Authorities working to contain outbreak of disease that is worse than bubonic plague
Two people in China have been diagnosed with plague, the latest cases of a disease more commonly associated with historical catastrophe.
Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and can arise in three forms – a lung infection, known as pneumonic plague; a blood infection, known as septicemic plague; and a form that affects the lymph nodes, called bubonic plague.
Continue reading...Dire risk is compounded by climate crisis, urbanisation and lack of sanitation, says global monitoring board
It sounds like an improbable fiction: a virulent flu pandemic, source unknown, spreads across the world in 36 hours, killing up to 80 million people, sparking panic, destabilising national security and slicing chunks off the world’s economy.
But a group of prominent international experts has issued a stark warning: such a scenario is entirely plausible and efforts by governments to prepare for it are “grossly insufficient”.
Continue reading...Hopes of eradicating the disease by 2050 will fail unless we tackle the poverty and weak governance that allow it to thrive
The Lancet Commission on malaria eradication received widespread attention this week with its claim that the disease could be eradicated by 2050. This would be a very welcome achievement, as malaria currently kills about 435,000 people – predominantly children – each year.
The report argues that the key to eradicating malaria is the application of existing and new technology, coupled with £1.6bn extra annual funding. Unfortunately, this solution is unlikely to be successful because it fails to address the underlying causes of malaria: grinding poverty and state incapacity.
Continue reading...Volunteers in Salvador’s favelas are collecting data on deadly infections and inequality to help campaign for better sanitation
Wearing crisp, white T-shirts and carrying tablets, the students fan out through Marechal Rondon – a bustling favela spread over hillsides and a valley in Brazil’s north-eastern city of Salvador. As they walk, they map blocked drains and piles of rubbish on their tablets. These are the “infection points” that attract the rats and mosquitoes which, in turn, spread diseases like leptospirosis and the Zika virus, both prevalent here.
Student Alexandre Santos, 20, stops before a weigh-high tangle of wild plants overlooking a housing block. “We look at sewers, rubble, garbage. Now there is high vegetation,” Santos says, tapping in the data. “It goes straight into the data bank.”
Continue reading...Congo results show good survival rates for patients treated quickly with antibodies
Ebola can no longer be called an incurable disease, scientists have said, after two of four drugs being trialled in the major outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were found to have significantly reduced the death rate.
ZMapp, used during the massive Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, has been dropped along with Remdesivir after two monoclonal antibodies, which block the virus, had substantially more effect, said the World Health Organization and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was a co-sponsor of the trial.
Continue reading...The star of ER and The Good Wife is back – as a doctor fighting to save humanity. She gives her bodyguard the slip to talk about our imperilled planet – and her love of Sussex A-roads
Before I meet Julianna Margulies, I spend three days staring at her bodyguard. He’s impossible to miss: one of those men whose every attempt to blend in flounders. Margulies and I are in Lille, judges at the Series Mania television festival, although our experiences differ a little. My cloak of anonymity allows me to roam the city unpestered. Margulies, however, has been a TV mainstay for 25 years, with roles in two juggernaut shows, ER and The Good Wife. Everybody knows who she is, hence Muscles.
He’s even there at the start of our interview, looming in the doorway of our room at the Chamber of Commerce. As I ease past and close the door, I ask if it isn’t a pain being constantly tailed. She smiles and says: “Three years ago, I was the guest of honour when they held this festival in Paris. When I get there, they say, ‘We have detail for you.’ I say, ‘Guys, I don’t need a bodyguard.’ But they won’t budge. We get to the hotel and I say to my bodyguard, ‘My husband and I are going out to lunch. You go home, please.’ So we left the hotel and I’ve never seen anything like it. People were everywhere. We backed into the hotel and my husband called the bodyguard and said, ‘We made a mistake!’ He said, ‘I know – I’m just around the corner.’”
Continue reading...Twenty-eight people required to stay on Freewinds after female crew member came down with virus
Authorities in the Caribbean island of Curacao have announced that 17 crew members and 11 passengers must stay on board a ship owned by the Church of Scientology that is under quarantine following a confirmed case of measles.
Dr Izzy Gerstenbluth said the group was required to stay on the 440-feet Freewinds ship until 13 May because they were still at risk of contracting measles after a female crew member came down with the virus.
Continue reading...Church of Scientology vessel held in port after contagious disease detected onboard
A cruise ship quarantined for a reported case of measles has left the Caribbean island of St Lucia after health officials supplied 100 doses of vaccine to the ship, according to reports.
The Church of Scientology cruise ship was confined to port this week by island health officials after the highly contagious disease was detected onboard.
Continue reading...In the last two weeks, 1,000 young people a day have been infected with the disease
Yemen is seeing a sharp spike in the number of suspected cholera cases this year, with 1,000 children a day infected in the last two weeks alone, agencies said.
More than 120,000 cases have been reported, with 234 deaths in the country, which has been at war for four years this month. Almost a third of the 124,493 cases documented between 1 January and 22 March were children under fifteen. Increasing rates of malnutrition among Yemen’s children have left them more prone to contracting and dying from the disease.
Continue reading...Collapse of Venezuela’s healthcare system could fuel spread of malaria and other diseases across region
Experts have warned of an epidemic of diseases such as malaria and dengue on an unprecedented scale in Latin America following the collapse of the healthcare system in Venezuela.
Continent-wide public health gains of the last 18 years could be undone if Venezuela does not accept help to control the spreading outbreaks of malaria, Zika, dengue and other illnesses that are afflicting its people, experts have warned in a report published in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Continue reading...Analysis of community where 73% of residents contracted Zika in 2015 offers new clues about epidemic
Scientists studying the 2015 Zika outbreak in Brazil have discovered that people previously exposed to dengue may have been protected from the virus.
Three-quarters of the inhabitants of a favela in the country’s north-east caught the mosquito-borne Zika virus during the epidemic. The outbreak left more than 3,000 babies across Brazil with microcephaly, a birth defect caused by mothers catching the virus during pregnancy.
Continue reading...Tests negative for patient who had returned from Burundi and was treated in isolation
A young man being treated in isolation at Uppsala University hospital in Sweden after suspicion of Ebola contamination does not have the disease, the regional authority has said.
Region Uppsala, which oversees several hospitals and medical clinics north of Stockholm, said a test had been carried out on the patient, who was not identified.
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