Resources

This brief provides a landscape of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency in Myanmar. The brief provides information about how G6PD is measured, and collates all accessible data from gray and peer-reviewed literature to offer a comprehensive view of the situation in Myanmar.

In a world with dynamic population movements, outbreaks with cross-border implications, and increasingly politicized health issues, linear and inflexible approaches to global health programs are ineffective. Adaptive management has emerged as one possible approach that embodies iteration and adaptability in program design and implementation to help with navigating complex and dynamic environments. It entails iterative program timelines, funding mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation plans, and implementation strategies that allow for a process of continuous “learning by doing.” It builds in explicit processes of testing, learning, and iteration throughout the project lifecycle and calls for an organizational culture that embraces flexibility and learns from its failures. Real-time data systems can strengthen adaptive management by generating data that can more rapidly inform tactical adaptations, changes, and future planning. This white paper challenges traditional project management in the global development sector. It encourages donors, policymakers, implementers, and ministries of health to set a new precedent of adaptive programming.

Critical care services use oxygen as a primary commodity required for the management of moderate and severe COVID-19 patients, particularly in accident and emergency departments and intensive care units. Similarly, general and specialist anesthesia services all rely on oxygen support through noninvasive and invasive mechanical ventilation.To this end, the Zambia Ministry of Health, in collaboration with its Zambia National Public Health Institute and PATH, cohosted a virtual Zambia Oxygen Summit from October 20 to 23, 2020. The summit aimed at addressing demand for national medical grade oxygen, or medical oxygen, in the management of critically or severely ill COVID-19 patients within the designated pandemic treatment centers and around the country. The summit’s primary goal was to obtain stakeholder input and recommendations to improve the government’s oxygen escalation plan for acute respiratory care among COVID-19 patients.This report shares highlights from the discussions held during the summit around strategies and approaches to improving access to medical oxygen. It illustrates the current national status of oxygen scale-up, challenges, and lessons learned, as well as mitigation strategies in the production and supply of medical oxygen. The report also presents a set of proposed recommendations to improve access to safe oxygen in Zambia.

Over the last decade, product development partnerships (PDPs) have produced a wide assortment of lifesaving technologies targeting diseases that afflict billions in low-income countries. This report from a group of 12 PDPs, including PATH, finds that since 2010 these 12 PDPs have developed and brought to market 66 new drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for a number of diseases—including tuberculosis, malaria, HIV, meningitis and sleeping sickness—that have reached and benefitted more than 2.4 billion people in low-income countries.The report identifies key factors in the success these organizations, such as developing products that are affordable and easy to administer and leveraging vast networks of partners to cost-effectively develop products. It also documents the contribution of PDPs to building a global ecosystem for health research, noting the 12 organizations helped build research capacity at 550 sites in 80 countries. With increased funding and political support, PDPs can ensure the promise of their current pipelines are realized and that the next wave of critical new technologies complete development and reach those in need.PATH provided a case study on the development of MenAfriVac®, the first vaccine to be developed for meningitis specifically for Africa, which virtually eliminated meningitis across the majority of the African meningitis belt.

This brief provides accurate information regarding breastfeeding and COVID-19 and addresses ways for protecting yourself from mis- or disinformation.