Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy

A  roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.

The New York Times blogged about CDDEP's latest study on the rise of drug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae. [NYT]

Last week, CDDEP attended Pew’s one-day conference titled “A New Pathway for Antibiotic Innovation: Exploring Drug Development for Limited Populations.” We’ve summarized it on our blog here.

CDDEP also live-tweeted a related public hearing organized by the US Food and Drug Administration on “Creating an Alternative Approval Pathway for Certain Drugs Intended to Address Unmet Medical Need.” Read our tweets here (be sure to follow us on Twitter too!).

Results from a survey conducted in New York City ICUs and published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology found significant gaps in clinicians’ knowledge of antimicrobial susceptibility testing methods, which help detect drug-resistant bacterial strains. [ICHE]

BMJ has launched a new online journal aimed at doctors in India. [BMJ]

Clinical trials of a promising new tuberculosis vaccine proved disappointing, showing an efficacy rate of just 17%, researchers reported in The Lancet. [BBC]

NPR produced a brief radio segment about Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD using robots to disinfect hospital rooms with hydrogen peroxide, which has led to a 64% decrease in untreatable infections. [NPR]

A new report published by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shows that antibiotic resistance found in bacteria isolated from retail meat samples sold across the US continued to increase in 2011.

Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that bathing patients daily with washcloths soaked with chlorhexidine decreased the rate of hospital-acquired bloodstream infections by 28% and the overall rate of MRSA acquisition by 19%. [US News]

A new study published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research reveals that several new species of fungi have become resistant to treatment with even the most potent antifungal medicines. [Times of India]

Participants at the Harvard Malaria Forum discuss ways to combat the threat of malaria. [Harvard Gazette]

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa - five developing nations with high rates of infectious diseases - have announced that they will work together to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis. [WSJ]

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation released a new report on global health expenditure, finding that after reaching a high in 2010, global health funding appears to have stagnated. [NPR]

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