topnaman | Malaria blog

Rapid diagnostic tests for malaria (and other diseases) can extend diagnosis to remote areas. This is sorely needed. Beyond benefits against the disease at hand, the introduction of diagnostics along with associated systems of quality assurance can strengthen the overall health system (previously discussed here). A major barrier for expanding the use of rapid tests [...]

Today, the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria was unveiled in Norway (great NY Times piece) with an initial $225 million. The subsidy program aims to increase the availability of affordable artemisinin combination therapies (ACT) – the recommended first line treatments for malaria – through private drug shops. Many people in some countries self-treat with antimalarials [...]

My friend Atanu Dey at Deeshaa.org often speaks of the fallacy of implementing technological solutions to overcome fundamentally non-technological problems. While Atanu usually invokes this paradigm in reference to India’s primary education challenge, I believe the same concept is relevant to public health efforts. Many public health problems today are non-technological, i.e. we have effective [...]

Studying health delivery means figuring out which techniques work for getting the interventions to the people who need them the most. It means studying how to scale effective techniques, and studying how we can speed up policy making processes. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Unfortunately, its rarely done and certainly without the scientific rigor we apply [...]