Allen School for Global Health

Habari za asubuhi dada (good morning sister)! It is a little before 7:00 in the morning and the survey team slowly starts appearing at my residence ready to start another day in the field. The driver helps me load the charged computers, extra batteries, backup paper surveys, the paper visual aids, GPS devices, and peanut butter and jelly bag lunches into the car. Today we have a two-hour drive to the border of Tanzania and Kenya where we will ask 25 households to complete surveys.

A Washington State University-led research team determined rabies vaccines stored at warmer temperatures still protect against the disease in dogs.

As they entered a village in Tanzania, Cassie Eakins (’16 DVM) and members of the rabies team announced over a loudspeaker that there would be a rabies vaccine clinic coming to town the next day. At another village, they tossed posters from their vehicle. Once the team started to drive away, the village children gathered them up to be posted. The next day a crowd was lined up to have their dogs vaccinated.

Beginning in the summer of 2015, the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health is partnering with veterinary clinics and their clients to eliminate rabies as a public health problem worldwide. The goal is zero human deaths by 2030. “We are partnering with veterinary clinics around the country because together we can do more […]

In rural Kenyan villages where few families have electricity or indoor plumbing, a surprising technology helps researchers study the health of animals and people: the cell phone.

After earning his DVM in 1980, Kyle interned in Santa Cruz, California, and then bought his practice in nearby Los Gatos. Over the years it has grown into a thriving practice. Crediting much of his success to his time at WSU, Kyle wanted to give back to the school and community that meant so much […]

Bacteria can do something remarkable. They can share genes. So, if one bacterium is resistant to a particular antibiotic, such as tetracycline, it can pass that resistant gene to another bacterium. That bacterium will become resistant and can pass its resistant gene to another bacterium.

Traveling by bicycle, community interviewers visit homes in Asembo, Kenya, to learn how animal and human disease impacts a family’s health, access to education, and economic well-being. They will visit more than 1,400 households four times each year over several years to ask about their nutrition, family members’ health, household assets, and health of their animals. They collect the data on a handheld computer, or PDA, so that it can be sent back to Pullman the next day for analysis.

The goal is to reduce poverty and hunger and improve health and education.

At 8:00 a.m. people in an East African village have already begun to line up with their dogs. Mostly it is young boys with their pets coming to one of the many free rabies vaccination clinics set up around the Serengeti National Park in northern Tanzania. “There can be 200 people in line at a […]

Last month the Hollywood movie Contagion showed the fear, devastation, and social chaos caused by a fast-spreading, airborne virus for which there is no cure. While the pandemic in the film is fictional, the newly emerging disease—Nipah virus—is not.