The Ebola virus is known to occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo and outbreaks are not entirely unexpected. But health authorities must take swift action to contain the outbreak.
A baby Hawaiian bobtail squid, measuring just 1.5cm across, is pictured using photomacrography.
Mark R Smith/Macroscopic Solutions
The power to overcoming Ebola was in public awareness by performing simple yet basic infection prevention and control measures like washing hands, isolation and reporting suspected cases.
Antibiotic resistance is a major health threat that causes almost 700,000 deaths a year, and its toll is expected to grow. Here are some things you can do to offer your own resistance.
A hospital nurse checks the temperature of all visitors in Conakry (Guinea) in 2014, at the height of the Ebola epidemic.
Marie-Agnès Heine/OMS
Eric Delaporte, Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
One year after the end of the West African Ebola epidemic, a study of survivors in Guinea shows what has been learned about the deadly virus, and what remains unknown.
Africa’s cities are melting pots of activity and interaction. There are fears that the continent’s next major modern disease crisis will emerge from them.
Countries like Nigeria affected by Ebola have launched campaigns to curb the consumption of bushmeat like fruit bats.
Shutterstock
Consuming bushmeat is thought to have contributed to the outbreak of Ebola in west Africa. Countries in the region are trying to slow down consumption.
Pregnant women in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia were faced with the double fear of dying from Ebola as well during childbirth.
UNMEER/Flickr
We found that less than 1% of published research papers around the time of both outbreaks, that related to the outbreaks, actually explored their gendered impact.
Patients in a hospice in Myanmar.
REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun
We need better surveillance systems to detect epidemics early. But while social media has been flagged as a potential solution, we’re not quite there yet.
An illegal fishing vessel caught off the coast of Sierra Leone, a region where illegal fishing is a serious problem.
Reuters
Politics, not epidemiology or medicine, drives government responses to disease. Politicians are the ultimate decision-makers in public health, and they must respond to political forces.
GMOs may very well have filled up that syringe.
Syringe image via www.shutterstock.com
Public health experts enlist the molecular biology tools that create genetically modified organisms – as well as the GMOs themselves – in the fight against emerging infectious diseases.
Man in a hospital via Shutterstock.
From www.shutterstock.com
Thousands of people acquire infections while hospitalized. Many are caused by urinary catheters, a routine part of a hospital stay. But cutting back on their usage can lower infection rates.
Now that UN peacekeepers have left Liberia, the country has much work to do.
Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly
There’s no doubt it was time for the United Nations mission in Liberia to end. But there are some gaps in the country’s plan to move on without the men and women in blue helmets.
Magazine Wharf: home to some of Freetown’s hardest-hit Ebola survivors.
UK Department for International Development
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