React & Respond

As a first-generation university student with little means to afford subscriptions to research publications, I cannot express how thrilled I was to see my first issue of Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health in my mailbox. Being able to stay current with public health research will be helpful in planning my pathways and project interests during graduate school and beyond. Thank you so much. 

I am a 78-year-old polio survivor (contracted polio in 1946) who was quarantined at home with my older sister (now age 80) with paralysis in my legs. Our two younger siblings were not affected. If I can contribute to your research, I would be eager to do so. 

I’m a survivor of polio, which I contracted at the age of 4, and am now 61. I’ve often wondered how I became paralyzed [in] my right leg, whilst my brother, who slept in the same bedroom, had no symptoms at all. 

Different strategies for developing and delivering an effective new portfolio of antibiotics for unmet public health needs must be considered—ones that rely on collaborative public responsibility instead of incentives for commercial markets. For example, public utility drug manufacturing already exists in some countries and could be expanded to encompass public interest medical R&D. 

The story of antimicrobial resistance is not only about excess and misuse but also access challenges, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where instead of having a range of drugs for various pathogens, there would be one or two types of antibiotics. This becomes a challenge to practitioners when they would like to prescribe a different drug but only have one. It is such reuse, as compared to misuse, that fosters resistance in limited-resource areas.