Infectious Diseases

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola case count continues to rise, but the WHO cited a promising development yesterday: Activity is declining in the hotspot of Beni.   The Numbers, according to the latest health ministry update:

China’s CRISPR baby controversy exposed the country’s ongoing failure to counter pervasive discrimination and lack of understanding about the disease, Kathleen McLaughlin writes.   She explores questions raised by the controversy—such as why did researcher He Jiankui chose…

The rare, polio-like illness acute flaccid myelitis spike in the US has peaked, but the quest to understand the disease continues. Cases surged in 2014, then in 2016, and again in 2018, with 158 cases confirmed so far. This year, parents and the medical community are more…

Why do patients drop out of HIV treatment services in Zambia? Using their own words, and those of health workers, aidsmap lays out 10 reasons, as revealed by the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia. The investigation, published in BMJ Global Health, found that…

Ebola cases in the DRC have reached 500 cases and 289 deaths, CIDRAP reported. The last time Ebola cases topped 500, it “didn’t turn out so well,” Helen Branswell noted in a Twitter thread.

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…

Gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis dominate discourse around the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. They’re also clever adapters, spawning superbug fears over 4 rising infections.   Neisseria meningitidis—a gonorrhea mutation causing…

More than half of people living with HIV have unsuppressed viral loads, and about 9.4 million are likely unaware that they are HIV positive, a UNAIDS report released Friday revealed—showing that the epidemic is far from over.

Illegal mining and malaria have made themselves at home in El Callao, Venezuela’s booming gold capital.   Now, the country once hailed for a vigorous malaria elimination program is seeing an alarming increase in malaria cases among miners, who often sleep in the mines.…

In a new report, the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health offers 20 top recommendations for getting ahead of future outbreaks in Yemen and similarly complex humanitarian settings.