Accessibility links
Global Health NPR news on world health issues, disease control, public health and sanitation, and health education. Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Global Health

Friday

Science

Year in Review: Science Stories of 2011

From the tsunami-damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant to the end of NASA"s shuttle program, a great deal of science stories made headlines this year. Science writers Mariette DiChristina, Matt Crenson, Steven Levy, and Paul Raeburn join Ira Flatow to discuss the year's top stories in science.

Year in Review: Science Stories of 2011

Listen · 47:03
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/144485202/144485195" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

Health

The War On Cancer Turns 40

Forty years ago, President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act, beginning the War on Cancer. Harold Varmus, director of the National Cancer Institute, discusses four decades of scientific progress in preventing, detecting and treating cancer--and the mysteries that still remain.

The War On Cancer Turns 40

Listen · 23:51
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/144190091/144190080" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Tuesday

Snakebite Threat Gets Short Shrift

Snake handler Subhendu Malllik holds up an Indian baby cobra hatchling after it emerged from an egg on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, India, in June. The venomous snake is indigenous to South Asia. Asit Kumar/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Asit Kumar/AFP/Getty Images

Shots - Health News

Snakebite Threat Gets Short Shrift

Even at the low end of estimates, deaths from snakebites would exceed those from some better-known scourges, such as cholera, dengue fever and Chagas disease.

Friday

Health

Hitting The 'Off' Switch On Antibiotic Resistance

Doctors are running out of effective antibiotics, as bacteria evolve ways to evade one drug after another. Now DARPA has called for alternatives to conventional antibiotics. Nanotechnologist Chad Mirkin discusses one such weapon--tiny globs of DNA and RNA that can switch off the bugs' antibiotic resistance. Nanotechnologist Chad Mirkin discusses next-generation antibiotics that target a bacterium's DNA.

Hitting The 'Off' Switch On Antibiotic Resistance

Listen · 9:08
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/143055120/143055111" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Tuesday

India Eye Care Center Finds Middle Way To Capitalism

Patients sit after their cataract surgeries at a hospital of the Aravind Eye Care System in Madurai, India. Reinhard Krause/Reuters/Landov hide caption

toggle caption
Reinhard Krause/Reuters/Landov

Social Entrepreneurs: Taking On World Problems

India Eye Care Center Finds Middle Way To Capitalism

Founded in the 1970s in India to eliminate needless blindness, Aravind Eye Care has grown to 4,000 beds in seven hospitals — and its surgeons are among the most efficient in the world. The hospital system conducts 300,000 surgeries a year, and about half are free.

India Eye Care Center Finds Middle Way To Capitalism

Listen · 8:19
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142526263/142911205" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

Science

Science Diction: The Origin Of 'Stethoscope'

The first stethoscope, invented by the French physician René Laennec, was simply a hollow wooden or ebony tube. Laennec named the device using the Greek roots stethos, or chest, and skopein, to look at or to observe. Medical historian Howard Markel discusses how Laennec came up with the invention. Unlike the stethoscope familiar to patients today, the original device was a simple tube.

Science Diction: The Origin Of 'Stethoscope'

Listen · 4:58
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142782877/142782868" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">

Tuesday

Selling Health Care In The Developing World

In a Healthpoint clinic in the village of Mallan in Punjab, India, lab technician Navdeep Sharma draws Suba Singh's blood sample. Part of Healthpoint's business plan is to offer cheap diagnostic tests at its clinics. Diagnosing and treating people in a single visit is one key to delivering affordable health care. Soma Vatsa/for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Soma Vatsa/for NPR

Social Entrepreneurs: Taking On World Problems

Selling Health Care In The Developing World

Healthpoint Services says it has a business model that will not only help the world's low-income populations — but also make a profit. Based in India, the company offers patients videoconferences with doctors, cheap diagnostic tests and clean water. And it hopes to spawn imitators as it proves it can be profitable.

Selling Health Care In The Developing World

Listen · 7:46
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142184691/142641719" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

Medical Treatments

Geron To End Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Citing "capital scarcity" the Geron Corporation said it will abandon its research into using human embryonic stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries. Stem cell expert Leonard Zon discusses the announcement and what it means for the future of embryonic stem cell research.

Geron To End Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Listen · 16:58
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142512098/142512087" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Technology

Building A Better Toilet

Toilets, as most of us know them, haven't changed much since the 1800s--they use a lot of water, and require an infrastructure that many communities can't afford. Ira Flatow and guests look at the problem of access to sanitation, and how engineers are making toilets better.

Building A Better Toilet

Listen · 30:03
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142512096/142512085" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Thursday

Friday

Health

Mosquitoes Engineered To Kill Their Own Kind

Reporting in Nature Biotechnology, researchers write of genetically engineering mosquitoes to pass lethal genes to their offspring, in hopes of crashing populations of one dengue-transmitting species. Science writer Bijal Trivedi talks about recent tests of the bugs, and the concerns of critics.

Mosquitoes Engineered To Kill Their Own Kind

Listen · 12:25
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/142024622/142024611" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Friday

When Forgettable Salads Cause A Deadly Outbreak

Would you remember exactly what was in this salad more than a week after eating it?

Luciana Bueno Santos (LuBueno)/iStockphoto.com hide caption

toggle caption
Luciana Bueno Santos (LuBueno)/iStockphoto.com

The Salt

When Forgettable Salads Cause A Deadly Outbreak

The E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 4,300 people in May and June had epidemiologists scrambling to find the contaminated vegetables that caused it. What made it difficult, they say in a new paper, is that people had trouble remembering what exactly was in the salads they ate. In this case, the culprit turned out to be fenugreek seeds, but it was a long road to get there.

Thursday

After A Half-Million Cholera Cases, Vaccination Will Begin In Haiti

A Haitian protester in Port-au-Prince last month spray-paints a wall, equating the UN mission in Haiti (abbreviated here as MINISTA) with cholera.

Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images

Shots - Health News

After A Half-Million Cholera Cases, Vaccination Will Begin In Haiti

The goal of the vaccinators isn't to stop cholera in its tracks. They can't do that in Haiti with only enough vaccine for 100,000 people. The aim is to show the world that vaccination against the illness can be done.

Tuesday

Malaria Vaccine Cuts Infection Risk By Half, Study Says

A mother held her baby as she received an experimental malaria vaccine at the Walter Reed Project Research Center in Kombewa in Western Kenya in Oct. 2009.

Karel Prinsloo/AP hide caption

toggle caption
Karel Prinsloo/AP

Shots - Health News

Malaria Vaccine Cuts Infection Risk By Half, Study Says

Several thousand young African children who got three doses of the experimental vaccine had about 55 percent less risk of getting malaria over a year than those who got a control vaccine against rabies or meningitis.

Malaria Vaccine Cuts Infection Risk By Half, Study Says

Listen · 4:11
Transcript
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/141460067/141478281" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript