BACKGROUND AND INTRODUCTION This review paper examines the growing implications of China's engagement in shaping innovative national initiatives against infectious diseases and poverty control and elimination in African countries. It seeks to understand the factors and enhancers that can promote mutual and innovative health development initiatives, and those that are necessary in generating rel...

Developing countries are clearly facing a double burden of disease. The prevalences of overweight and obesity are rising among adults simultaneously with high rates of undernutrition among children. Consequently, nutrition-related chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, are emerging as concerns in developing countries. These concerns are combined with the continued need t...

In mid-September, India and Pakistan experienced one of the worst flood disasters since their independence. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands of villages were totally destroyed. Both countries were soon facing substantial economic damages, and, more importantly, the recent flooding paved the way for various kinds of infectious diseases. Significant growths in population, poverty, and...

Prior to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in Liberia, the laboratory system was duplicative, fragmented and minimally coordinated. The National Reference Laboratory was conceptualised to address the existing challenges by promoting the implementation of effective and sustainable laboratory services in Liberia. However, in a resource-limited environment such as Liberia, progress regarding the re...

inflammatory bowel disease, coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, hypertension, diabetes, tumours, are exam­ples of chronic degenerative diseases that have a high prevalence in developed nations. these chronic-non-communicable dis­eases have multifactorial aetiologies that considered to be caused by the interaction of environmental risk factors with multi­ple predisposing genes. gen...

Epidemiological and experimental data suggest the association of gender and sex with susceptibility and severity of infectious diseases (Moss, 2005). Gender and sex likely affect viral and parasitic infectious diseases (Morales-Montor et al., 2004; Fish, 2008; Snider et al., 2009). Here we will review the effect of gender and sex on bacterial infectious diseases (sepsis, mycobacterial diseases ...

Running over timescales that span decades or centuries, the epidemiological transition provides the central narrative of global health. In this transition, a reduction in mortality is followed by a reduction in fertility, creating larger, older populations in which the main causes of illness and death are no longer acute infections of children but chronic diseases of adults. Since the year 2000...

Too often we hear about ‘bad bugs’ and too little do we contemplate the role that society and the environment play in struggles with the vast microbial world. No question that biomedical research remains important for solving problems, but we should be cautious not to rely too heavily on technology – vaccines and pharmaceuticals, for example. Surely amplification resulting from, and adaptation ...

In August 1996, the International Health Law Committee, International Law and Practice Section, American Bar Association, sponsored a program entitled “Law and Emerging and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases” to examine how the emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases affects international and U.S. federal, state, and local law. The issues addressed included international legal rules on in...