Category: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome

“Superspreaders” identified as driving cause of 2014 Ebola epidemic

A new study has shown that in the catastrophic 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, about three percent of the people infected were responsible for infecting 61 percent of all cases. The issue of so-called “superspreaders,” according to researchers who published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is so significant that it’s important to put a better face on just who these people are and then better reach them with public health measures designed to control the spread of infectious disease during epidemics.

“Superspreaders” identified as driving cause of 2014 Ebola epidemic

A new study has shown that in the catastrophic 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, about three percent of the people infected were responsible for infecting 61 percent of all cases. The issue of so-called “superspreaders,” according to researchers who published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is so significant that it’s important to put a better face on just who these people are and then better reach them with public health measures designed to control the spread of infectious disease during epidemics.

Disease outbreak guarantees: A proposal to build public health…

In 2005, the World Health Assembly adopted a revised version of its International Health Regulations , a legally binding treaty among 196 nations to boost global health security and strengthen the world’s capacity to confront serious disease threats such as Ebola and SARS. A decade later, just one-third of countries have the ability to respond to a public health emergency.