Nearly 100 years after the 1918 flu pandemic claimed as many as 50 million lives, many of us would like to think such devastating losses will never be seen again. Unfortunately, the experts say otherwise. Despite a century’s worth of lifesaving scientific and medical…
What do Eritrea, Pakistan, Tanzania, Finland, Saudi Arabia and the US have in common? Only these 6 countries—3 poor, 3 rich—have undergone recommended evaluations on their ability to cope with a global pandemic, a World Bank-sponsored report shows.
To make sure information about the emergency is shared, leading global health organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Médecins Sans Frontières, NIH, and the Wellcome Trust, along with journals including Nature, Science and the New England Journal of…
The announcement yesterday by President Obama that he will seek $1.8 billion in emergency funding to fight Zika shouldn’t have surprised anyone, argues Amanda Glassman in the Center for Global Development blog.
In case you missed it in JAMA last week, Daniel R. Lucey, MD, MPH, and Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, mapped out important steps that countries should take to enhance preparedness on Zika. They deliver specifics on everything from vector control and risk communication to enhanced…
A Harvard-London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine review delivers yet another indictment of the global health community’s response to West Africa’s Ebola outbreak, and offers specifics aimed at preventing the next crisis.
As the window of political opportunity following the West African Ebola epidemic rapidly closes, “International institutions are poised to make one of the most momentous decisions about the future of global health security since the formation of the World Health…
A CDC report summarizing the agency’s experiences in the West-African Ebola epidemic concludes that the outbreak highlights the need for stronger systems for disease surveillance and response to prevent the spread of future health threats worldwide.
El Niño looms, and threatens to spur epidemics of Rift Valley fever, break bone fever and even snakebites.
An in-depth, multi-part investigation by the GroundTruth Project and NOVA Next explores just how prepared the world is for infectious disease pandemics. In the online series, “Next Outbreak,” journalists report on the ground in Asia, Africa and North America, asking how…
