The RTS,S malaria vaccine may soon be licensed. Models of impact of such vaccines have mainly considered deployment via the World Health Organization's Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in areas of stable endemic transmission of Plasmodium falciparum, and have been calibrated for such settings. Their applicability to low transmission settings is unclear. Evaluations of the efficiency of different deployment strategies in diverse settings should consider uncertainties in model structure.

Reed Beall and Randall Kuhn describe their findings from an analysis of use of compulsory licenses for pharmaceutical products by World Trade Organization members since 1995.

Original Source

A systematic review and meta-analysis by Kathrin Ziegelbauer and colleagues finds that sanitation is associated with a reduced risk of transmission of helminthiases to humans.

Original Source

Current malaria elimination guidelines are based on the concept that malaria transmission becomes heterogeneous in the later phases of malaria elimination. In the pre-elimination and elimination phases, interventions have to be targeted to entire villages or towns with higher malaria incidence until only individual episodes of malaria remain and become the centre of attention. With increasing evidence of clustering of malaria episodes within villages, we argue that there is an intermediate step.

In 2009, the promulgation of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulation focused attention on cigarette flavor additives. The tobacco industry had prepared for this eventuality by initiating a research program focusing on additive toxicity. The objective of this study was to analyze Philip Morris' Project MIX as a case study of tobacco industry scientific research being positioned strategically to prevent anticipated tobacco control regulations.

Richard Cibulskis and colleagues present estimates of the worldwide incidence of malaria in 2009, together with a critique of different estimation methods, including those based on risk maps constructed from surveys of parasite prevalence, and those based on routine case reports compiled by health ministries.

Over the past decade there has been a massive scale-up of antimalarial interventions including insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), artemisinin-combination treatments (ACTs), and rapid-diagnostic tests (RDTs), and in selected areas, indoor residual spraying. This scale-up is beginning to have a significant impact on the burden of malaria in many areas worldwide. In the most recent World Malaria Report, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2010 there was an 8% decrease in the number of cases (compared with 2005) and a 21% decrease in the number of deaths (compared with 2000).

There is growing, but belated, concern that much of the developing world's supply of medicines—in particular, its supply of anti-infective drugs—is of poor quality. This constitutes a major public health problem because the high prevalence of poor quality drugs in developing countries results in avoidable morbidity, mortality, and drug resistance. Moreover, any efforts to improve public health by developing new medicines or by changing treatment policies will ultimately be pointless if the drugs patients actually take contain insufficient or incorrect ingredients.

In 2009, the promulgation of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulation focused attention on cigarette flavor additives. The tobacco industry had prepared for this eventuality by initiating a research program focusing on additive toxicity. The objective of this study was to analyze Philip Morris' Project MIX as a case study of tobacco industry scientific research being positioned strategically to prevent anticipated tobacco control regulations.

Mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders are highly prevalent and are responsible for 14% of the global burden of disease expressed in disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). The resources that have been provided in countries to tackle the huge burden are insufficient, inequitably distributed, and inefficiently used, which results in a large majority of people with these disorders receiving no care at all. Even when available, treatment and care often is neither evidence-based nor of high quality.