Posted 27/11/2020. The migrant-friendly residential TB program of SMRU on the Thailand-Myanmar border has achieved high treatment success rate. However, many TB patients admitted to the centers are in advanced stage of disease. Win Pa Pa Htun and colleagues show that early TB death (in the first month of treatment) is highest among pulmonary TB cases and in particular in HIV co-infected patients and in those with co-morbidity. Early detection and treatment for both TB and HIV are crucial for migrants, if the case fatality rate is to be reduced in this marginalized population.

Posted 24/11/2020. Malaria Screener is a smartphone application developed by the National Library of Medicine, in partnership with Richard Maude and colleagues at MORU Epidemiology, aiming to improve the availability of high quality malaria diagnosis. It is cheap, fast and easy-to-use with a standard smartphone and microscope and detects malaria parasites by machine learning.

Posted 13/11/2020. Use of antimicrobials in animals and the environment has been established to contribute to the global antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and yet there have been inadequate collaborative efforts to tackle this problem. Sunil Pokharel, Bipin Adhikari and colleagues discuss how and why ‘One health’ approach is important to tackle antimicrobial resistance.