Recent News

By Region: South America

World TB Day — March 24, 2011

World TB Day is observed each year on March 24 to commemorate the date in 1882 when Robert Koch announced the discovery of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB). Worldwide, TB remains one of the leading causes of death from infectious disease. World TB Day provides an opportunity for TB programs, nongovernmental organizations, Read More »

March 24, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, International, and Public Health
Share

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
Share

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
Share

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
Share

BWC Nations Should Weigh Impact of New Research, U.N. Chief Says

States parties to the Biological Weapons Convention should establish a system for assessing how scientific and technological advances could affect efforts to rid the world of biological weapons, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement to a meeting of the countries that started yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 3).