Resources

Maternal and child health (MCH) funding is among the most cost-effective and lifesaving investments the United States can make. Since 2012, US leadership and investments through USAID have helped save the lives of over 340,000 women and 9.3 million children, reducing the mortality rate for children under five by nearly a quarter in USAID’s 25 priority countries.

This document summarizes a monograph by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on the latest state of the science around single-dose HPV vaccination. It includes follow-up from studies that informed WHO’s 2022 endorsement of a single-dose schedule for HPV vaccines, as well as new studies on topics such as durability of protection, effectiveness and health impact across diverse socioeconomic contexts, implementation, and cervical cancer screening integration.Taken together, the papers in this monograph add to and reinforce earlier findings: across multiple geographies, single-dose HPV vaccination provides strong protection against cancer-causing HPV infection, while also providing opportunities to reduce ongoing program costs and expand coverage.

Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the most effective treatment for Plasmodium falciparum infections—the deadliest form of malaria responsible for the vast majority of the estimated 608,000 malaria deaths reported in 2022.Reliable access to ACTs is critical for malaria patients, but the key starting material for ACTs, artemisinin, is vulnerable to multiple market and supply chain risks, casting doubt over long-term affordable access to these lifesaving antimalarial treatments.Developed more than a decade ago, semi-synthetic artemisinin (SSA) has great potential to address these market and supply chain risks but faces multiple barriers that prevent its wide adoption in ACT production. This brief highlights SSA’s critical role in stabilizing the ACT market, barriers to SSA adoption and the actions that needs to be taken by stakeholders to remove these adoption barriers.

Low adoption of piped oxygen infrastructure in health facilities in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) may be related to countries’ reliance on predominant, globally recognized standards. Many of these standards were not created with the operational limitations of those countries in mind, such as supplies, access to labor, and financial resources. National medical gas pipeline standards can be ambiguous or nonexistent in LMIC. PATH and Build Health International (BHI) investigated five innovative technical options spanning facility design, material, and component sourcing, and installation that could help alleviate barriers to install piping.The goal of this investigation is to prompt global discussion on increased adoption of high-quality medical gas pipeline systems, and address the unmet need for sustainable and uninterrupted lifesaving oxygen in LMIC.

The ORS and zinc: A policy and advocacy primer outlines the current global status of ORS and zinc uptake and key actions to increase their scale-up, as well as advocate and communicate about improving access and use.PATH, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, reviewed literature and existing data sources and carried out 37 key informant interviews with global- and country-level stakeholders from five countries: Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan.The findings summarized in this primer include key actions to scaling ORS and zinc, strategies for successful implementation, and priority areas for investment to advance progress.