Insights & Updates

  Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally and the most common among women in Eastern and Middle Africa. Tanzania has one of the highest incidence rates of cervical cancer in this region: 34.3 cases per 100,000 women.1 Low-and-middle-income countries such as Tanzania bear a disproportionate burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality. These regions have not demonstrated the same reductions in cervical cancer rates that high-income countries have achieved with the introduction of the Papanicolaou smear and HPV vaccination campaigns. This disparity is largely fueled by resource limitations in screening programs and financial and social challenges to the acquisition, distribution, and acceptability of the HPV vaccine.2   "Low-and-middle-income countries such as Tanzania bear a disproportionate burden of cervical cancer incidence and mortality."   HIV infection imposes complex barriers to cervical cancer screening among women in Tanzania. Tanzanian women living with HIV are more likely to become infected with HPV and develop persistent infection leading to precancerous lesions. Patients living with...

Despite national efforts to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers, Arkansas remains the only state that hasn’t expanded coverage to 12 months. Postpartum Medicaid, funded largely by the federal government, ensures that low-income women receive uninterrupted healthcare for 60 days after giving birth. However, Arkansas interrupts this coverage at 42 days, transitioning women to different programs, which often leads to gaps in care. An NPR article covered the experience of Maya Gobara, a new mother in Arkansas who falls into the low-income category. She lost her Medicaid coverage about six weeks after an emergency C-section and was transferred to a new health plan without any warning. This significantly disrupted her care and left her without coverage for her own health issues and her twins’ intensive care bills. When questioned about whether Arkansas has plans to expand postpartum Medicaid, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders opposed this measure, believing that adding more coverage would not address the state’s maternal health issues. For context,...

Discovering Hands was founded by Dr. Frank Hoffman in Germany after he identified the need to catch early breast cancer cases that doctors may have missed in regular exams. Hoffman trained blind women, as their heightened sense of touch can potentially detect breast cancer more effectively than doctors. Evidentiary support for this method has shown that trained blind women can detect tissue changes 30% more effectively than doctors. Hoffman also ran a 2023 pilot study which further showed that medical tactile examiners (MTEs) are as accurate as doctors in identifying potentially cancerous lumps.   In her NPR article, Kamala Thiagarajan focuses on one blind woman in particular, Meenakshi Gupta, who is part of this program. Gupta has worked as an MTE at Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon, India, for over two years. Introduced to India in 2017, this program is now part of major hospitals in several Indian cities. MTEs are especially important in these hospitals because of the limited access to mammograms....

The HIV epidemic has affected millions globally since the 1980s. While it remains a major public health issue, recent clinical trials of lenacapavir, developed by Gilead Sciences, show significant effectiveness in preventing new HIV infections.   According to an NPR article, the recent PURPOSE 2 trial found lenacapavir to be 96% effective in preventing HIV infections in over 3,200 participants of different genders. In African countries, PURPOSE 1 trials had 100% efficacy in preventing HIV transmission among cisgender women.   Lenacapavir is unique in that it is a twice-a-year injection, as opposed to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs like Truvada, which need to be taken every day. Despite being shown to be extremely effective in clinical settings, this efficacy has not held up in the real world, primarily due to the social stigma surrounding the oral pill, especially in African countries.   Lenacapavir has also been previously used for HIV treatment; however, Gilead Sciences is ensuring that it can be classified as a prevention drug as well....