African leaders need to up their health allocations to help the new World Health Organisation Director-General meet his health care targets for the continent.
Revellers at a carnival in Sao Paulo wear mosquito masks in a reference to the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can spread dengue and Zika on February 4, 2016.
Paulo Whitaker/Reuters
The recent severe thunderstorm in Melbourne caused hospitals across the city to be put on emergency alert as thousands of people called ambulance services, reporting severe breathing difficulties.
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.
Timeliness is important for detecting epidemics.
yochika photographer/
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.
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.
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.
Hand, foot and mouth disease may not be a public health priority, but parents and caregivers at day-care centres should still be careful about its spread.
An Angolan soldier administers a yellow fever vaccine to a child at “Quilometro 30” market, Luanda.
EPA/Joost de Raeymaeker
To tackle Zika and other viral outbreaks, we need to focus not only on the pathology of the disease, but also on the global political and economic architecture.
How much will it cost to fumigate the streets of Haiti?
Reuters
How does an institution like the World Bank come to put a price tag on a virus like Zika or any other health calamity?
A book about Aedes aegypti mosquitoes is seen next to larvae in a laboratory conducting research on preventing the spread of the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases, at the Ministry of Public Health in Guatemala City.
Josue Decavele/Reuters
When the measles vaccine was introduced, it was associated with reductions in more childhood disease deaths than were actually caused by the measles. How does that work?
Nigeria managed to stem the spread of ebola in Lagos, a densely populated city of 21 million people.
Reuters/Juda Ngwenya
The measles outbreak traced back to Disneyland has spread to eight states, with as many as 95 cases reported by January 28. Media outlets are highlighting the rise of anti-vaccination sentiments. Scientists…
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…
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…