Global Health

Image: Many young Ukrainian children are not vaccinated

bbc.co.uk - September 22nd, 2015

Health officials in Ukraine are gripped by fears of a major polio outbreak, after it was announced this month that the disease had paralysed two children in the south-western region of Trans-Carpathia.

Concerns that the virus could cut a deadly swathe through the country has mobilised officials to launch a national immunisation campaign that would embrace all children up to 10 years old.

The threat has also mobilised international organizations, as well as Bill Gates, whose foundation promotes increased vaccinations worldwide and who spoke to President Petro Poroshenko about the polio danger last week.

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submitted by Gavin Macgregor-Skinner

Temperature-Independent, Portable, and Rapid Field Detection of Ebola via a Silk-Derived Lateral-Flow System

googlesciencefair.com - 2015

I developed a “stable and stored at room temperature” Ebola Assay Card, applicable as an ELISA-based diagnostic for diseases such as HIV, Lyme and certain cancers, that will allow for water-activated, timed-release detection of Ebola antigens, with detection limits that are analogous to current sandwich ELISA techniques. Reagents become chemically “stabilized” when mixed into silk, which enables them to remain “chemically active” without refrigeration. This Ebola Assay Card will allow for shipment and storage without refrigeration, and provide detection of the Ebola viral antigens based on color change in as little as 30 minutes.

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wired.com- September 15, 2015 - Mary-Rose Abraham

A pile of puppies cower under a parked car. The men grab one, but two escape down the street, forcing them to give chase. Five scrappy adult shorthairs – of an indiscriminate breed commonly known as an ‘Indian dog’ – appear from nowhere.

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Image: A masked man walks past trees shrouded with pollution haze in Beijing, China. Andy Wong/AP

npr.org - September 16th, 2015 - Susan Brink

More people die prematurely because of the air they breathe than the 2.8 million who die each year of HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

That's the startling statistic from a new study in this week's journal Nature. The annual global death toll from outdoor air pollution is 3.3 million. (Premature death is a medical term that means a usually preventable death that occurs before expected — for instance, earlier than the life expectancy of age 78 in the U.S.).

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