Communicable Diseases

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) GHealth News - The World Health Organization convened its emergency committee Thursday to consider if the spiralling outbreak of monkeypox warrants being declared a global emergency. But some experts say the WHO's decision to act only after the disease spilled into the West could entrench the grotesque inequities that arose between rich and poor countries during the coronavirus pandemic. Declaring monkeypox to be a global emergency would mean the UN health agency considers the outbreak to be an "extraordinary event" and that the disease is at risk of spreading across even more borders, possibly requiring a global response. It would also give monkeypox the same distinction as the COVID-19 pande...

GHealth News - British health officials will start offering vaccines to some men who have sex with men and are at the highest risk of catching monkeypox, in an effort to curb the biggest outbreak of the disease beyond Africa. Doctors can consider vaccination for some men at the highest risk of exposure, Britain’s Health Security agency said in a statement Tuesday. The agency identified those at highest risk as men who have sex with men and who have multiple partners, participate in group sex or attend venues where sex occurs on the premises. “By expanding the vaccine offer to those at higher risk, we hope to break chains of transmission and help contain the outbreak,” said the Health Security Agency’s head of immunization, Dr. Mary Ramsay. Last month, a leading adviser to the Worl...

There are now more than 1,000 confirmed monkeypox cases in 29 countries.CDC GHealth News - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) raised its monkeypox alert to a Level 2, or “practice enhanced precautions.” The guidance includes wearing face masks while traveling as well as avoiding close contact with sick animals and people, especially those with skin lesions. The highest level alert — Level 3 — would caution against non-essential travel. While emphasizing that the risk was not on the same level as for Covid-19, the agency is tracking cases that have been reported in several countries that don’t normally report monkeypox, including the United States. Many of these people have not recently been in central or west African countries where monkeypox usually occurs. T...

Highly magnified electron micrographic image shows a mulberry-type monkeypox virus particle GHealth News - The World Health Organization has received reports of 257 confirmed monkeypox cases and about 120 suspected cases in 23 nations where the virus is not endemic as of Thursday, it said in a Sunday update. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 12 cases in eight states as of Friday afternoon. In five African countries where monkeypox is commonly found, the WHO said it has received reports of 1,365 cases and 69 deaths due to the virus. These illnesses were reported in various periods ranging from mid-December to late May. No deaths have been reported in nonendemic countries. "Since 2017, the few deaths of persons with monkeypo...

GHealth News - More than 80 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed in at least 12 countries. The World Health Organization has said another 50 suspected cases are being investigated - without naming any countries - and warned that more cases are likely to be reported. Infections have been confirmed in nine European countries, as well as the US, Canada and Australia. Monkeypox is most common in remote parts of Central and West Africa. It is a rare viral infection which is usually mild and from which most people recover in a few weeks, according to the UK's National Health Service. The virus does not spread easily between people and the risk to the wider public is said to be very low. There is no specific vaccine for monkeypox, but a smallpox jab offers 85% protect...

By: Kevin Zeng The Ebola virus can hide in the brains of monkeys that have recovered after medical treatment without causing symptoms and lead to recurrent infections, according to a study by a team I led that was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Ebola is one of the deadliest infectious disease threats known to humankind, with an average fatality rate of about 50%. Ebola is known for a high level of viral persistence, meaning the virus remains lurking in the body even after a patient has recovered. But where this hiding place is remains largely unknown. In 2021, there were three Ebola outbreaks in Africa, all linked to previously infected survivors. Ebola also reemerged in Guinea that same year, linked to a survivor of the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak. W...

By Apoorva Mandavilli UNICEF/UN0292287/DE WET Australian regulators have approved a simple drug combination as an effective cure for a form of malaria in children ages 2 to 16, opening the door to approvals in other countries and heralding a new weapon in the battle against a deadly disease. The drug is a single dose of tafenoquine (brand name Kozenis), administered along with the traditional chloroquine treatment. The approval was announced by the nonprofit Medicines for Malaria Venture, which helped develop the drug. Tafenoquine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, can cure a type of malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax, which is most common in South and Southeast Asia, South America and the Horn of Africa. The drug will be submitted for approval in nine countries, as well as to the Wo...

GHealth News - Cameroon launched a year-long anti-malaria campaign dubbed "Stop Malaria" on Thursday amidst rising numbers of infections. The campaign will take place nationwide targeting all communities and especially business leaders, local elected officials, traditional rulers, religious rulers and associations, Manaouda Malachie, the country's Minister of Public Health said while launching the campaign in the capital, Yaounde. "This is one of our biggest anti-malaria campaigns which aims to step up official efforts to reduce the infection and death rate from malaria and to alleviate its heavy social and economic burden on the population," Malachie told reporters. "We have seen an increase in infection rate but the Cameroonian government will spare no efforts in reversing the t...

Students of Yangzhou University in East China's Jiangsu Province, put red ribbon on their hands as an appeal to eliminate social discrimination against HIV patients on World AIDs Day. Photo: cnsphoto GHealth News - A patient with leukaemia in the United States has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant, researchers say. The case, presented on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunisitic Infections in the US city of Denver, was the first involving umbilical cord blood to treat acute myeloid leukaemia, which starts in blood-forming cells in the bone marrow. Since receiving the cord blood, the middle-aged woman of mixed race has been in remission and free of HIV for 14 months, without the need for ...

An Ebola outbreak in Guinea that started in February, infecting 16 people and killing 12, has been declared over, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. Health authorities were able to move swiftly to tackle the resurgence of the virus, which causes severe bleeding and organ failure and is spread through contact with body fluids, after lessons learned from previous outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “Based on the lessons learned from the 2014-16 outbreak and through rapid, coordinated response efforts … Guinea managed to control the outbreak and prevent its spread beyond its borders,” the WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a statement. The Ebola outbreak in 2014-2016 killed 11,300 people, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. ...