As the Nation Begins Virus Tracing, It Could Learn From This N.J. City

Tuberculosis is still a rampant problem in the developing world. Doctors are looking for even more advanced ways to test for TB beyond the GeneXpert tests.

A strategy for stopping widespread depression in developing countries should be as obvious as one for combatting epidemics. A new strategy aims to downshift jobs to local workers to act as peer therapists.

Child mortality rates are decreasing in Afghanistan due to more readily available basic health care, more effective vaccinations, and locally-trained volunteer health workers.

India has, for years, been a hotbed of polio. Supported by the WHO as well as local health-care workers, immunizations have officially rid the country of the disease. There are still challenges in maintaining records and reaching everyone, but the message continously changes and adapts.

Child mortality rates in third-world countries are often shockingly high. But they are gradually decreasing due to efforts that target contagious diseases and more widespread health education.

Slow test results make it difficult to stop the spread of tuberculosis. Using faster diagnostic technology and driving vans to rural areas in Tanzania, GeneXpert is making progress in treating this curable disease.

Although patients go to hospitals to receive medical care, many Americans will acquire infections that did not already have them. The United States as a whole has made modest progress at reducing the rates of hospital-acquired infections. Spearheading the efforts, the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers have devised anti-MRSA strategies to keep patients safe.

For decades, AIDS has taken the lives of millions of people and infected millions more worldwide. The key to reducing the effect of AIDS, and even potentially curing it, involves treating patients as early as possible after being diagnosed with HIV, before the disease damages organs. San Francisco General Hospital developed the RAPID program for this purpose, with the goal of “Getting to Zero” the number of new infections and deaths.

In the developing world, intestinal worms stunt physical and mental growth, drain energy, and can inhibit school work for children. Deworm the World is a global campaign that lobbied the Delhi government to regularly distribute deworming pills to school children. The benefits decrease student absenteeism and increase cost-saving measures.

Two columns on how Iran is treating its massive epidemic of injecting drug use by tackling it as a health problem, effectively lowering H.I.V. rates among drug users using an approach to drugs known as harm reduction.