US Mission Geneva

Companies and nonprofits have joined the U.S. Agency for International Development in efforts to improve mother and infant health.

On World Polio Day 2011, the number of polio cases has been reduced by 99 percent since 1988 and the disease limited to a handful of countries resulting in fewer than 500 individual cases this year.

Researchers and government health officials express measured optimism about a malaria vaccine candidate that has produced positive results in trials involving more than 15,000 children across 11 sites in seven countries in Africa, where the disease causes the most deaths.

A report from the respected U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) provides another endorsement of the movement to convert the world to clean cookstoves, lending further momentum to a campaign begun a year ago by the United Nations in partnership with the German, Dutch, Norwegian, Peruvian and U.S. governments.

“USAID is proud to support the critical work of domestic and international partners against TB,” said Ariel Pablos-Mendez, assistant administrator for USAID’s global health programs, at a Washington news conference unveiling the new WHO report. “We know that treating TB abroad saves lives while also saving money here at home.”

An international research consortium has identified 29 genetic variations that influence blood pressure, providing insight into blood pressure abnormalities that are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack and stroke. This class of disease is the world’s largest killer, taking more than 17 million lives in 2008, according to the World Health Organization.

The GAVI Alliance (formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) said the new vaccination campaign will provide funding to pay for vaccines in dozens more countries where they are not currently available. The vaccines will protect the children receiving them from two of the diseases with the highest fatality numbers in the developing world.

The United States and the World Health Organization (WHO) are moving to a higher level of cooperation, combining resources to help other countries boost their public health infrastructure for the good of their own people and the rest of the world.

Improving capacities to detect, report and respond to infectious diseases quickly and accurately lies at the heart of the global community’s ability to address all infectious disease threats.