The chance the someone at the Rio games will import the virus to their home country is low.
A patient with symptoms of the Chikungunya virus in a Dominican hospital. Outbreaks have been reported in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Reuters/Ricardo Rojas
There is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat the chikungunya virus infection. The only available method of prevention is through shielding people from mosquito bites.
The fungus Marasmiellus inoderma attacks weakened banana plants.
Scot Nelson
Hoping to avoid the pitfalls and tropes of drug genre photography, documentary photographer Aaron Goodman spent a year following three addicts enrolled in a heroin-assisted treatment program.
Women who were found to have lied in a clinical trial testing anti-HIV drugs were heavily criticised. But there are several factors that drove them to lie.
Mathematical models can help allocate medical resources.
UNMEER/flickr
Erin Lafferty, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine e Gwen Knight, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Mathematicians are a secret weapon when it comes to preparing for outbreaks of diseases like Ebola.
Eradicating TB across the globe by 2035, as the World Health Organisation hopes to do, will only take place if the global funding and will improves.
Supplied
More than 1.5 million people die of tuberculosis across the world every year. Although testing and screening has improved and more drugs are available, it is not enough to conquer the scourge.
Air travel can turn epidemics into pandemics.
Bobby Yip/Reuters
More than 8,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa since February 2014 and it has spread beyond the three countries initially affected. So, it’s an epidemic, right? Or is it an outbreak? What about…
The densely populated cities like Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, have been the worst hit.
EPA/str
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…
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…
Short-term panic draws attention away from long-term solutions.
Paul Hanna/Reuters
It does not make the news when a two year old boy dies of Ebola in Guinea. Nor when his sister, his mother and his grandmother succumb. It takes time for local officials to recognize an outbreak. By the…
At the sharp end of the fight against Ebola and other infectious diseases are courageous people who work tirelessly in difficult conditions. Equations are not included as standard in medical kits. But…
Screening passengers might calm the public, but it won’t stop Ebola.
Eduardo Munoz/Reuters
In 1728, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI ordered that a 1,200-mile fortified chain of guard posts along the entire eastern boundary of his lands be made into a permanent Pestkordon. Travelers and their…
Having health-care workers use personal protective equipment significantly reduces the risk of onward transmission.
AHMED JALLANZO/EPA
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…
A Liberian nurse disinfects a looted mattress taken from an elementary school that was used as an Ebola isolation unit in West Point, Monrovia, Liberia.
AHMED JALLANZO/EPA
The extent of the current Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa has belatedly focused the attention of non-governmental organisations, local and Western governments, and international media. What we haven’t…
Major pharmaceutical companies have shown little interest in developing effective treatments for illnesses such as Ebola virus disease.
AAP Image/David Crosling
Ebola virus disease typically only occurs in rural and remote areas among resource-poor populations. Until the large, recent outbreak in West Africa, cases of the illness were a rarity. So the fact that…
Border screening for Ebola is unlikely to be effective because the virus has a 21-day incubation period and early symptoms are similar to common infections such as malaria.
EPA/AHMED JALLANZO
The current outbreak of Ebola in West Africa is now the largest recorded since the virus was first described in 1976. That this outbreak is not under control after more than four months is cause for great…
Many people infected have had no contact with camels or other animals.
Al Jazeera English/Flickr
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…
Honorary Professor Faculty of Health and Medical Science, Univeristy of Sydney; Senior Researcher Sydney Institue for Infectious Disease, University of Sydney., University of Sydney
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney