Feature Stories

Givers of Life Condemned to Death

In vast, struggling stretches of the world, there lurks a killer of women and girls that no vaccine can prevent. This is the often agonizing, sudden death in pregnancy or childbirth, and it takes the lives, needlessly in most cases, of more than half a mi

Grow Old Along With Me--And 690 Million Other People by 2030

Widespread success at overcoming the major public health challenges of the past is creating a major public health challenge for the future.

The Generic Gamble: Developing countries hope India will remain a major supplier of low-cost drugs, despite controversy over patent rules

For now, India remains a leading supplier of low-cost generic drugs. But even so, the recent ruling of the Madras High Court that rejected a bid by Novartis to tighten the country's patent laws for brand-name products left many questions unanswered.

Preventing Cervical Cancer Deaths: How to save 4 million lives in ten years

Among the most tragic public health failures of the last decade are the preventable deaths of young women in developing countries from maternal mortality and cervical cancer.

Malawi: Overcoming Health System Hurdles

Health systems are failing to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in Africa. In many cases, health care services either do not exist or are not reaching the people who need them...

Reducing Adult Deaths From Chronic Diseases in Asia: Evidence and Opportunities

Martin Wolf, the noted columnist for the Financial Times, recently commented that the economic rise of China and India was nothing less than a fundamental realignment of the global order...

Newborn Survival: A Snapshot of Progress Since 2005

Each year at least 4 million newborn babies die--an unacceptably high number given that low-cost solutions exist to save these lives.

Clearing the Smog: Fighting Air Pollution in Mexico City, Mexico, and São Paulo, Brazil

Lidia Reyes spent much of 2006 in the hospital. Her children, ages 7, 13, and 17, suffered several asthma attacks during the year, and needed to be hospitalized between five and eight days each time.

Bhutan: When Environment Drives Public Health Policies

From its cold, high Himalayan valleys to the belt of semitropical terrain facing the tea plantations of northeastern India, the isolated, landlocked kingdom of Bhutan presents public health officials with environmental challenges every day.

Disease Control Priorities: Essential Surgical Services in Africa

Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition, shows that surgical services provided in low-cost district hospitals in resource-constrained countries are highly cost-effective.

Efforts to Write Tobacco Control Laws Meet Resistance in Kenya

Lucy Achieng is lucky to be alive after she quit smoking 14 years ago. Achieng, a 46-year-old mother of three and a manager at a local company in Nairobi, says there is nothing glamorous about smoking.

DCPP Finds an Eager Audience in Journalists: Links to Information and Resources Facilitates Evidence-Based Reporting

The news media around the world play two important roles?educator and watchdog. With that in mind, the Disease Control Priorities Project (DCPP) set out to ensure dissemination of its ?best health buys? to the media.