A “deadly dozen” diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said on Tuesday.
It listed the “deadly dozen” as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow [...]

go to permalink....

The government’s caution arouses suspicions about what it knows
ALMOST as long as it has had people, Hong Kong has had booths selling squawking live chickens. They are treasured by locals who spurn frozen meat, finding it tasteless. But after the latest in a series of outbreaks of avian influenza, the government has offered HK$1 billion [...]

go to permalink....

Infectious diseases are emerging as a major threat in China’s quake zone, with injured and traumatised victims most at risk, the health minister was quoted as saying Wednesday.
As summer approaches, the warmer weather creates optimal conditions for epidemics, with survivors of the massive May 12 quake particularly vulnerable to disease, the China Daily reported, citing [...]

go to permalink....

WILL the world lose another miracle cure? Fifty years ago chloroquine seemed to be an unbeatable malaria remedy. But as the popularity spread of this synthetic form of quinine (a tree extract), the biological backlash began in the form of drug resistance. Today it is not recommended even for use in Africa, which suffers most [...]

go to permalink....

Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won’t get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die.
Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients would not be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma [...]

go to permalink....

Scientists fear that the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus — which began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 — could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic that kills millions. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
Read More…

go to permalink....

China reported a jump today in the number of children sickened with hand, foot and mouth disease, saying more than 9,700 cases have been reported.
At least 24 deaths in the central province of Anhui and Guangdong province in the south have been blamed on enterovirus 71, one of several viruses that cause the disease, the [...]

go to permalink....

China’s Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday calling for heightened efforts to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and shows signs of spreading.
Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot and mouth disease following a “relatively large” outbreak in the central city [...]

go to permalink....

Poverty and weak health systems contribute hugely to the problem, but another, largely overlooked, factor is responsible for nearly 30% of all malaria deaths in Africa - conflict.
In 2007, 26 million people were driven from their homes by conflict. The effects of climate change - and conflict over limited resources like water, food and land [...]

go to permalink....

A row involving Indonesia, the United States and the World Health Organization over the sharing of bird flu virus samples is jeopardizing the global early warning system for a potential influenza pandemic and putting lives at risk, say experts and officials.
The row centers on the issue of profits made by multinational pharmaceutical companies from vaccines [...]

go to permalink....

On a Sunday in July 1832, a fearful and somber crowd of New Yorkers gathered in City Hall Park for more bad news. The epidemic of cholera, cause unknown and prognosis dire, had reached its peak.
People of means were escaping to the country. The New York Evening Post reported, “The roads, in all directions, were [...]

go to permalink....

One of China’s top doctors has said that the H5N1 bird flu virus has shown signs of mutation and can kill human victims more easily if treatment is not given early enough, newspapers reported on Tuesday.
Zhong Nanshan, an expert on respiratory diseases, told reporters in Beijing that vigilance should be kept up, especially when H5N1 [...]

go to permalink....

Presenting the first-ever map of “hotspots” of new infectious diseases, they predict that the next pandemic is likeliest to come out of poor tropical countries, where burgeoning human populations come into contact with wildlife.
The emergence of new diseases have roughly quadrupled over the past 50 years, says the study, appearing in the British journal Nature.
Sixty [...]

go to permalink....

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA–Potentially fatal rat-borne diseases, such as typhus and leptospirosis, are likely to spread farther around the world, according to research presented here this week at the Archaeological Science Conference 2008.
The findings come from a genetic analysis of the black rat (Rattus rattus), the rodent that spreads the bubonic plague. Researchers led by mammalogist Ken [...]

go to permalink....

“FREE goods are worth what you pay for them” is the cynic’s approach to the world, shared by hard-headed poverty-busters. Charging even a nominal price for things such as mosquito nets and condoms makes people take them more seriously, it is argued. Given away free, the nets may end up being used to catch fish [...]

go to permalink....

Last year, for the first time since avian flu emerged as a global threat, the number of human cases was down from the year before. As the illness receded, the scary headlines — with their warnings of a pandemic that could kill 150 million people — all but vanished.
But avian flu has not gone away. [...]

go to permalink....

For hundreds of years, people have debated whether syphilis came from the Americas or whether it, along with a number of closely related diseases, had a much longer history in Europe. Because the first undisputed outbreak was recorded in 1495, shortly after Columbus’s return, circumstantial evidence suggests an origin on the western shores of the [...]

go to permalink....

Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.
While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist [...]

go to permalink....

The avian flu virus is a bomb waiting to explode, in the same way that the HIV virus decimated millions.
In the past several weeks, the specter of an avian flu pandemic has raised its ugly head again, with reports of new deaths in China, Indonesia and Vietnam. The first dead victims in South Asia were [...]

go to permalink....

AS BEFITS an industrialised country, Britain’s public-health problems are those of wealth rather than poverty. But beneath headlines about fat, cigarettes and a national epidemic of drunkenness, two diseases that were believed vanquished decades ago are re-emerging. Both are linked to immigration.
On December 28th the Department of Health (DoH) confirmed what doctors have long suspected: [...]

go to permalink....

The United States remains unprepared for disasters ranging from biological attacks to a flu pandemic, and funding for preparedness is falling, according to a report released on Tuesday.
Many states still lack a stockpile of drugs, masks, gloves and other equipment needed to battle a pandemic of diseases, despite five years of constant and detailed warning, [...]

go to permalink....