World Health Organization (WHO)
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The Race To Contain West Africa's Ebola Outbreak
Digital volunteers are racing to map regions in West Africa where the Ebola virus, which has a 90 percent fatality rate, continues to spread Read More »
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The Story of How Fake Sugar Got Approved is Scary As Hell
The common-sense wisdom about the most widespread artificial sweetener on the market, aspartame, is that it's perfectly safe. The substance laces more than 6,000 products and is added to diet versions of Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, and Dr. Pepper. It is also sold under the brand names NutraSweet and Equal. It represents a multi-billion-dollar industry. Popular pieces across the internet in recent years have declared that concerns about aspartame are just a bunch of hype. A pediatrician and writer for The New York Times defends aspartame and says he regularly gives it to his kids. Vox dismisses concerns about the sweetener and includes a video about how safe the stuff is...
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The Underreported Side Of The Ebola Crisis
Amid the media accounts of the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded some significant context is largely missing from the major media reporting. Atop this list are links of the outbreak to the climate crisis and global inequality, mal-distribution of wealth, and austerity-driven cuts in public services that have greatly contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola...
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The World Knows an Apocalyptic Pandemic Is Coming
A new independent report compiled at the request of the United Nations secretary-general warns that there is a "very real threat" of a pandemic sweeping the planet, killing up to 80 million people. A deadly pathogen, spread airborne around the world, the report says, could wipe out almost 5 percent of the global economy. And we're not ready. The ominous analysis was compiled by an independent panel, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), which was assembled last year in response to a request from the office of the U.N. secretary-general, and convened jointly by the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO). Co-chaired by the former WHO head and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and the head of the international Red Cross, Elhadj As Sy, the GPMB commissioned expert studies and issued a scathing attack on the political, financial, and logistical state of pandemic preparedness affairs.
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This Stanford Student’s $35 Invention Saves Lives and Won Her $150,000
Maya Varma did something at the age of seventeen that many people will never even accomplish in their lifetime—she invented a device that can save lives. Varma, now a rising sophomore at Stanford University, won the First Place Medal of Distinction for Innovation at the Intel Science Talent Search in 2016 for designing an inexpensive pulmonary function analyzer for the diagnosis of five pulmonary illnesses. Unlike the typical devices that hospitals use to diagnose lung diseases, Varma’s invention is exceedingly affordable, with the necessary materials costing a measly $35...
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Threatwatch: Will Deadly Ebola Become More Contagious?
Threatwatch is your early warning system for global dangers, from nuclear peril to deadly viral outbreaks. Debora MacKenzie highlights the threats to civilisation – and suggests solutions
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Three Reasons the US is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic
One hundred years after the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918, global health leadership stands at a crossroads. The United States continues to expand its policy of isolationism at a time when international cooperation in health could not be more important. The state of pandemic preparedness and the necessary steps for protecting the people throughout the world was the topic of The Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs' 2nd Annual White Paper. As pandemic policy scholars, with two of us spending the majority of our career in the federal government, we believe that it is essential to prepare the country and the world for the next pandemic. It is not a matter of if, but when, the next disease will sweep the world with deadly and costly consequences.
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To Your Health Deadly Fungal Infection That Doctors Have Been Fearing Now Reported in U.S.
Nearly three dozen people in the United States have been diagnosed with a deadly and highly drug-resistant fungal infection since federal health officials first warned U.S. clinicians last June to be on the lookout for the emerging pathogen that has been spreading around the world. The fungus, a strain of a kind of yeast known as Candida auris, has been reported in a dozen countries on five continents starting in 2009, when it was found in an ear infection in a patient in Japan. Since then, the fungus has been reported in Colombia, India, Israel, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, South Korea, Venezuela and the United Kingdom...
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Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines
One of the world's top cardiologists says that many of the major nutrition guidelines have no good basis in science. "I'm not a nutrition scientist and that may be an advantage because every week in the newspaper we read something is good for you and the same thing the next week is bad for you," said Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil, (McMaster University), at Cardiology Update 2017, a symposium presented by the European Society of Cardiology and the Zurich Heart House...
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Towards a Fortnite Healthcare System or how Gen X and Millenials will demand Gamification in Medicine
The World Health Organization (WHO) just included "gaming disorder" as a new mental health condition, listing it is its 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases. My first reaction was, oh, good, now I have a good excuse to write about Fortnite. A year ago I hadn't even heard of Fortnite. That's no surprise, because few had; it wasn't officially released until July 2017, and even then the free, most popular version -- Fortnite Battle Royale -- wasn't released until last September. It was an immediate sensation, with over a million players within the first month. It has been smashing numbers ever since.
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TPP Treaty Could be a Serious Threat to US Public Health System
While trade agreements may seem to be another, albeit international species of wonkery, these agreements could have major effects on patients' and the public's health. Since these concerns have been essentially ignored by the US medical and health care literature, (although they have appeared in UK journals, Australian, and New Zealand journals in English), they I will discuss them below. Worthy of further discussion is the possibility that these potential threats to health care and public health may arise not just from ideological disagreements, but also from health care corporations' increasing capture of government, facilitated by the conflicts of interest generated by the revolving door. Read More »
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Tracking Disease One Text at a Time
How cheap cell phones — and quick thumbs — are saving lives in Uganda
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Tuberculosis Epidemic Much Worse Than People Think – WHO
The world’s preoccupation with the Ebola virus has eclipsed almost any attention to other health hazards. But the tuberculosis epidemic is now considered to be much more severe than before, the WHO has claimed in a report...
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Turning Tea Into Medical Breakthroughs
Recently, the World Health Organization warned that we are entering a “post-antibiotic era” in which “common infections and minor injuries can kill,” due to the widespread resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and the emergence of “superbugs.” Maybe the answer is tea. Seton Hall professor Tin-Chun Chu...has shown in her research that processed tea extracts (polyphenols) can fight bacteria — including Staphylococcus epidermis, a widely resistant bacteria and a major concern for the medical community and hospitals in particular, Escherichia coli (E. coli) and S. marcescens, an opportunistic human pathogen which is very resistant to most antibiotics...
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U.S. Travelers Return Home With Tropical Disease. Will It Spread In The States?
...Three states — Rhode Island, North Carolina and Tennessee — all said that they have identified residents who have been diagnosed with the mosquito-borne tropical disease chikungunya...
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