug is proving to be effective in saving mother's lives. It's the only shelf-stable, easy-to-administer solution to curbing postpartum hemorrhage. In trials, misoprostol is shown to save the lives of women who live far from medical care facilities. Since Nepal allowed use of the drug, postpartum hemorrhage has fallen from the leading cause of maternal death to number two.

Although patients go to hospitals to receive medical care, many Americans will acquire infections that did not already have them. The United States as a whole has made modest progress at reducing the rates of hospital-acquired infections. Spearheading the efforts, the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have devised anti-MRSA strategies to keep patients safe.

For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.

In the developing world, intestinal worms stunt physical and mental growth, drain energy, and can inhibit school work for children. Deworm the World is a global campaign that lobbied the Delhi government to regularly distribute deworming pills to school children. The benefits decrease student absenteeism and increase cost-saving measures.

Two columns on how Iran is treating its massive epidemic of injecting drug use by tackling it as a health problem, effectively lowering H.I.V. rates among drug users using an approach to drugs known as harm reduction.