Round up - 22.12.2023
Universal Basic Income, a new study on malnutrition relapse, the effectiveness of community health worker programs in fragile situations, and great global health reporting from 2023.
Welcome to the sixth installment of the round-up! It has been a good experience for me to start this newsletter, and I hope you have enjoyed the content. I would love to understand how useful it has been and how I could make it more useful for you. To that end, please reply to this post with any thoughts!
(I was ill last week and off for the next few, so this is the last installment of 2023.)
“Universal Basic Income: Short-Term Results from a
Long-Term Experiment in Kenya” - A new study on GiveDirectly’s work suggests that “Communities receiving UBI experienced substantial economic expansion—more enterprises, higher revenues, costs, and net revenues—and structural shifts, with the expansion concentrated in the non-agricultural sector.” (NPR Goats and Soda, Banerjee et al., 2023)
A new study provides high-quality evidence on the risk of malnutrition relapse. In some contexts, between 30 and 50% of children treated for severe acute malnutrition relapse within six months. (Action Against Hunger, King et al., 2023)
A community health worker program study kept working when conflict struck Mali. The ensuing study provides more evidence for the power of community healthcare. (Muso Health, Kayentao et al., 2023)
“Challenges to Achieving a Grand Convergence in Health Indicators by 2035” - A piece outlining the problems countries face in improving their health metrics from a more structural perspective. (CGDev)
Global Health Now published a list of the best global health reporting in 2023, including:
“Indian companies are bringing one of the world’s most toxic industries to Africa. People are getting sick.” (The Examiner)
“Doctors Warned Her Pregnancy Could Kill Her. Then Tennessee Outlawed Abortion.” (ProPublica)
“How Japan is tackling ‘hikikomori’ – a syndrome that created a generation of recluses” (The Telegraph)
‘A Quick Death or a Slow Death’: Prisoners Choose War to Get Lifesaving Drugs (NYT)
“The Rise of Indigenous Doulas” (The Pulitzer Center)
“What if you had dementia — and didn't know it?” (NPR Goats and Soda)
“In Defense of the Rat” (Hakai Magazine)
Musculoskeletal disorders affected close to 500 million people in 2020. “Cases of other musculoskeletal disorders are projected to increase by 115% (107–124) from 2020 to 2050, to an estimated 1060 million (95% UI 964–1170) prevalent cases in 2050; most regions were projected to have at least a 50% increase in cases between 2020 and 2050”, as per a Global Burden of Disease study. (The Lancet)
The WHO has added Noma — a disfiguring condition affecting around 35,000 people a year — to the Neglected Tropical Diseases List. (The Guardian)
“Unlocking Medicine Access in Africa: The complementary role of online pharmacies and robust regulations.” (Afuye et al., 2023)