The Task Force for Global Health

The Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network aims to reduce childhood mortality around the world by identifying what exactly is killing children under five years of age. The Task Force’s Public Health Informatics Institute (PHII) is a partner of this ambitious initiative, and is responsible for developing the data transportation process and managing… Read More

By Joseph Bresee The development of a universal influenza vaccine has long been a public health goal, but it has thus far proven elusive. The April announcement of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Page Family (Larry Page, co-founder of Google) $12-million funding opportunity for innovative approaches to the development of a “universal”… Read More

By David Addiss On a hot August morning along a dusty road near Leogane, Haiti, a farmer approached us, holding his sick infant daughter in his arms. His eyes met mine as he pleaded for help. The little girl was suffering from severe diarrhea. As a physician, I could see that she needed urgent hospital… Read More

In Yemen’s “forgotten war,” a troop of health workers recently braved their way into remote villages carrying medicines provided by The Task Force’s International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) for the country’s first ever mass treatment of trachoma — the world’s leading infectious cause of blindness. ITI had originally planned to start providing antibiotic to Yemen in… Read More

Africa accounts for 40 percent of the global burden of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Last year, The Task Force and its partners launched a USAID-funded grants program to support African scientists in conducting operational research studies on the control and elimination of these diseases. The initiative was spearhead by John Amuasi, PhD, executive director of… Read More

Head of Novartis Foundation, Ann Aerts, MD, visited our HQ this month to discuss the opportunities for the new Global Partnership for Zero Leprosy. The foundation is supporting the partnership which is hosted at The Task Force.   Related: The Task Force Joins Global Effort to Eliminate One of Humanity’s Oldest and Most Stigmatizing Diseases

A groundbreaking new test to detect drug resistance in intestinal worms is expected to be ready for proof of concept testing early next year. This test could help large-scale treatment programs identify resistance before it takes hold within a population. Intestinal worms cause soil-transmitted helminthiasis (STH), a neglected tropical disease that affects more than a… Read More

New research supported by The Task Force’s International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) has found that mass administration of a low-cost antibiotic can dramatically reduce deaths in children under five years of age in developing countries. In the double-blind, placebo-controlled study called MORDOR, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, researchers gave one dose… Read More

The last time The Task Force moved into a new building, George W. Bush was president and it had seven programs and 40 employees. Ten years later, The Task Force’s extraordinary growth of programs and staff have spurred its move to a new headquarters – one that is three times larger and can accommodate its… Read More

In 2010, Haiti received a flood of medical supplies and equipment donations after an earthquake ravaged the small island nation but much of the equipment was not requested or usable. Some of those donated devices, such as incubators for premature babies, would not work in Haiti’s hospitals because they required a higher electrical voltage than… Read More