The World Health Organization’s (WHO) assistant director for emergencies, said factors such as population movement, conflict, and poor governance are creating a perfect storm for disease outbreaks.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Science Division has launched an online resource, the Health Product Profile Directory, to guide the development of new health products for which there are limited markets or incentives for research and development.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with its partners released the a collaborative report listing the top zoonotic diseases of national concern for the US.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 75 percent of emerging infectious diseases in people are zoonotic.
On February 26, 2003, Carlo Urbani, an infectious diseases specialist in the World Health Organization's (WHO's) country office in Vietnam, was called to the French Hospital in Hanoi to examine a grievously ill Chinese-American businessman. Johnny Chen had been admitted with severe breathing difficulties shortly after stepping off a flight from Hong Kong and was being nursed in intensive care, where x-rays revealed ominous shadows on his lungs.
Scientists who study predictive systems, doubt that it will be possible to predict exactly what will happen next in a disease outbreak, because the most important variables can change so much from one outbreak to another.
Medical breakthroughs and advances in public health systems have enabled countries to contain the effects of infectious diseases, but these gains are tempered by insecurities from forces in economics, globalization, and synthetic biology.
There are many measles related viruses circulating in other animals that are not far from being able to infect human cells.
Animals in regions that are geographically remote present challenges for disease containment. In Thailand, local residents are using technology, including digital scanning, to track animals and stop outbreaks before they start.
By running data on flavivirus-positive species through a machine-learning model of known mammal and bird species, scientists from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) believe they’ve honed-in on those animals most likely to host future flaviviruses.