Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
WHO: Progress Has Stalled In Worldwide Effort To Eliminate Malaria
Reuters: WHO Fears Complacency As Progress Against Malaria Stalls
Progress in the global fight against malaria has stalled amid signs of flatlining funding and complacency that the mosquito-borne disease is less of a threat, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. Malaria infected around 216 million people in 91 countries in 2016, an increase of 5 million cases over the previous year, the WHO said in its annual World Malaria Report. It killed 445,000 people, about the same number as in 2015. (Kelland, 11/28)
Los Angeles Times: The World Is Off Track In Its Goal To Eliminate Malaria. Here's Why.
Progress toward the global elimination of malaria has stalled, according to a report to be published Wednesday by the World Health Organization. The world made big gains against malaria from 2000 to 2015, with annual infections falling 18% and annual deaths dropping 48%. The WHO was so encouraged by the declines that in 2015 it announced a goal of cutting malaria infections and deaths worldwide by at least 40% by 2020. (Simmons, 11/28)
Los Angeles Times: About 15% Of Americans With HIV Don't Know They're Infected, CDC Report Says
Half of the Americans recently diagnosed with HIV had been living with the virus for at least three years without realizing it, missing out on opportunities for early treatment and in some cases spreading it to others, according to a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Healy, 11/28)
The New York Times: How Running May Or May Not Help The Heart
If 50 men run 3,510 marathons over the course of three decades, will their heart health suffer or improve? A new study delving into precisely that question concludes that the answer is simultaneously reassuring and complicated, with long years of endurance training seeming not to harm runners’ hearts, but also not necessarily to benefit them in the ways that the runners themselves probably expected. (Reynolds, 11/29)
The New York Times: A Failure To Heal
What happens when a clinical trial fails? This year, the Food and Drug Administration approved some 40 new medicines to treat human illnesses, including 13 for cancer, three for heart and blood diseases and one for Parkinson’s. We can argue about which of these drugs represent transformative advances (a new medicine for breast cancer, tested on women with relapsed or refractory disease, increased survival by just a few months; a drug for a type of leukemia had a more lasting impact), but we know, roughly, the chain of events that unfolds when a trial is positive. ... Yet the vastly more common experience in the life of a clinical scientist is failure: A pivotal trial does not meet its expected outcome. What happens then? (Mukherjee, 11/28)
Stat: Scientist Concedes His Controversial Multiple Sclerosis Therapy Is Ineffective
What many hope will be the final chapter in an unfortunate saga in multiple sclerosis research appears to have been written by the scientist who started the affair in the first place. Italian physician Paolo Zamboni has publicly acknowledged that a therapy he developed and dubbed “the liberation treatment” does not cure or mitigate the symptoms of MS. A randomized controlled trial — the gold standard of medical research — he and other Italian researchers conducted concluded the procedure is a “largely ineffective technique” that should not be recommended for MS patients. (Branswell, 11/28)
