In a guest post on Humanosphere, Katie Leach-Kemon, a policy translation specialist from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), discusses the recently released reports from IHME and the World Bank on regional disease burdens. “One of the six reports, ‘Global Burden of Disease: Generating Evidence, Guiding Policy — Europe and Central Asia Regional Edition,’ is focused on countries in Eastern Europe, where progress has been made but for some parts of the region [tuberculosis (TB)] and HIV rates have skyrocketed,” she writes, noting, “This portion of the report includes countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Serbia, and Turkey.” She includes charts and graphs examining causes of morbidity and mortality for different age groups, and she adds, “In addition to interventions designed to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS and improve eating habits, GBD data show that reducing alcohol use among men in Europe and Central Asia has the potential to address the disturbing increases in mortality the region is experiencing” (9/5).

YAOUNDE, Sep 5 2013 (IPS) - When Francois Biloa fell ill with malaria, his family did what they had always done in the past – they gave him anti-malaria drugs and antibiotics bought from the local market. Only when his condition worsened and he became bedridden and fell unconscious, did his family take him to a local clinic in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé.