Regional Stories
February 2024In the remote community of Tekohá Y' Apo, in the Department of Canindeyú, some 280 kilometers from Paraguay's capital, stands the Avá Guaraní ethnic group health post, a small pink wooden house with a tin roof. For years, medical care in the area was limited, but recently, thanks to an initiative led by the Pan American Health…
Do you know why it is so important to get your vaccines?” Claudia asked her 10-year old son, Adil, who sat with her in the waiting room of the local health center in Rio Claro, Trinidad. “So I can enter secondary school?” he answered. “And why else, love?” “So that if I ever get the virus, I won’t need to worry about getting sick. I…
In 2023, the Americas has seen the highest number of dengue cases in its history, with climate change being a potential contributor. Actions to reduce the population of mosquitoes that transmit the disease are essential to prevent and control dengue.
— Asunción, Paraguay, November 2023 —
November 2023
“When I got malaria, my body felt warm from the inside out. At first, I thought it was something else but when, after five days, I found myself shivering with a high fever, that is when I went to see the community collaborator who was able to test and treat me,” Señora Emelida, a 52-year old, Indigenous woman from Rio Cañas, said.
Brasilia, 20 October 2023 - Nursing instructors from Guyana and five other Caribbean countries and territories participated in a training course in Brazil on clinical simulation, an educational methodology that recreates professional practice scenarios in a controlled, participatory, and interactive setting.
The training took place last September…
For food engineer Geovanna Amancha, ensuring that the food products consumed in Ecuador do not make people sick is a priority.— August 2023 —That is why, as part of the SORT IT research and training initiative, led by Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases of WHO, UNICEF, UNDP and the World Bank, with…
In October 2022, after a period of over three years with no newly confirmed cases, Haiti’s West Department experienced a resurgence of cholera, making it the epicenter of the outbreak. On February 6, 2023, an alert was issued by the Département Sanitaire de l'Ouest (DSO) in response to a rapid increase in cases on La Gonâve, an island within the…
Microbiologist Soany Avilez was delighted when she was selected to implement genomic sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in Honduras. In the wake of the pandemic, in 2020, she began working at the National Virology Laboratory performing PCR tests for COVID-19 diagnosis. At that time, genomic sequencing to detect variants…