Recent News

By Region: Africa

Stemming the Spread of Disease at Airports

With roughly two million people flying each day and spending hours in confined areas where they will come into close contact with potentially infected people, air travel poses a serious challenge to public health officials seeking to contain major disease outbreaks; last month public health officials scrambled to contain a potential mass outbreak of measles Read More »

March 16, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, and Public Health
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Committee Sharply Critiques WHO’s Pandemic Response

Eight months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the swine flu pandemic officially over, an independent expert group has given the global health agency a decidedly mixed evaluation of how it handled the entire episode, from the outbreak’s…

March 14, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, and Public Health
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Virologists form Global Virus Response Network

Leading medical virologists from around the world today signed up to join a new Global Virus Response Network – a first-of-its-kind international scientific alliance that aims to be a leading global authority on viral disease. Two days of organizational meetings at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC, culminated in a signing ceremony 3 March during Read More »

March 7, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Pentagon Looks to Africa for Next Bio Threat

The Pentagon agency charged with protecting the United States from weapons of mass destruction is looking to the insecure storage of pathogens at clinics in Africa as the next flashing red light for a potential biological outbreak. Kenneth Myers, the director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, joined his old boss, Sen. Richard Lugar, on Read More »

February 25, 2011
| Filed under Africa, North America, and Biological Weapons
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Uganda Scrambling To ID New Deadly Disease

KAMPALA — Uganda is working “around the clock” with international health experts to identify an unprecedented illness that has killed 38 people in the north of the country, an official told AFP on Wednesday.