David J. Olson

GENEVA, Switzerland -- This month I was visiting the Strategic Health Operations Centre (SHOC), deep inside the World Health Organization. SHOC is WHO's equivalent of the White House Situation Room, where a multi-disciplinary team of experts gather to access and share information that enable rapid situation assessment and decision-making during...

The last time the Horn of Africa was hit by a famine as severe as the current one, it was 1985 and I was just finishing two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. My wife and I, moved by the horrific images coming out of Ethiopia, volunteered...

Earlier this year, Ann Kim, a freelance journalist on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project, went to Botswana to report on AIDS, where the adult HIV prevalence is 24 percent, the second highest in the world.

She found AIDS, but she also found...

Lancet once called it "the most important medical advance of the 20th century." But in the 21st century, oral rehydration therapy (ORT) -- a simple, cost-effective treatment given at home using either packets of oral rehydration salts (ORS) or a simple solution of sugar, salt and water -- seems to...

One night, as a young development worker in Mali 20 years ago, I engaged in high-risk behavior in a village west of Bamako -- I slept without a mosquito net in the middle of the rainy season.

I came to regret my lapse: I was struck down with a severe...

Pope Benedict XVI's comments last month that condom use can be justified in some cases to help curb the spread of AIDS were surprising to me only because they came from the very top of the Catholic Church. But in my 10 years of managing condom social marketing programs for...