An emergency committee established to advise the World Health Organization (WHO) on Ebola outbreak response steps met for the seventh time last week and today announced that ongoing transmission and other factors still meet the threshold for a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) as defined by the International Health Regulations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that malaria incidence and mortality have decreased by 37% and 60%, respectively, since 2000, thus meeting the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halting and reversing malaria incidence by 2015.
The Pentagon today announced a moratorium on work with dangerous pathogens such as the bacterium that causes anthrax at its nine biodefense labs, USA Today reported. The action comes in the wake of the discovery of live anthrax spores outside of containment at a military lab in Utah and an ongoing investigation by USA Today into problems at the nation's high-containment labs.
Saudi Arabia reported another new MERS-CoV case in Riyadh today, while the World Health Organization (WHO) supplied details on eight other recent cases, including two possible chains of transmission involving at least five of the patients.
Decades in the making, the world's first malaria vaccine was cleared by European regulators and awaits WHO decisions.
In 2013 and 2014, high-containment laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) logged about a dozen power outages and airflow system failures that could have compromised safety, USA Today reported yesterday.
The problems were disclosed in a lab incident summary that the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. They occurred between January 2013 and July 2014.
South Korea's health ministry reported four more MERS-CoV infections today, boosting the total to 179, and said they have identified transmission that may have occurred outside of the hospital setting, according to media reports.
In the wake of several lab missteps involving dangerous pathogens, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said it will take 3 years to release detailed information on lab incidents throughout the country, USA Today reported yesterday.
Saudi Arabia today reported one new MERS-CoV case, involving a 77-year-old man who died from from his infection, the country's Ministry of Health (MOH) said today in a statement.
The World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva set ambitious goals of reducing the global malaria burden 40% by 2020 and at least 90% by 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported today.
The WHA, the annual meeting of the WHO's member countries, also established a goal of eliminating malaria in at least 35 more countries by 2030, the WHO said in a news release.
