Research Roundup: What we’re reading this week

In this regular feature on Breakthroughs, we highlight some of the most interesting reads in global health research from the past week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a report stating that the United States faces "potentially catastrophic consequences" if health officials do not act immediately to combat rising drug resistance to antibiotics. CDC Director Tom Frieden has also stressed that public health efforts, including research, are more important than ever to address emerging health threats like drug resistance.

A new Forbes opinion piece argues that public-private partnerships are key to combatting diseases such as HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

In related news, Rajiv Shah—administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—recently spoke with Scientific American about how USAID is diversifying its partnership base to address global development challenges.

“There’s a growing global need for innovative financial solutions,” Graham Macmillan and Hui Wen Chan from the Citi Foundation write as part of a new blog series. “Innovation and collaboration are necessary to tackle” international development challenges, they write, adding that advance market commitments and the International Finance Facility for Immunization are examples of “exciting innovations that have the capacity to make a major impact.”

A new opinion piece in Roll Call states that in addition to the “prospect of a government shutdown or a default on the national debt, the most destructive aspect of the federal budget impasse is the sequester’s damage to basic scientific research, especially biomedical research.”

The MenAfriVac™ meningitis vaccine has reduced cases of the potentially fatal disease by 94 percent in Africa’s meningitis belt, researchers reported this week in The Lancet.