global health

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As the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spreads in more than 60 countries, the race to develop a vaccine to prevent the illness has taken on new urgency. In a meeting with CEOs of major drug companies this week, President Trump ramped up the pressure, suggesting that vaccines could come to...

As the latest of the six British-built Ebola treatment centres in west Africa admitted its first three patients this weekend, some of the volunteer NHS staff working there over Christmas said they felt insulted by a draconian ramping up of the protocols they have been told they will have to...

Though it is not in the headlines much these days, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is worsening, with the number of infected people and the number of people killed by the disease being dramatically underreported. In fact, as noted by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, the number of people in...

"It's all hands on deck, 24/7, for Ebola," one prominent federal health official told me during the hysteria, but "we're ignoring antibiotic resistance." Yet, each year, more than 5 million people in the U.S. and Europe become infected with serious, resistant bacterial infections across the...

So, the number of people who have known to have died of Ebola in the current outbreak in west Africa has passed 5,000. But what does that mean for the affected communities? I briefly visited Sierra Leone, one of the three most affected countries along with Liberia and Guinea, this week. One...

Cuban healthcare workers have played a leading role on the African continent for decades. The revolutionary government views its work in the fight against the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) as a manifestation of internationalism and solidarity with Africa. In a surprised twist in diplomatic protocol...

Koinadugu had prided itself on being the only area to have kept Ebola at bay by operating self-imposed quarantine system A fresh outbreak of Ebola in a part of Sierra Leone where the virus was thought to have been contained has raised fears of a new, uncontrolled infection chain that could send...

Ebola is spreading up to nine times faster in parts of Sierra Leone than two months ago, a report by the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI) said. On average, 12 new cases a day were seen in the rural areas surrounding Freetown in late October, compared with 1.3 cases in early September, the...

The Ebola epidemic in west Africa may have reached a turning point, according to the director of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding an unprecedented series of fast-tracked trials of vaccines and drugs against the disease. Writing in the Guardian, Dr Jeremy Farrar says that although there are...