Communicable Diseases

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...

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. ...

The World Health Assembly, the main governing body of the World Health Organization, has adopted a new resolution that aims to revitalize and accelerate efforts to end malaria, a preventable and treatable disease that continues to claim more than 400 000 lives annually.  Led by the United States of America and Zambia – and co-sponsored by Botswana, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Eswatini, Guyana, Indonesia, Kenya, Monaco, Mozambique, Namibia, Philippines, Peru, Sudan, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Member States of the European Union – the resolution comes at a critical time as global progress against malaria stalls and the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to further derail efforts to tackle the disease worldwide. The resolution urge...