There is a vicious circle of ill health, poverty and social exclusion. Inequalities in wealth and access to essential services impair people's ability to maintain their health and wellbeing. This prevents them from fulfilling their potential and from participating fully in their communities and nations.

Millions of people in developing countries lack access to adequate basic services including clean water, sanitation, food security and healthcare, a situation exacerbated by the HIV and AIDS pandemic. Inadequate mental health and welfare services reduce individual wellbeing and exacerbate social exclusion. If disadvantaged people could exercise their rights to these services, much poor health and social exclusion would be prevented.

Priority Areas of Focus

HIV/AIDS
Prevention, Care & Treatment, Lab, Evaluation

Malaria
Control, Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, Travel

Global Disease Detection
Preparedness, Investigation, Response
Parasitic Diseases
Control, Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment, Travel

Influenza
Seasonal, Avian, 2009 H1N1, Pandemic, Symptoms, Vaccine

Polio
Vaccination, Eradication, Lab Networks, Partnerships

Our work in infectious diseases focuses on developing ways to fight and prevent enteric and diarrheal diseases, HIV/AIDS, malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and neglected and other infectious diseases.

We also work on integrated health solutions for family planning, nutrition, maternal, neonatal and child health, tobacco control  and vaccine-preventable diseases.

Global Health Overview

Despite incredible improvements in health since 1950, there are still a number of challenges, which should have been easy to solve. Consider the following:

• One billion people lack access to health care systems.
• 36 million deaths each year are caused by noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. This is almost two-thirds of the estimated 56 million deaths each year worldwide. (A quarter of these take place before the age of 60.)
• Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number one group of conditions causing death globally. An estimated 17.5 million people died from CVDs in 2005, representing 30% of all global deaths. Over 80% of CVD deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
• Over 7.5 million children under the age of 5 die from malnutrition and mostly preventable diseases, each year.
• In 2008, some 6.7 million people died of infectious diseases alone, far more than the number killed in the natural or man-made catastrophes that make headlines. (These are the latest figures presented by the World Health Organization.)
• AIDS/HIV has spread rapidly. UNAIDS estimates for 2008 that there are roughly:
  • 33.4 million living with HIV
  • 2.7 million new infections of HIV
  • 2 million deaths from AIDS
• Tuberculosis kills 1.7 million people each year, with 9.4 million new cases a year.
• 1.6 million people still die from pneumococcal diseases every year, making it the number one vaccine-preventable cause of death worldwide. More than half of the victims are children. (The pneumococcus is a bacterium that causes serious infections like meningitis, pneumonia and sepsis. In developing countries, even half of those children who receive medical treatment will die. Every second surviving child will have some kind of disability.)
• Malaria causes some 225 million acute illnesses and over 780,000 deaths, annually.
• 164,000 people, mostly children under 5, died from measles in 2008 even though effective immunization costs less than 1 US dollars and has been available for more than 40 years.