In a stunning development that played out over the weekend, news surfaced that WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus appointed 93-year-old Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe as goodwill ambassador for noncommunicable diseases, prompting international outrage followed by a quick withdrawal of the appointment.
The number of confirmed, probable, and suspected cases in Madagascar's plague outbreak has climbed to 849, 67 of them fatal, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in an update. The totals reflect increases of 165 cases and 10 deaths since the WHO's last report on Oct 12.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that tests have ruled out plague in several patients in Seychelles under monitoring and treatment for probable or suspected pneumonic infections. The set of samples included one from a 34-year-old man who had returned from Madagascar and who was previously identified by the Seychelles health ministry as a probable imported case, based on a weakly positive result on a rapid test.
Cases are now at 684, with 57 deaths; 474 of the cases are pneumonic, a serious form.
The first shipment of Anthim (obiltoxaximab) injection, a novel treatment for the inhalation of Bacillus anthracis, which causes anthrax, has arrived in the US Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) according to a press release yesterday from Elusys Therapeutics, Inc. Elusys manufactures Anthim and has received more than $240 million from the US government to develop the drug over the past 15 years.
Also, the CDC's travel notice said local officials are scaling up flea control and have cancelled mass gatherings.
Syria has confirmed seven new cases involving vaccine-derived poliovirus 2 (cVDPV2) infection and Pakistan has reported four detections of wild poliovirus 1 (WPV1) in environmental samples, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) said today in its weekly update.
After a lag in reporting last week, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) updated it information on MERS-CoV cases over the weekend, noting three new cases since the agency last reported on Sep 25.
The World Health Organization (WHO) advisory committee that reviewed the most recent influenza developments and recommended strains for the Southern Hemisphere's 2018 flu season also looked at the newest genetic findings with zoonotic influenza viruses and recommended three new candidate vaccine viruses (CVVs).
An experimental drug that belongs to a new class of antibiotics showed promise in lab tests against multidrug-resistant (MDR) gram-negative bacteria, and was protective against the bacterium that causes plague in mice, according to a study yesterday in mBio.
