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It’s that time of the year again wherein global health influenza experts begin urging the public to get their seasonal flu shots. Naturally, the inquisitive people of the world have more than a fair share of questions. When should I get it? How long does it last? Does Tamiflu work? STAT news compiled a bunch of questions and provided some answers. It’s worth a skim, if nothing more. http://bit.ly/31fyQc4
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control have adopted a new name for the vaping-related illness that seems to be spreading at an increasing pace. From now on, it will be referred to as EVALI, or e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury. http://bit.ly/2nMi7PQ
A study in The Lancet Global Health looked at the primary healthcare systems of 67 low- and middle-income countries and estimated how much investment would be needed to significantly improve them. According to the authors, “An estimated additional US$200–328 billion per year is required for the various measures of PHC from 2020 to 2030.” http://bit.ly/2OUIfDd
This years Nobel Prize winners in economics owe a nod to the scientific community. Michael Kremmer, Abhijit Banerjee, and Esther Duflo won the honor for their work adopting randomized trials for economic research. According to Nature, “Kremer, Banerjee and Duflo are at the vanguard of the ‘randomista’ movement, which applies the methods of rigorous medical trials — in which large numbers of participants are randomized to receive either a particular intervention or a standard treatment, and followed over time — to social interventions such as improving education.” https://go.nature.com/31nE8lQ
A research paper published in Nature Medicine that questioned the futures of the CRISPR-edited babies born in China has been retracted due to errors that undercut its conclusion. New studies conducted by independent laboratories “have rejected the results and find no evidence that people with the mutation die early. The erroneous conclusion about CCR5 was caused by technical errors in how the mutation was identified in a population-health database.” https://go.nature.com/31pqhf3
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