Ukrainian Doctors Reach Out For Help, American Surgeons Answer the Call

Project ECHO - driven by a single doctor with a cause - pulled together a team of specialists to develop a model that combines technology with collaborative care and careful patient tracking to help cure for diseases spread to patients around the world through community healthcare agents, as opposed to only specialty centers. This kind of "disruptive innovation" is effectively working to demonopolize health care knowledge and access, and lends to a health system capable of meeting today’s soaring demands for care.

A new approach to distributing pharmaceuticals in Egypt could become the blueprint for providing cutting-edge medicines to the poor. The approach, developed to fight Hep. C, capitalizes on local networks and involves negotiating lower prices with drug companies.

The typical surgery for hydrocephalus, a brain swelling disease, often leads to infection. Medical constraints in Uganda inspired a neurosurgeon to create a safer and more effective surgery which is now used in Uganda and the U.S.

In light of a study published in BMC Medicine, authors Nancy Fullman and Alexandra Wollum take a deeper dive into Nigeria’s gains against polio and what they could mean for the country’s routine vaccine systems.

PrePex, a new nonsurgical circumcision tool, could revolutionize the prevention of H.I.V. and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Cheap and easy to assemble, the device has proven successful in several randomized trials.

The Jaipur Limb organization based in India has developed prostheses at low cost, and services are free for the poor. The organization’s efforts have recently spread to other countries with impoverished people. Jaipur Limb reaches patients through branch clinics, traveling workshops, and limb camps in cities around the world.

A prosthetist from Texas visiting Jaipur Limb workshops in Honduras saw problems with their low-cost prosthetics - the issue wasn't the design of the leg, but the technicians at the Honduras workshops were people completely new to prosthetics who were given just eight weeks of training. Thanks to his research, Jaipur established a research and development unit to improve the limb.

The U.S. prison population is aging, which is costly because older inmates need more care. Some states have responded by creating special wards, having the young inmates care for the old, or building nursing homes.

In Zambia, the need for surgery is just as common as in the United States - doctors, however, are rare. So Zambia is training clinical officers – with no medical degrees – to do C-sections and hernia repairs.

An Oklahoma surgery center made news by posting its prices online – a revolutionary idea in an industry where consumers normally are buying blind. This is a big reason health care costs so much, but recent months have seen great advances in transparency.