A column by Donald G. McNeil Jr. about global health news.

Bill and Melinda Gates Grade the World’s Health

Bill and Melinda Gates handed the world a report card last week, assessing its progress on 18 global health indicators: infant mortality, AIDS, vaccine use, smoking rates and so on.

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Lasting Merit Found in a Tuberculosis Vaccine Invented a Century Ago

Tuberculosis kills almost two million people a year. A perfect vaccine could save many of them, but the one now in use — invented in the 1920s and known as BCG, for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin — has so many flaws that some countries, including the United States, have never adopted it.

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