A new diagnostic test for Ebola that can measure viral proteins in the blood or saliva and give results within 15 minutes is going to be tested in Guinea. The British-led project will determine the effectiveness…
I was living and working in Africa at the time of Band Aid 1984. I found the song Do They Know it’s Christmas? cloying, but I recognised that it was mobilising ordinary citizens towards concern and compassion…
A man in India has been quarantined after his semen sample tested positive for Ebola. This man had been in Liberia, was infected with Ebola, got horribly sick and survived. He had the same Ebola-free documentation…
It really doesn’t matter if you don’t like this song. It doesn’t matter if you hate the artists. What matters is that you buy the record. So said the Irish songwriter Bob Geldof last weekend, in anticipation…
The UK government’s Department for International Development has been severely criticised by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact for its apparent failure to tackle corruption in the countries that…
US president Barack Obama has pledged US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged other G20 nations to make contributions to it. The American announcement…
The Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s mini-World Cup, is played every two years by the national teams of 16 African countries who have competed in a series of qualifiers to play in the final tournament…
Tony Abbott finds himself the party host caught somewhat off-balance as his guests set off crackers all over the place. The government is – and has been all year – shouting that it wants this weekend’s…
Media coverage of the growing Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia has presented world audiences with apocalyptic predictions of ultimate death tolls and grisly imaginings of its spread to…
The West African outbreak of Ebola has claimed more than 4,800 lives and this number is sure to rise. There is understandably a lot of fear about Ebola, but how does it actually compare with other fast-spreading…
The Ebola outbreak continues to rage, and the immediate need is to control the spread of the disease and to help those infected. But it is time also to plan how to rebuild a post-Ebola West Africa, whose…
University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker and Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan discuss the week in politics, including Russia and the G20 Leaders’ Summit, Australia and China’s impending…
The Russians have started coming. On Thursday, an aircraft with about 80-90 Russians arrived in preparation for the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane. There will be four more official planes, including President…
An epidemic disease such as Ebola brings suffering to more than those who get ill or die. Social and economic threats can actually outstrip the medical ones. The outbreaks of SARS in 2003, for example…
As Arthur Conan Doyle said, “it is easy to be wise, after the event”. When it comes to infectious diseases, decisions about how to manage and contain them have been traditionally informed by prior experience…
The Abbott government is set to announce on-the-ground help for the fight against Ebola in West Africa – but plans to contract out the operation to a private company. It is expected to use the medical…
Contemplating how Papua New Guinea (PNG) would deal with Ebola may not be that different from asking the same of Liberia 12 months ago. While PNG’s per capita gross national income (US$2,540 in 2013) is…
Despite killing a majority of people it infects, some patients survive the onslaught of Ebola virus. What gives them this resistance, ask Michael Katze, professor of microbiology, and colleagues from the…
News that a doctor in New York City tested positive for Ebola sparked mandatory quarantine orders for heath workers returning from West Africa in New York and New Jersey last week. The outbreak has killed…
How will the Ebola crisis influence next week’s mid-term elections in the USA? One might expect that an epidemic limited almost entirely to West Africa should be way, way down on the list of factors likely…
Part-time lecturer at the Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard University, and Lecturer at the School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, University of Liberia
Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections, and Professor of Neurology, University of Liverpool