Amid a spiraling Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, traditional healers remain the front line of medicine, raising concern about their outsize influence. In Africa there are 80X more traditional healers than medical doctors, writes Donald G. McNeil, Jr…
The Black Death and the Spanish flu may be the most famous epidemics—but have you heard of the Vatican malaria outbreak of 1623? Or the 1875 Fijian measles outbreak that killed 40,000? Such lesser-known outbreaks changed the course of history and public health—sometimes…
The BMJ’s roundup of neglected disease innovations in South Asia shows successes towards the SDG of ending these epidemics by 2030. It also surfaces significant gaps in prevention and treatment, writes Suman Rijal of Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative of India in an…
Canada’s Inuit have devised a plan to eliminate “staggeringly high rates” of TB in 4 regions spanning the Canadian Arctic. The Inuit Tuberculosis Elimination Framework represents some 65,000 Inuit, and also calls for the reported rate of active TB to be slashed 50% by 2025…
Despite repeated lessons from natural disasters and explosive epidemics like Ebola, many low- and middle-income countries still don’t have what they need: the 4 S’s, Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer said during a keynote speech at the American Society of Tropical…
A new Web-based electronic surveillance system tracks epidemic-prone diseases in South Sudan, vaulting over the country’s former paper-based system, according to WHO. Deployed by the WHO and the Ministry of Health, the Early Warning, Alert and Response System enables…
President Trump’s Jan. 27 Executive Order suspending travel to the US by citizens of 7 countries in the Middle East could limit scientists’ ability to research neglected diseases, says Peter Hotez, an infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “…
During the West African Ebola crisis, why did the number of new Ebola cases drop long before an international response deployed? And why did the decline first occur where the epidemic began? Anthropologist Paul Richards believes the answer to both questions is that…
Highlighting Canada’s experience fighting the SARS epidemic and leading early development of an Ebola vaccine, Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, urges the country to take on a broader role in the war on epidemics.
Someday soon there will be a week with zero new cases of Ebola. Prior to this, the question has to be, “What would it take to make the health systems in Africa ready to snuff out the next Ebola outbreak at the first next case?” Now that we can glimpse a post-Ebola…
