Informal Consultation On End Game Challenges For Trachoma Elimination Task Force For Global Health Decatur United States Of America 7 9 December 2021

Using the WHO-recommended “SAFE” strategy (surgery, antibiotics, facial cleanliness, environmental improvement), considerable progress is being made towards global elimination of trachoma as a public health problem. However, it has become apparent that in a small proportion of districts, despite apparently high-quality local implementation of the SAFE strategy, achieving the active trachoma criterion of elimination as a public health problem has been difficult to achieve. Such districts fall into at least two categories: (1) those in which the prevalence of trachomatous inflammation—follicular in 1–9-year-olds (TF1–9) continues to hover above the elimination threshold of 5% despite interventions; and (2) those in which TF1–9 5% is achieved but subsequently returns to ≥5% during the two-and-a-half-year period of surveillance after antibiotic mass drug administration ceases. How these districts should be managed is presently unclear. Uncertainty is deepened by programmatic reliance on TF1–9 as the WHO-recommended indicator for decision-making; TF prevalence is known to be a lagging marker as the prevalence of infection with trachoma’s causative organism, iChlamydia trachomatis/i, declines, and would likely also lag behind population-level infection recrudescence, too. Health ministries and their partners are keen to find solutions to this problem.brbrIn December 2021, WHO’s Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases convened an informal consultation to allow discussion of the way forward with respect to this issue. This document is the meeting report.

Experts explore the biological, social, and economic complexities of eradicating disease. Disease eradication represents the ultimate in global equity and the definitive outcome of good public health practice. Thirty years ago, the elimination of smallpox defined disease eradication as a monumental global achievement with lasting benefits for society. Today, the global commitment to eradicate polio and guinea worm and heightened interest in the potential eradication of other infectious diseases, including measles/rubella, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, and malaria, dominate public health concerns. But what does it take to eradicate a disease? This book takes a fresh look at the evolving concepts of disease eradication, influenced by scientific advances, field experience, societal issues, and economic realities. A diverse group of experts from around the world, representing a range of disciplines, examines the biological, social, political, and economic complexities of eradicating a disease. The book details lessons learned from the initiatives against polio, measles/rubella, and onchocerciasis. Further chapters examine ethical issues, the investment case, governance models, organizational and institutional arrangements, political and social factors, feasibility of eradication goals, priority setting, and the integration of disease eradication programs with existing health systems. Contributors Stephen L. Cochi, Walter R. Dowdle, Claudia I. Emerson, Kimberly M. Thompson, Radboud J. Duintjer Tebbens, Regina Rabinovich, Lesong Conteh, B. Fenton Hall, Peter A. Singer, Maya Vijayaraghavan, Damian G. Walker, Kari Stoever, Julie Jacobson, Andy Wright, Chris Maher, Bruce Aylward, Ali Jaffer Mohamed, T. Jacob John, Robert S. Scott, Robert Hall, Jeffrey Bates, Sherine Guirguis, Thomas Moran, Peter Strebel, Eric A. Ottesen, Ciro de Quadros, Linda Muller, Jai Prakash Narain, Ole Wichmann, Alan R. Hinman, Stewart Tyson, Robin Biellik, Piya Hanvoravongchai, Sandra Mounier-Jack, Valeria Oliveira Cruz, Dina Balabanova, Yayehyirad Kitaw, Tracey Koehlmoos, Sebastião Loureiro, Mitike Molla, Ha Trong Nguyen, Pierre Ongolo-Zogo, Umeda Sadykova, Harbandhu Sarma, Maria Gloria Teixeira M, Jasim Uddin, Alya Dabbagh, Ulla Kou Griffiths, Muhammad Ali Pate, John O. Gyapong, Adrian Hopkins, Dairiku Hozumi, Mwelecele Malecela

Why do diseases of poverty afflict more people in wealthy countries than in the developing world? In 2011, Dr. Peter J. Hotez relocated to Houston to launch Baylor’s National School of Tropical Medicine. He was shocked to discover that a number of neglected diseases often associated with developing countries were widespread in impoverished Texas communities. Despite the United States’ economic prowess and first-world status, an estimated 12 million Americans living at the poverty level currently suffer from at least one neglected tropical disease, or NTD. Hotez concluded that the world’s neglected diseases—which include tuberculosis, hookworm infection, lymphatic filariasis, Chagas disease, and leishmaniasis—are born first and foremost of extreme poverty. In this book, Hotez describes a new global paradigm known as “blue marble health,” through which he asserts that poor people living in wealthy countries account for most of the world’s poverty-related illness. He explores the current state of neglected diseases in such disparate countries as Mexico, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, the United States, Japan, and Nigeria. By crafting public policy and relying on global partnerships to control or eliminate some of the world’s worst poverty-related illnesses, Hotez believes, it is possible to eliminate life-threatening disease while at the same time creating unprecedented opportunities for science and diplomacy. Clear, compassionate, and timely, Blue Marble Health is a must-read for leaders in global health, tropical medicine, and international development, along with anyone committed to helping the millions of people who are caught in the desperate cycle of poverty and disease.

This volume begins with a short history of malaria and follows with a summary of its biology. It then traces the fascinating history of the discovery of quinine for malaria treatment, and then describes quinine’s biosynthesis, its mechanism of action, and its clinical use, concluding with a discussion of synthetic antimalarial agents based on quinine’s structure. It also covers the discovery of artemisinin and its development as the source of the most effective current antimalarial drug, including summaries of its synthesis and biosynthesis, its mechanism of action, and its clinical use and resistance. A short discussion of other clinically used antimalarial natural products leads to a detailed treatment of additional natural products with significant antiplasmodial activity, classified by compound type. Although the search for new antimalarial natural products from Nature’s combinatorial library is challenging, it is very likely to yield new antimalarial drugs. This book thus ends by identifying ten natural products with development potential as clinical antimalarial agents.

"Mammoth Cave was under private ownership before it became a National Park in 1941. For over 85 years, the cave was owned and operated by John Croghan of Locust Grove and his heirs. This is the first comprehensive look into the history of the Mammoth Cave Estate using unpublished information and rarely seen photographs of the Cave Estate from private collections. Maps, drawings, and floor plans of the Hotel and Estate are provided as well as never before seen images of the 1916 Mammoth Cave Hotel Fire aftermath"--

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic “Crisis in the Red Zone reads like a thriller. That the story it tells is all true makes it all more terrifying.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction From the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone, now a National Geographic original miniseries . . . This time, Ebola started with a two-year-old child who likely had contact with a wild creature and whose entire family quickly fell ill and died. The ensuing global drama activated health professionals in North America, Europe, and Africa in a desperate race against time to contain the viral wildfire. By the end—as the virus mutated into its deadliest form, and spread farther and faster than ever before—30,000 people would be infected, and the dead would be spread across eight countries on three continents. In this taut and suspenseful medical drama, Richard Preston deeply chronicles the pandemic, in which we saw for the first time the specter of Ebola jumping continents, crossing the Atlantic, and infecting people in America. Rich in characters and conflict—physical, emotional, and ethical—Crisis in the Red Zone is an immersion in one of the great public health calamities of our time. Preston writes of doctors and nurses in the field putting their own lives on the line, of government bureaucrats and NGO administrators moving, often fitfully, to try to contain the outbreak, and of pharmaceutical companies racing to develop drugs to combat the virus. He also explores the charged ethical dilemma over who should and did receive the rare doses of an experimental treatment when they became available at the peak of the disaster. Crisis in the Red Zone makes clear that the outbreak of 2013–2014 is a harbinger of further, more severe outbreaks, and of emerging viruses heretofore unimagined—in any country, on any continent. In our ever more interconnected world, with roads and towns cut deep into the jungles of equatorial Africa, viruses both familiar and undiscovered are being unleashed into more densely populated areas than ever before. The more we discover about the virosphere, the more we realize its deadly potential. Crisis in the Red Zone is an exquisitely timely book, a stark warning of viral outbreaks to come.

A twelfth-century poem by the creator of the Arthurian romance describes the courageous exploits and triumphs of a brave lord who tries to win back his deserted wife's love

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery. Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.