Tom Frieden

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It’s the world’s leading killer. Make it the focus of the next breakthrough

InternacionalSalud Pública

In 2023, the weight-loss drug Wegovy and similar medications were a scientific and cultural — and profit-making — breakthrough. Allowing patients to shed weight without diet or exercise, they are a rare bright spot in efforts to reverse obesity. They also reduce heart disease.

But what if we had medications that cost 5,000 times less and are better at preventing heart attacks and strokes? And what if only 1 in 5 people who need these medications get them?

That’s the situation with drugs to treat high blood pressure — and it needs to change.

Hypertension, the “silent killer”, is the deadliest but most neglected and widespread pandemic of our time, killing more than 10 million people a year worldwide.…  Seguir leyendo »

La nueva ola de la COVID-19 podría estar por comenzar

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

La lección más importante que nos ha dejado la pandemia de COVID-19 es que lo único constante es el cambio. Las variantes se propagan, los casos aumentan y disminuyen, los tratamientos cambian y los conocimientos aumentan.

Esto significa que todos —la sociedad civil, los funcionarios electos y los líderes del sector de la salud pública— debemos aprender de manera constante y adaptarnos con rapidez, bajo el entendimiento de que es poco probable que dure mucho la eficacia de cualquier respuesta política.

Es momento de poner en práctica esa flexibilidad. Los casos al alza en Europa, los estragos que está causando la variante ómicron, sobre todo entre las personas mayores no vacunadas, en Hong Kong y la desaceleración de las campañas de vacunación son advertencias de que otra ola de infecciones podría estar a punto de desatarse en Estados Unidos.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública, , ,

Those on the pandemic's frontlines -- health and care workers, including nurses -- risk their lives every day to treat their patients. They face high risk of infection with Covid-19; the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in May, almost certainly a substantial underestimate, that a stunning 115,000 or more had already died from Covid-19. By July, the death toll was estimated at 200 each and every day since the pandemic began.

The WHO has declared 2021 the International Year of Health and Care Workers, but to celebrate them as heroes is an empty, meaningless gesture if we continue to fail to protect them.…  Seguir leyendo »

Jose Gemas, de 84 años, manda un abrazo a su familia en un asilo de ancianos en Montijo, en Portugal, el 18 de mayo de 2020. (Armando Franca)

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia, ,

Las cinco fases del duelo brindan un marco referencial útil para reflexionar sobre la crisis que ha ocasionado la pandemia. Si bien en ocasiones el concepto simplifica demasiado un proceso complejo, contiene verdades fundamentales: la gente suele aceptar las realidades duras poco a poco y con dificultad. La gente no necesariamente experimenta todas las fases, tampoco lo hace en orden lineal. No obstante, reconocer el efecto de la pandemia y la fase final —la aceptación—, podría acelerar el regreso a una nueva normalidad pospandemia de forma colectiva.

El COVID-19 ha volcado vidas en todo el mundo. Millones están de luto. Cientos de millones están desempleados.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública

Looking back over more than 30 years working in public health globally and in the United States, I can't recall a year with as pronounced a divergence: big advances and big setbacks.
Heart health improved in parts of the world, but in the US, the decline in cardiovascular deaths stalled, contributing to a shocking decline in life expectancy. We know more about epidemic preparedness than ever, but preventable infectious disease outbreaks continue. More countries are reducing smoking, but e-cigarettes are hooking a new generation of kids into lifelong nicotine addiction. Here's the good, the bad and the ugly of 2019.

The good
  • Industrially produced transfat, an artificial chemical in food, kills 500,000 people every year, but this year, Thailand, the European Union and Brazil banned it, bringing to nearly 3 billion the number of people who will be protected from it..
…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoÁfrica, , ,

On July 24, 2015, Nigeria passed an important milestone marking an entire year without a single new wild poliovirus case. This is a remarkable achievement in the global effort to eradicate polio.

This week, we detailed in a report with cautious optimism that polio will be gone not only in Nigeria but in all of Africa.

Only a few years ago, Nigeria was Africa's last outpost of polio and seemed to be losing the battle against the disease. In 2012, Nigeria recorded 122 cases -- more than half of all cases worldwide.

With dedication and hard work from the Nigerian government and Global Polio Eradication Initiative partners such as Rotary International, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, World Health Organization, UNICEF and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as tens of thousands of health workers, nearly every child in the country was vaccinated against polio.…  Seguir leyendo »