News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The Ministry of Health of China on Friday, Dec 26, told the World Health Organization (WHO) of a suspected case of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), according to a WHO update. The patient, a 32-year-old freelance television worker from the Panyu District of Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, experienced fever and headache Dec 16 and sought medical help on the 20th.

(CIDRAP News) – A Taiwanese scientist has contracted SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), probably while studying the SARS coronavirus in a laboratory, the Taiwan Department of Health reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in Hong Kong are investigating a case in which a 5-year-old boy was infected with an avian influenza virus called influenza A(H9N2).

The boy was admitted to a hospital Nov 27 with fever, cough, and runny nose, the Hong Kong Department of Health said in a news release yesterday. He was discharged 2 days later and has recovered.

(CIDRAP News) – The Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the Congo increased to a total of 47 cases with 18 deaths last week, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government is considering buying influenza vaccine from a British company in an effort to remedy a possible shortage in the United States, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – The death toll in the Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in the Congo has increased to 18, with a total of 36 cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported yesterday.

The outbreak involves two villages in the Mbomo district of the Cuvette Ouest Department. The villages are in the northwestern Congo, about 440 miles northwest of Brazzaville, the capital, according to a Reuters report.

(CIDRAP News) – An outbreak of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in the Congo expanded to 24 cases last week, with 12 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO reported Nov 17 that the Congo government had confirmed that the disease was Ebola, with 11 cases, all fatal, at that point. On Nov 21 the WHO reported another 13 cases, including one death.

(CIDRAP News) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced the start of the first human trial of a vaccine for Ebola virus infection, a currently untreatable disease that kills most of its victims.

(CIDRAP News) – It will probably take between 2 and 5 years to develop a SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) vaccine, depending on the scale of future SARS outbreaks, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted today.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers who met in Geneva this week agreed that any clusters of severe SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cases would probably be detected quickly but that isolated cases might not be, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday.