Global Health

CLICK HERE - WHO - R&D Blueprint - List of Blueprint priority diseases

telegraph.co.uk - by Alanna Shaikh - March 10, 2018

Over two days in early February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) convened an expert committee at its Geneva headquarters to consider the unthinkable.

The goal was to identify pathogens with the potential to spread and kill millions but for which there are currently no, or insufficient, countermeasures available . . . 

 . . . In addition to eight frightening but familiar diseases including Ebola, Zika, and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the list included a ninth global threat: Disease X.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Mysterious 'Disease X' Could Be The Next Deadly Global Epidemic, WHO Warns

xinhuanet.com - Editor: Liu - February 23, 2018

CLICK HERE - Dampened STING-Dependent Interferon Activation in Bats

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have identified the secret of bats that harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola, Marburg and SARS coronavirus but do not show clinical signs of disease.

In a paper published on Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, so bats can maintain just enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune reaction.

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A mural announces anti-Ebola sentiment outside a business in Harper, Liberia.  Brad Wagenaar

CLICK HERE - STUDY - The 2014–2015 Ebola virus disease outbreak and primary healthcare delivery in Liberia: Time-series analyses for 2010–2016

After the 2014 outbreak, the population's needs were often unmet in terms of primary care, mother-child health, and immmunizations.

newsroom.uw.edu - by Ashlie Chandler - February 20, 2018

The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa rapidly became the deadliest occurrence of the disease — claiming 4,809 lives in Liberia alone.  Now new research from the University of Washington suggests Ebola's collateral effects on that nation's health system likely caused more deaths than Ebola did directly.

The study, published today in PLOS Medicine, found that it only took four months for Liberia to lose between 35 percent and 67 percent of primary health care services after the  Ebola outbreak began.

China has confirmed first ever human case of H7N4 bird flu Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

CLICK HERE - The Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - Press Release

A 68-year-old patient from Jiangsu province, who has since recovered, developed symptoms on Christmas Day and was admitted to hospital

theguardian.com - by Tom Phillips - February 15, 2018

A woman from eastern China has been confirmed as the first ever human case of H7N4 bird flu, according to Chinese authorities . . .

 . . . The 68-year-old patient from Jiangsu province, who has since recovered, developed symptoms on 25 December, was admitted to hospital for treatment on 1 January and was released on 22 January. 

“She had contact with live poultry before the onset of symptoms,” Hong Kong’s centre for health protection (CHP) said in an alert on Wednesday evening. “According to a report from the Chinese centre for disease control and prevention, upon analysis, the genes of the virus were determined to be of avian origin.”