22/02/2012

Available for over a year

MALAWI – CASH INCENTIVES Young women in Malawi who were given cash worth 20% of their household income had a reduced incidence of HIV infection. Claudia Hammond hears about the research from economist Dr Berk Ozler of the World Bank. OLD DRUG FOR TB A new treatment for TB is desperately needed as more and more cases are resistant to the existing drugs. Now Dr Paul Elkington, of Imperial College London and his team have discovered that doxycycline, a cheap and common antibiotic, might be a useful addition to the cocktail of drugs used to treat the disease. CLEANING UMBILICAL CORDS After a baby is born the umbilical cord linking it to its mother is cut and the WHO advice is to leave the cord wound to heal by itself. But two new studies from Pakistan and Bangladesh have found that cleaning the cord and giving advice on the importance of hand washing reduces the number of deaths amongst new borns. Dr Zelly Hill from the Institute for Child Health explains the significance of this research to Claudia Hammond.