The Age of Infection

Kim Lewis collects dirt. For the past decade, he and his colleagues—all scientists in Massachusetts—have asked friends and family around the United States to send them 1-gallon Ziploc bags of backyard soil. It might not seem like much, but it turns out that a little grime can hold a trove of groundbreaking scientific discoveries.

In 2011, Lewis’s team began analyzing a bag of soil from a grassy field in Maine, focusing on bacteria naturally growing inside. The scientists mixed some of the dirt with water and nutrients—proteins, for instance, and potato starch—and poured the mixture over specially designed domino-sized plastic blocks punctured with dozens of tiny wells. Each minuscule compartment captured 20 microliters of the slurry, which, thanks to the dilution, contained just a single bacterial cell. Finally, the researchers packed the small plastic slabs in buckets with the remainder of the soil and left them alone for a month.

Welcome to Modicare: India spends next to nothing on public health, and its new prime minister is cutting even deeper. Can the rural clinics that serve the country's poorest survive?

It was 8 p.m. on January 12 at the Jan Swasthya Sahyog (Health Care for the People) clinic, and Dr. Yogesh Jain was examining one of the last patients of the day: a strikingly gaunt man stricken by malnutrition and diabetes. The patient, Jawaal Singh Gondh, is a construction laborer in Ganiyari, a rural town in Chhattisgarh, one of India’s poorest states, and one of the dozens of acutely sick people whom Jain sees every day at the charitable clinic. As Jain tended to Gondh, his knees jutted through too-large pant legs, like a child in his father’s clothes.

World losing ground as Ebola infections soar

The world is falling behind in a desperate race to stop the deadly Ebola outbreak, a top UN official warned amid dire predictions that thousands of new infections are possible before year's end.

"Ebola got a head start on us," said Anthony Banbury, head of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response.

What American Healthcare Can Learn From Germany

Under Obamacare, the U.S. healthcare system is starting to look more like Germany's. Here's what Germans do right—and how Americans could do even better.

Olga Khazan 

Michaela Rehle/Reuters 

 

Last fall, Sam, an American woman who lives in Berlin, began to experience stomach pain while eating and drinking. She visited her general practitioner, who wrote her a prescription.

Universal Health cover:Crucial negotiations at the United Nations

by Mathilde Bouyé and Jean-Michel Severino

 

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed by the United Nations in 2000 (1) have made an unprecedented contribution to the fight against poverty. But with the 2015 deadline approaching, and in spite of significant progress, the MDGs are a long way from being achieved. Worldwide, 1.2 billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day. The MDGs that remain furthest from being reached include the targets on child and maternal health (MDGs 4 and 5) and transmissible diseases (MDG 6). 

7 Things You Need to Know About Obamacare Exchanges

Ready or not — and like it or not — enrollment in the Obamacare Affordable Healthcare Exchanges begins Oct. 1, providing a new way of shopping for health plans if you don't get your insurance from your employer, Medicare, or Medicaid.

If you've decided you want to buy insurance through the exchange offered by your state or the federal government — or maybe you're just curious about the offerings? — here's a primer on the exchanges and a step-by-step guide to picking a plan, calculating costs, and determining if you're eligible for a federal subsidy.

Is This a Pandemic Being Born?

 LAURIE GARRETT

Here's how it would happen. Children playing along an urban river bank would spot hundreds of grotesque, bloated pig carcasses bobbing downstream. Hundreds of miles away, angry citizens would protest the rising stench from piles of dead ducks and swans, their rotting bodies collecting by the thousands along river banks.