Did you ever consider that human beings might have a breeding season? Birth seasonality exists – and has interesting implications for childhood disease outbreaks.
Polio can be circulating through a community long before anyone is paralyzed. Monitoring sewage for the virus lets public health officials short-circuit this ‘silent transmission.’
Vaccines have long been considered safe, but many people still believe they are not. A new study shows that people who think they know more than medical experts are more likely to believe that vaccine are not safe.
Pakistan had only eight new diagnoses of polio in 2017. The virus’ days look numbered – but health workers have their work cut out for them to eradicate the devastating disease once and for all.
More than 788 health facilities have been destroyed in parts of North-Eastern Nigeria captured by Boko Haram insurgents, crippling health services in the area.
You may not know anyone with an infectious disease covered by the immunizations on the 2017 list of recommended vaccines. Here’s why that doesn’t matter, and why children still need to be protected.
Every year hundreds of thousands of children die from vaccine-preventable diseases. Africa leaders could change this if they improved vaccination efforts.
As more vaccines have been developed, the challenge of delivering them with minimal pain and number of visits to the doctor has increased. Needle-free vaccinations might help.
Researchers are piloting a smartphone app to collect better information about who is getting vaccinated and to design better incentives for health workers on vaccination drives.
Recent polio outbreaks in Ukraine and Mali, caused by a vaccine-derived form of poliovirus, don’t mean the vaccine isn’t working. On the contrary, they are a reminder to keep up vaccination rates.
Nigeria’s strategy to eliminate polio was so effective that it was duplicated to deal with ebola. So why did the country take so long to get off the list of polio-endemic countries?