Americans are getting fatter, and older. These converging trends are putting the USA on the path to an alarming health crisis: Nearly half of adults have either pre-diabetes or diabetes, raising their risk of heart attacks, blindness, amputations and cancer.
We can all breathe a sigh of relief. The FDA has announced that the flu vaccine for the 2014-2015 flu season is ready. This means you can drive down nearly any city street and see at least one flag or spinner, manically suggesting that you “Get your flu shot here!
A top German virologist has caused shockwaves by asserting that it’s too late to halt the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone and Liberia and that five million people will die, noting that efforts should now be focused on stopping the transmission of the virus to other countries. Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit of the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg told Germany’s Deutsche Welle that hope is all but lost for the inhabitants of Sierra Leone and Liberia and that the virus will only “burn itself out” when it has infected the entire population and killed five million people. “The right time to get this epidemic under control in these countries has been missed,” said Schmidt-Chanasit.
The number of Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo doubled over the past week to 62, the World Health Organization reported Thursday, and more than half the afflicted patients have died. The outbreak in the country, where the Ebola virus was first discovered nearly 40 years ago, is a distinct strain from the far more drastic Ebola crisis ravaging West Africa, where more than 2,200 people have died this year, the worst on record. The Congo outbreak, by contrast, is confined to four villages in one county, and is linked to one initial case, first reported to the health organization on Aug.
The Ebola virus that is causing the raging epidemic in West Africa is famously lethal. In previous outbreaks it has killed as many as 90% of the people it infects. That’s why the figures in World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) latest “Situation Report” look like they might be a rare glimmer of good news.
An econometric simulation model based on the assumption the World Health Organization and others will be unable to control the Ebola outbreak in West Africa predicts 1.2 million people will die from the disease in the next six months. Six months is the minimum time the WHO projects will be necessary to contain the epidemic.
Today, the Ebola virus spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as blood and vomit. But some of the nation’s top infectious disease experts worry that this deadly virus could mutate and be transmitted just by a cough or a sneeze. “It’s the single greatest concern I’ve ever had in my 40-year public health career,” said Dr.
Since 2004, a string of scientists have died, many under mysterious circumstances, and now some in the alternative media have begun asking why. The most recent scientist was found dead after a strange disappearance, but he wasn’t just any scientist: He was employed not by academia but by the federal government’s National Institutes of Health in Maryland, according to a website called All News Pipeline, which has been tracking and reporting the strange deaths.
With warnings from officials that the Ebola virus is “spreading like wildfire” in Liberia, Sarah Crowe, who works for the UN children’s agency (Unicef), describes her week on the Ebola front line: Flights into disaster zones are usually full of aid workers and journalists. Not this time.
Dr. Theresa Deisher, a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Physiology from Stanford University, the first person to discover adult cardiac derived stem cells, determined that residual human fetal DNA fragments in vaccines may be one of the causes of autism in children through vaccination. “It is possible that these contaminating fragments could be incorporated into a child’s genome and disrupt normal gene function, leading to autistic phenotypes.
An undisclosed number of people who’ve been exposed to the Ebola virus — not just the four patients publicly identified with diagnosed cases — have been evacuated to the U.S. by an air ambulance company contracted by the State Department.
There is not a single empty bed available for an Ebola patient in Liberia right now, but thousands more cases are expected in the coming weeks. Entire families have been driving around in taxis looking for some place that will take their sick family members, but every treatment facility is already full. According to the World Health Organization, many of those potential Ebola patients end up returning to their homes where there will inevitably spread the virus to even more people.
WHO and other groups have been warning that the situation in Liberia and Sierra Leone and Guinea is dire. It’s especially bad in Liberia, WHO said Monday. “Transmission of the Ebola virus in Liberia is already intense and the number of new cases is increasing exponentially,” WHO said in a statement.
Medical officials admitted a record number of children to a local hospital over the weekend because of what they believe to be a rare respiratory virus spreading throughout the country. Although there’s been no confirmed cases of the enterovirus at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, officials admitted 540 patients Friday, said Dr. Derek Wheeler, associate chief of staff at the hospital.
The Ebola virus is spreading exponentially in Liberia, where many thousands of new cases expected over the coming three weeks, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday. In a statement, the WHO said that motorbike-taxis and regular taxis are “a hot source of potential virus transmission” in Liberia where conventional Ebola control interventions “are not having an adequate impact”. (Read the rest of the story here…)
With the possibility of the Ebola outbreak widening in the region and eventually spanning the globe, this writer reached out to Board Certified Internal Medicine specialist Dr. Jorge Rodriguez for more information. During an interview on Saturday’s “Pure Opelka” radio program, Rodriguez, the show’s frequent medical contributor, shared some of his concerns about the latest news in the Ebola story.
A total of 1,011 Indians, who have returned from Ebola-affected areas, are being tracked for the virus, the heath ministry Sunday said. Most of those being tracked are from the states of Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal and Delhi, an official release said here. During the past 24 hours, 201 passengers from the affected countries have arrived at the airports of Mumbai (88), Delhi (58), Chennai (24), Bangalore (15), Kochi (11), Thiruvananthapuram (4) and Kolkata (1).
Doctors Without Borders has returned to Macenta as well, opening a transit center more than a week ago at the site of its old clinic where it screens patients. As of the beginning of this month, the Health Ministry said 45 people from Macenta were being treated at an expanded treatment center at Gueckedou. The charity would like to open treatment centers in both towns, but it does not have enough staff.
A respiratory illness that has already sickened more than a thousand children in 10 states is likely to become a nationwide problem, doctors say. The disease hasn’t been officially identified but officials suspect a rare respiratory virus called human enterovirus 68. According to the U.
One in 10 health-care workers treating Ebola patients in West Africa are becoming infected with the disease, the World Health Organization announced in Geneva Friday in an international media teleconference at the conclusion of an emergency meeting on the outbreak. The WHO invited medical experts from around the world to the two-day meeting to discuss using experimental and alternative treatments to combat the Ebola crisis, which the U.N.