Life expectancy improves for blacks in the U.S., and the racial gap is closing, CDC reports
African Americans have made significant gains in life expectancy, and the mortality gap between white and black Americans has been cut in half since 1999.
Public health & disease
World Health Organization hails major progress on tackling tropical diseases
WHO director general says significant strides have been made in fight against sleeping sickness, elephantiasis and other neglected tropical diseases
FDA approves first treatment for severe type of multiple sclerosis
“We’ve been banging on a wall with a bunch of drugs, and we finally put a big crack in the wall,” said Dr. Jerry Wolinsky.
Global life expectancy and health improving
The Global Burden of Disease study, which shows the key drivers of ill health, disability and death in individual countries, found that by 2015, the world population had gained more than a decade of life expectancy since 1980 – rising to 69.0 years in men and 74.8 years in women.
Guatemala becomes fourth country in the world to eliminate onchocerciasis, known as ‘river blindness’
Of the six countries in the Americas where transmission of the debilitating disease was present in the 1990s, Guatemala accounted for about 41% of the 568,000 people at risk.
Dozens of countries poised to drive out malaria by 2020
Success in Sri Lanka raises hopes that at least 30 other nations could follow suit, marking beginning of the end for disease that kills 400,000 every year
India launches massive, historic Swachh Bharat Mission to boost poverty alleviation through sanitation efforts
Initiated by the Indian government, the mission aimed to achieve an “open-defecation free” and resulted in the construction of an estimated 89.9 million toilets between 2014 and 2019.
Smallpox becomes first infectious human disease to be fully eradicated
The WHO launched an intensified plan to eradicate smallpox in 1967. Widespread immunization and surveillance were conducted around the world for several years. The last known natural case was in Somalia in 1977.
Robert Austrian, Jerome Gold, and colleagues develop world’s first pneumococcal vaccine
With the discovery of penicillin in 1928, interest in vaccines to prevent pneumonia waned. The assumption was that the problem would largely be eliminated by use of this antibiotic. Austrian and Gold, however, showed that, despite treatment with penicillin, deaths from pneumococcal pneumonia were unchanged in the first 96 hours of therapy. These efforts ultimately led to the licensing first of a 14-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1977 followed by the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide in 1983.
Global life expectancy surpasses 40 years for first time ever
Through major advancements in medicine, public health, and poverty alleviation, by 2021 the global average life expectancy was just over 70 years. Less than 15 years later, humanity reaches another critical milestone by achieving 75 years of life expectancy around the world.