Scientists who are working to discover new medicines often use robots to prepare samples of cells, allowing them to test chemicals to identify those that might be used to treat diseases. Students will meet a scientist who works to identify new medicines. She created free software that ''looks'' at images of cells and determines which images show cells that have responded to the potential medicines. Students will learn about how this technology is currently enabling research to identify new antibiotics to treat tuberculosis. Students will complete hands-on activities that demonstrate how new medicines can be discovered using robots and computer software, starring the student as ''the computer.'' In the process, the students learn about experimental design, including positive and negative controls.

This course examines the growing importance of medicine in culture, economics and politics. It uses an historical approach to examine the changing patterns of disease, the causes of morbidity and mortality, the evolution of medical theory and practice, the development of hospitals and the medical profession, the rise of the biomedical research industry, and the ethics of health care in America.

This presentation provides an introduction to infectious diseases like tuberculosis, vector-borne diseases, puerperal sepsis, streptococcus septicemia, etc. and how these diseases have affected global health over the last two centuries and decades.

This video is about interactions between nutritional deficiencies and infections in low-income settings. First, the typical diet in low-income countries, and the most common micronutrient deficiencies will be described, and basic concepts about the malnutrition-infection cycle will be introduced. Then the role of iron, zinc and vitamin A in relation to childhood infections will be discussed. Finally, students will hear about the need for nutritional support to patients with TB and HIV patients.

TB is one of the oldest known diseases (since antiquity at least), and it is estimated that a quarter of the human population is infected by the bacteria that causes TB. Not everyone gets TB though. Learn more about this fascinating disease and old companion of humans here.
Get transcript for video here: https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/module/58789/overview

Downloadable transcripts for the videos from Karolinska Institutet, from the course "An Introduction to Global Health".The course is originally published at EdX. 

By 2030, end the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and neglected tropical diseases and combat hepatitis, water-borne diseases and other communicable diseases
Professor Tehmina Mustafa, CIH, Haukeland University Hospital, University of Bergen

Mustafa began by pointing out that the UN Millennium Development Goals, which preceded the SDGs (Goal 6: COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA AND OTHER DISEASES), had only highlighted a few global communicable diseases. The SDGs continue to address the challenges of communicable disease epidemics, but have a widened focus to include a number of other important diseases. Also diseases that are not only pathogen caused.

Mustafa underlined that communicable disease epidemics highlight other global issues such as social injustice and social inequality. The years of life lost to these diseases is much higher in “hot-spots”, generally located in low- and middle-income countries.

According to Mustafa, the approaches included in the SDGs are more integrated than those of the MDGs and will be better able to lead to research directions that will help to alleviate the health and economic implications of communicable disease outbreaks.

Episode 3 of the Swedish Global Health Podcast.
In April 2019, a youth-led panel with representatives from youth and student organizations and global health leaders took place at our house in Stockholm.

Before the panel, we had the opportunity to sit down with Peter Sands (Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria) and Dr Seth Berkley (CEO of Gavi the Vaccine Alliance) to discuss their respective work and personal engagement in global health. It became an interesting dialogue spanning over sustainable development goals, barriers to gain impact to achieve the 2030 agenda, the role of stakeholder engagement and reigniting global solidarity. We hope you enjoy it!
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The Swedish Global Health Podcast - A Podcast about Global Health and Sustainable Development is aimed at anyone interested in knowing more about this exciting topic! It is co-produced by the Swedish Society of Medicine's Committee for Global Health and the Swedish Society of Medicine's student and junior doctor section.

This textbook has evolved from online and live-in-person lectures presented in Professor Kenneth Todar's bacteriology courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its contents are suitable for reading or presentation in courses or course modules concerning general microbiology and medical bacteriology at the college and advanced high school levels of education. For teachers, instructional materials are available that accompany many chapters and topics. These include lecture outlines, notes, powerpoint presentations, and examination questions that compose a study guide

This month, the World Health Organization announced that tuberculosis cases are on the decline for the first time in at least 20 years. We seem finally to be winning what has been a very long battle. Tuberculosis bacteria have been attacking us since modern humans began to migrate out of Africa around 40,000 years ago. If you enjoy classic literature, you'll be familiar with the cough, fever, and weight loss of consumption (the old-fashioned term for tuberculosis), which used to be a near certain death sentence. That changed when the aminoglycoside antibiotic streptomycin was discovered in 1943.

In an Essay, Matthew Todd and colleagues discuss an open source approach to drug development. This Essay outlines how open source methods of working could be applied to the discovery and development of new medicines. There are many potential advantages of an open source approach, such as improved efficiency, the quality and relevance of the research, and wider participation by the scientific and patient communities; a blend of traditional and innovative financing mechanisms will have to be adopted. To evaluate properly the effectiveness of an open source methodology and its potential as an alternative model of drug discovery and development, we recommend that new projects be trialed and existing projects scaled up. Where we stand The scientific and medical community has discovered and developed many groundbreaking medicines that have had a major impact on public health. However, drug development is challenged by a widening gap between health needs and the pharmaceutical industry’s motives and business model, alongside a decrease in efficiency per research dollar spent in medicinal product research and development (R&D), a trend known colloquially as Eroom’s Law. Such fundamental challenges result in frequent high-level calls for new initiatives to develop therapeutics and bring them to market. These include market push and pull mechanisms such as priority review vouchers, advance market commitments, and public R&D funding. New organizational models have also emerged, including public–private partnerships (PPPs) and not-for-profit product development partnerships (PDPs) (for example, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative [DNDi], the Medicines for Malaria Venture [MMV], and the Global Alliance for Tuberculosis Drug Development [TB Alliance]) that often apply a full “de-linkage” model in which the price of medicines and the cost of R&D are uncoupled.