Medicines to treat common diseases in poorer countries tend to be old and are often ineffective. But the pharmaceutical industry has little incentive to research new drugs: patients in developing countries can’t afford them. All that may change, as ”needs-driven” research on diseases that afflict developing countries gathers momentum.
Unless Brazil enforces existing conservation laws, it will lose more than 40% of its Amazon rainforest by 2050, say scientists. The predictions are among the first to emerge from a unique, large-scale study that is using computer models to simulate how factors such as logging, farming and climate could affect the future of the forest.
Heterosexual men who are circumcised are less likely to contract HIV/Aids from their female partners, according to ground-breaking South African research. In 2002, the scientists recruited more than 3Â 000 uncircumcised heterosexual men aged 18 to 24 from Orange Farm, a Johannesburg slum where about 32% of women have HIV.