• Smallpox Was Declared Eradicated 40 Years Ago This Month, but Worries Remain

    Forty years ago – more precisely, on 9 December 1979 – the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that smallpox had been confirmed as eradicated. A few months later, the World Health Assembly (WHA) officially declared that “the world and all its peoples have won freedom from smallpox.” Yet, four decades later, two nations — the United States and the Russian Federation — keep stockpiles of the variola virus which causes smallpox. Some scientists and security experts say that the risks of retaining the stockpiles outweigh the benefits.

  • Antibiotic Over-Prescribing for Kids in Poorer Nations

    A new study has found that children in eight low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) receive a remarkably high number of antibiotics by the time they reach the age of 5. The study, which looked at data on sick children who attended healthcare facilities in Haiti, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Namibia, Nepal, Tanzania, and Uganda over a 10-year period, found that the average number of antibiotic prescriptions written for children between birth and the age of 5 in these countries was 25.

  • The Spread and Mutation of Zika Virus

    Researchers have found that outbreaks of human disease, such as the 2015 Zika virus epidemic, may be due to genetic mutation, and viruses may undergo further changes as they expand their geographic range.

  • Samoa Extends Measles Emergency

    Samoa’s government has extended a state of emergency related to its measles outbreak as illnesses and deaths continue to climb, and health groups released status reports on measles activity in two other parts of the world—the Americas and Europe.

  • Kids Traveling Abroad Often Forgo Measles Vaccine, Study Finds

    Though most U.S. babies and preschool-age children are eligible to receive the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine before traveling abroad, nearly 60 percentage weren’t vaccinated before departing, revealing missed opportunities by doctors, a new research finds.

  • What Happened after an Explosion at a Russian Disease Research Lab Called VECTOR?

    In September, a mysterious, powerful explosion shook-up a vast Soviet-era virology campus in Siberia called VECTOR. Filippa Lentzos writes that around the world, people in the know sat up and took notice, and for a good reason. Was the explosion the result of a deliberate attack by terrorists who were trying to gain a hold of deadly cultures to be used in bioterror attacks? Or was it an accident which, as was the case with an explosion at a similar facility forty years ago, would expose illicit bioweapons activities by Russia?

  • Drug-Resistant Infections Climbing in England

    A new report from Public Health England (PHE) shows an increase in antibiotic-resistant infections in England, despite a decline in antibiotic consumption. There were an estimated 60,788 antibiotic-resistant infections in England in 2018, a 9 percent increase from 2017, when 55,812 drug-resistant infections were reported. That’s the equivalent of 165 new antibiotic-resistant infections every day.

  • New Smallpox Vaccine Tested by USAMRIID Receives FDA Approval

    Army scientists played a key role in testing a new smallpox vaccine approved last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Marketed under the brand name JYNNEOS, the product, developed by Bavarian Nordic, is a live, non-replicating vaccine for the prevention of both smallpox and monkeypox disease in adults.

  • The Risk of Lab-Created Pandemic Pathogens

    In 2017, considerable new data became available which calls for a new estimation of the risk of release into the community of lab-created potential pandemic pathogens. In a new study, one expert writes that these are “the most worrisome potential pandemic pathogens because a highly transmissible strain released from a lab into the community could seed a pandemic with substantial worldwide fatalities.”

  • Engineered Viruses Could Fight Antibiotic Resistance

    Antibiotic resistance is a one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. Scientists working on an Army project have developed a new weapon to combat super-bugs, which could protect Soldiers and fight resistance.

  • Declaring Vaccine Hesitancy One of the Ten Biggest Health Threats in 2019 Is Unhelpful

    The rhetoric is well-known: vaccines work, the science is settled, vaccine-hesitant parents are uninformed or misguided victims of the social media platforms where crooks spread fake science. It is taken as a given that vaccines are similarly and uniformly beneficial – aside from rare side effects – and no sane person would question that. But are vaccines similarly and uniformly beneficial? There is no doubt that vaccines can induce immunological “memory” against their target disease. And, at the population level, this reduces the risk of getting the target disease. Vaccine led to the eradication of smallpox, and we are close to eradicating two other serious infections: polio and measles. But we don’t have a lot of evidence about the overall health effects of vaccines. Everybody has been so sure that vaccines only protected against the target infection, nothing else, and so nobody studied the overall health effects. They were simply assumed to be proportionally beneficial. We do not have the evidence for all vaccines to tell vaccine-hesitant parents that it is overall beneficial for their child to receive each one of them. Rather, we have to acknowledge that there are things about vaccines that have not been investigated very well.

  • Powerful Potential Weapon May Overcome Antibiotic Resistance

    UNC School of Medicine researchers led by Brian Conlon, PhD, discover how molecules called rhamnolipids could make common aminoglycoside antibiotics effective against the toughest Staph infections.

  • Bashar al-Assad’s Updated, Sinister Version of Biological Warfare

    Biological warfare is generally understood as the deliberate wartime introduction of a lethal pathogen with the intent to kill or maim. Syria under President Bashar al-Assad is pursuing a sinister variation—one with long and dangerous historical precedents. Assad’s government has allowed pathogens normally controlled by public health measures—such as clean water, sanitation, waste disposal, vaccination, and infection control—to emerge as biological weapons through the deliberate destruction and withholding of those measures. The conflict has in effect reversed public health advances to achieve levels of disease not seen since the Napoleonic era.

  • German law would require measles vaccination to attend schools, kindergartens, daycare

    German children will have to prove they have had a measles vaccination before they would be allowed to attend kindergarten or go to school. A new draft law imposes steep fines on parents who refuse to immunize their children.

  • UN agency launches new vehicle to fund antimicrobial resistance

    The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) has launched a new funding vehicle meant to accelerate the response to rising global rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The AMR Multi-Partner Trust Fund was developed through the joint efforts of the Tripartite—the FAO and sister UN agencies the World Organization for Animal Health, and the World Health Organization.