Although the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo are two years away, experts are already worrying of a possible dengue outbreak.

In 2014, Tokyo suffered an outbreak of dengue fever, with 34 individuals affected. Experts are worried that with such a large amount of people coming to the games, the risk of the virus spreading quickly will greatly increase.

Dengue is a mosquito-borne illness, spread to humans by infected mosquitoes. The insects contract dengue when they bite a person who has the virus. From there, the infection spreads. Humans can’t directly spread the disease to others.

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The topic of latent tuberculosis has been a subject of debate recently. How common is it really?

Tuberculosis is a lung disease transferred from person to person by infected particles in the air. This makes tuberculosis highly contagious. But, even though the disease is airborne, not everyone who comes in contact with TB will become infected.

There are two types of tuberculosis: tuberculosis disease and latent tuberculosis.

We know the ongoing dangers of tuberculosis disease. Even with the help of modern medicine, tuberculosis continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous diseases.

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Like many parts of the world, Africa is growing, and doing so fast.

And, with population rising, Central Africa is also becoming much more urbanized. Over half of Central Africa’s population are expected to live in cities within the next 20 years.

For many in the region, these changes are largely seen as a positive growth. Although, disease and outbreak risks are also rising with increased urbanization.

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Polio is a nightmare of the past for most of the world thanks to life-saving vaccinations.

But, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Somalia, Kenya and now Papua New Guinea, recent outbreaks have brought a resurgence of the incurable disease where it was once eradicated.

Twelve children in five provinces of Papua New Guinea have been diagnosed with polio since July.

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Hundreds of people have died in Brazil’s largest yellow fever epidemic in over 100 years.

A major and unexplained resurgence of yellow fever in Brazil occurred in non-human primates in 2016. The outbreak then spread to humans in early 2017, taking almost 700 lives.

Thanks to a detailed study from Oxford University, we now know how the virus spread in the 2016-2017 Southeast Brazilian outbreak. Not only does it give insight into this outbreak, but could help stop future epidemics around the world.

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