Category Archives: pandemic

Worldwide update shows drug-resistant TB rate is worsening | Vaccine News

“Yet another year of disheartening statistics, such as TB’s persistent annual 1.5 million death toll, should serve as a wake-up call that enormous work still needs to be done to reduce the burden of this ancient, yet curable disease,” Grania Brigden, interim medical director with the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign, said. “When it comes to the deadlier forms of the disease – such as multidrug-resistant TB – the news is particularly bleak. Despite progress in rolling out better diagnostics such as rapid molecular tests, fewer people were detected with MDR-TB in 2014 than in 2013, even though the estimated number of new cases remained steady.”

Source: Worldwide update shows drug-resistant TB rate is worsening | Vaccine News

​Hawaii dengue fever case count reaches 15 – Pacific Business News

Hawaii officials are urging the community to work collectively to prevent the spread of dengue fever, as the case count rose to 15 on the Big Island as of Wednesday afternoon.State vector control experts are on ground on the Big Island to conduct mosquito abatement, but stopping the virus will take community involvement, Hawaii State Epidemiologist and Chief of the Disease Outbreak Control Division Sarah Park told PBN.

Source: Hawaii dengue fever case count reaches 15 – Pacific Business News

Report shows countless birds dying from West Nile virus | Vaccine News “Uh oh!”

The study demonstrated that millions of birds die in just one year when they are exposed to the virus. “These populations are getting hammered — over five years, they’re losing a third of their population,” Harrigan said. “They’re getting infected every year. In some species, this has gone on five or six years after the disease hit, so the idea that the populations have not recovered since then is a bit scary.”

Source: Report shows countless birds dying from West Nile virus | Vaccine News

Deforestation ‘may have started west Africa’s Ebola outbreak’

Environment ministers from all over the world attend one-day conference on deforestation and climate change in London

Source: Deforestation ‘may have started west Africa’s Ebola outbreak’

Deforestation may have triggered the recent Ebola outbreak in west Africa, France’s environment minister Ségolène Royal told a London summit hosted by the Prince of Wales ahead of next month’s Cop21 conference.

Royal said researchers believe the destruction of forest habitat brought bats, known to carry the virus, into greater contact with humans.

“They had to clear the forest to begin subsistence agriculture and the deforestation has also been caused by mining activity and large-scale logging for export,” she told the high-level meeting at Lancaster House.

“This destruction of the natural habitat of fruit-eating bats drove the animals to approach human settlements to find food and the virus may have been transmitted during this increased contact resulting from deforestation,” she said.

{I have thought this had to have been the cause of many outbreaks in the past, or we would have heard about it for more than 100 years but it took generations before too much of the forest was cut and drove bats into closer contact with humans and other primates.}

No, it is true that meat causes cancer | Sci-Tech | DW.COM | 29.10.2015

“I have sat on many committees around the world, I have done cancer research for 35 years – if you want the ultimate answer to something, you go to the IARC monograph program,” says Neil Pearce, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.Pearce tells DW that such criticisms come out every time IARC produces a monograph. “The same happened with smoking, with asbestos and many other things.”

Source: No, it is true that meat causes cancer | Sci-Tech | DW.COM | 29.10.2015

I Wasn’t Supposed to Get Breast Cancer | Dame Magazine

I feel very fortunate that I’ve been alive and able to experience my daughter’s childhood. It could just as easily have gone differently, as it does, tragically, for so many women.  I think of friends whose lives this disease has claimed in the years since I beat it back, and I feel sorrow, mixed with gratitude. And I try to get on with my life.

A few months ago, my most recent MRI showed a small area of abnormality in my other breast. My oncologist feels it’s most likely benign. I trust her, as I trusted Mary, as I trusted the crystal ball of the Oncotype score. You just have to keep moving the pieces around the board, making the best decisions you can, using whatever information you can get, trying to win the game and get to the end of your life before the cancer does.I have a follow-up test soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Source: I Wasn’t Supposed to Get Breast Cancer | Dame Magazine