We’ve long struggled to defend against dengue fever. Without a vaccine available, how can you prevent the mosquito-borne disease?
By changing the mosquitoes, apparently.
An initiative focused in the Australian town of Townsville proved that theory. The town noticed a dramatic decrease of dengue outbreaks thanks to modified mosquitoes.
In July 2018, the U.S. Federal Drug Administration officially approved the first new medicine for relapsing malaria in more than 60 years.
The development of the drug, tafenoquine, was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Foundation CEO Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann says that approval of the drug “is a major milestone along the road to ending the scourge of malaria for good.”
While this event is notable in itself, tafenoquine (also known by the name Krintafel) is quite impressive. The drug is a single-dose treatment that fights the most prevalent human malaria parasite in the world, Plasmodium vivax.
A century ago the world was shaken by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, an event that infected about one-third of the world’s population. The epidemic ultimately resulted in about 50 to 100 millions deaths.
While many people may know how destructive the Spanish Flu was, few realize how much it shaped modern medicine and our response to outbreaks. In 1918, the world learned the immense value of epidemiology.
Scientists from the University of California at Davis and Columbia University have discovered a new species of Ebola in two types of bats in Sierra Leone.
Researchers are calling it the Bombali virus and know it is capable of infecting humans. Even with that knowledge, this doesn’t mean the virus will cause immediate problems. Researchers will need to conduct further investigation to judge whether it actually poses a threat.
The information is key as some species of Ebola spread disease to nonhuman primates but not to humans. Meanwhile, other species are capable of transmitting Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) to people. Currently, researchers are not sure what the Bombali virus can do, but don’t believe there is cause for alarm. For the moment, their message to the public is to stay calm.
The signs of dangerous bites can be as varied as the bugs that give them.
Although, many bites from different animals do have common links. Swelling, pain and redness may be appear after almost any bite and it’s important to know these symptoms in case an emergency situation arises.
Being prepared may just save someone’s life, or, at the very least, it could help that pesky bite to stop hurting a lot sooner.
