Addressing the United Nations on September 25, Barack Obama described the Ebola crisis as “an urgent threat to the people of West Africa but also a potential threat to the world”. The disease has spread…
The World Health Organisation has declared Nigeria to be free of the Ebola virus, after six weeks with no new cases being detected. Speaking from the capital, Abuja, WHO representative Rui Gama Vaz told…
Suggestions the Ebola virus could “mutate” into a form that is transmissible by the respiratory route are speculative, and the likelihood of it happening are low. Nonetheless, the idea appears to have…
The Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola virus while caring for a dying priest appears to be the victim of the first transmission in this outbreak to have taken place outside of Africa. Along with the traveller…
A man in the United States has become the first known international traveller to be infected in the West Africa Ebola epidemic and carry the virus abroad. He is thought to have been infected in Liberia…
Too slow. Too little, too late. Unprecedented. Out of control. These are just some of the descriptors for the biggest recorded epidemic of human infection by an ebolavirus. The question by some is how…
A government investigation into whether Lyme disease exists in Australia and how to treat it has ended without being able to resolve the issues. But there is a plausible explanation for why people here…
The West African Ebola virus outbreak is already the largest of its kind, both in terms of numbers and geography. And with the most distant parts of the world less than a day’s flight away, it isn’t too…
The current outbreak of Zaire Ebola virus in Western Africa is the largest ever recorded. More than 1800 people have been infected and nearly 1000 people have died. But while drug therapies are close to…
Our understanding of Ebola has increased considerably since outbreaks of a mysterious haemorrhagic fever caused by an unknown virus first occurred in Southern Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo…
It is 6am on a warm West African morning. Two men, Ahmed and Milton, are up early, getting ready for long journeys. Apart from that they have little in common. Ahmed is a high-ranking official in the Ministry…
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a tiny, spiky package of fat, proteins and genes that was first found in a dying man in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 2012. Since then, we…
The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS Co-V) emerged in 2012 and has caused ongoing illness in the Middle East and more than 280 deaths. The public health response to MERS-CoV has been…
Richard Stabler, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Chinese authorities have lifted a nine-day quarantine on a town in the country’s northwest that saw a resident die of the plague. The victim is thought to have caught the disease from a dead marmot, which…
The island of Bali has pledged to be free of the rabies by 2020 and has begun culling stray dogs in an effort to control the virus. Rabies was first detected in Bali in November 2008 and has since claimed…
We live in an ageing society, with the global median age rising steadily. Australia’s economic viability will increasingly rely on retaining older people in the workforce for longer. This, of course, relies…
It is a commonplace for children to be taller than their parents, but four generations ago this wasn’t the case. A recent study of soldiers around the age of 20 who enlisted in the army during World War…
A new oral antiviral drug may be a future tool in the global fight against measles, according to a new international study. The research, published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine…
Akshat Rathi, The Conversation and Declan Perry, The Conversation
Bacterial diseases cause millions of deaths every year. Most of these bacteria were benign at some point in their evolutionary past, and we don’t always understand what turned them into disease-causing…
As a virologist, I am often asked when science will come up with a solution to stop deadly viruses, such as the current Ebola outbreak in Guinea. With collaborators, I’ve helped design and test over a…