News & Perspective

(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 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) – Federal health officials yesterday released a 37-page report that they say demonstrates "tremendous progress" in developing countermeasures for bioterrorism through federally funded research since early 2002.

(CIDRAP News) – Researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have determined that a single injection of a fast-acting experimental Ebola vaccine confers protection against the disease in monkeys after just 1 month.

(CIDRAP News) – The head of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) communicable disease programs says severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may pose a more serious global health threat than any other new disease in the past 20-plus years, with the sole exception of AIDS.

(CIDRAP News) – As the death toll from hemorrhagic fever in the Congo continued to climb, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed yesterday that the disease is Ebola virus infection.

The disease had claimed the lives of 59 people out of 73 infected as of yesterday, WHO officials said in a statement. An Associated Press report put the toll higher: 67 deaths among 80 cases.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that 50 people in the Congo have died of a suspected acute hemorrhagic fever syndrome. A Reuters report said the disease is suspected to be Ebola virus infection.

Editor's note: This story was updated Jan 30, 2003, with additional information from the Department of Health and Human Services.

(CIDRAP News) – President Bush yesterday proposed an initiative, called Project Bioshield, to speed the development and production of vaccines and treatments for smallpox, anthrax, botulism, and other diseases that could be spread by terrorists.