The world's first solar ambulance just completed its first real-world test in rural Kenya
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The question most ambulances are designed to answer is how fast a patient can reach a hospital. In the Narok region of Kenya, where long distances and unreliable electricity make quality healthcare difficult to access, that question has no good answer. The Read More...
Why the poo taboo has held back a killer disease, and what's changing
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM There is a disease that kills more than one million people a year, nearly half of them children under five, and it rarely breaks through in global health coverage. Researchers have a name for that gap: the "poo taboo." People, including journalists and Read More...
The new TB diagnostic that could replace 150 years of microscope testing
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Tuberculosis kills more than a million people a year. It’s the world’s deadliest infectious disease. And for most of its history, the standard diagnostic hasn’t changed much since the 1880s: a phlegm sample examined under a microscope. The test has Read More...
Why experts say the hantavirus outbreak is not another COVID
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM When a cluster of hantavirus cases emerged aboard the M.V. Hondius, a Dutch polar expedition vessel sailing from Argentina toward the Canary Islands, it was the kind of news that triggers comparisons to the early days of COVID-19. An outbreak on a ship. Read More...
The Big Catch-Up vaccinated 18 million children in two years
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Before any vaccine can protect a child, someone has to reach them. Around 12.3 million of the children covered by the Big Catch-Up had never received a single dose of anything: not measles, not polio, not diphtheria. They are known as zero-dose children, and Read More...
The Bahamas eliminates mother-to-child HIV transmission
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM The Bahamas became the 12th country or territory in the Americas to receive WHO certification for eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, joining a regional cohort that now accounts for more than half of all such certifications worldwide. The Read More...
Smartphone test detects water contamination in under a minute
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM After a flood, a pipe break, or a contamination event, one of the most pressing questions is also one of the hardest to answer fast: is the water safe? Standard microbiological testing takes hours, sometimes a full day. In that gap, people make decisions Read More...
How a three-pill treatment could eliminate a centuries-old disease
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM For decades, the treatment for sleeping sickness was nearly as dangerous as the illness itself. One widely used intravenous drug caused a burning sensation in the veins and killed roughly one in 20 patients who received it. The oral replacement that followed Read More...
AI brings faster, life-saving TB screenings to communities with limited healthcare access
BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM Tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest infectious disease, still claims more than 1.2 million lives every year. Yet in clinics like Boniaba Community Health Center in Mali, the process of diagnosing TB looks very different than it did just a few years ago. Read More...
COVID-19: Rapid and affordable tests to be rolled out worldwide
One of the main challenges in slowing down the spread of the coronavirus pandemic has been the lack of adequate testing facilities and trained medical staff to carry out the lab testing of the virus. That problem may soon be mitigated, thanks to a global initiative that is preparing a massive Read More...