News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A dramatic 78% drop in measles deaths since the start of the decade has global health officials eyeing eradicating the disease, but two major setbacks— resurgence of the disease in Africa and shrinking disease-fighting funds —threaten the efforts, experts said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Delegates at the World Health Organization's (WHO's) World Health Assembly (WHA) wrapped up their 5-day meeting on May 21, taking aim at diseases such as childhood pneumonia and measles and addressing difficult issues involving equitable access to vaccines and medicines.

(CIDRAP News) – In the history of infectious diseases, coincidence plays an extraordinary role. In 1706, Cotton Mather purchased a slave named Onesimus who happened to come from a tribe that practiced variolation, and so smallpox prevention was introduced to North America.

(CIDRAP News) – Dr. D. A. Henderson, who led the global smallpox eradication campaign in the 1960s and 1970s, says researchers who recently reported on the duration of immunity conferred by smallpox vaccination were wrong in suggesting that immunity can last for decades or even for life.

(CIDRAP News) – If bioterrorists released smallpox virus today, each person who contracted the disease could infect as many as 10 to 12 more before health authorities would recognize the disease and act to contain it, according to experts writing in the Dec 13 issue of Nature.