Category: Featured Headlines
Uganda: 25 contacts of Ebola patients traced in Jinja city
The Independent The Senior Health Educator of Jinja City, Sayyid Kalume, has confirmed that 25 contacts of the two Ebola patients identified last week have been traced. The majority of these contacts are family members and neighbors of the patients, who were isolated after testing positive for the Ebola virus. The two patients—a child and […]
Feb 5, 2025
Africa CDC Strengthens Support to Ebola Response in the Democratic Republic of Congo
African Union The African Union Commission, through the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), is reinforcing its support to the Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other parts of Africa, following the declaration of the outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Immediately after the declaration by WHO on […]
Feb 4, 2025
Push to curb Tanzania’s Marburg outbreak
Nature Treatment centres, mobile laboratories to support national response teams. An effort to curb Tanzania’s second outbreak of Marburg virus disease in almost two years includes enhanced case detection, treatment centres, and a mobile laboratory in the northwestern Kagera region. The virus that causes Marburg, which is similar to Ebola, is highly virulent, with a […]
Feb 4, 2025
Tuberculosis Outbreak, Highly Pathogenic Bird Flu Strain and Polar Bear Hair
Scientific American Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Hope your February is off to a great start. Let’s kick off the week by catching up on all the science news you might have missed. First, a quick note on some presidential moves that might impact health and science. Robert F. Kennedy […]
Feb 4, 2025
Will bird flu spark a human pandemic? Scientists say the risk is rising
Nature H5N1 is adapting to new mammalian hosts, raising the possibility of the virus spreading between humans. Ten months on from the shocking discovery that a virus usually carried by wild birds can readily infect cows, at least 68 people in North America have become ill from the pathogen and one person has died. Although many […]
Feb 4, 2025
Could the Bird Flu Become Airborne?
NYT Scientists were slow to recognize that Covid spreads through the air. Some are now trying to get ahead of the bird flu. In early February 2020, China locked down more than 50 million people, hoping to hinder the spread of a new coronavirus. No one knew at the time exactly how it was spreading, but Lidia […]
Feb 4, 2025
Uganda begins Ebola vaccine trial after new outbreak
BBC Uganda has launched a trial of a vaccine against the Sudan strain of the Ebola virus, following an outbreak in the country that has killed one person and infected two others. The first patient, a 32-year-old male nurse, died last week. On Monday, the initial participant in the trial, who is currently in isolation, […]
Feb 4, 2025
Nurse dies from Ebola in Uganda as country declares first virus outbreak since 2022, health ministry says
PBS A nurse in Uganda has died of Ebola, a health official said Thursday, in the first recorded fatality since the last outbreak ended in 2023. The 32-year-old male nurse was an employee of Mulago Hospital, the main referral facility in the capital, Kampala, Diana Atwine, permanent secretary of the health ministry, told reporters Thursday. […]
Feb 3, 2025
Potential Ebola outbreak reported in DRC at a time of strained U.S.-WHO relations
STAT Tanzania is separately confronting an outbreak of Marburg fever. A potential Ebola outbreak has been reported in a western part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in what would be the second viral hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the region at a time when the Trump administration has paused communication with the World Health […]
Jan 29, 2025
Who is protecting Americans from Marburg right now?
STAT The U.S. had a playbook — now undermined — for responding to biological threats. On Saturday, Jan. 11, as we entered the final week of the Biden-Harris administration, I got a call about a suspected Marburg outbreak in Tanzania. Marburg virus disease is like its close cousin Ebola, but worse. It can have a […]
Jan 28, 2025