At the launch of the 2014 American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Conference in New Orleans, Bill Gates said the meeting was talking place at a critical moment in the history of global health — in the midst of an Ebola epidemic in a part of the world that had already been hit hard …
How did this Ebola outbreak emerge and what have we learned? Read More »
A recurring question about the current Ebola outbreak is how it grew to be so large — and whether the virus has changed modes of transmission or somehow become more infectious. However, most of the experts at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Health conference held in New Orleans in early November agreed: The …
“There have been reports about Ebola survivors selling their blood on the black market in the affected countries,” one audience member from Lagos, Nigeria said at a roundtable discussion on Ebola during the recent American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene meeting in New Orleans in early November. “Is there any effort to regulate this? …
Is there a Black Market for Ebola Convalescent Blood Products? Read More »
“Coordination has been a routine failure in Ebola outbreak after Ebola outbreak,” Dr Armand Sprecher of MSF said during a roundtable discussion at the ASTMH conference in response to a question from a healthcare worker from Taiwan. She said her country would be sending a number of healthcare workers to the field soon and wanted …
Coordination of new teams of Ebola responders a big challenge Read More »
Dr. Tim Jagatic of Médecins Sans Frontières spent March and April in Guinea when the Ebola outbreak was first recognized — and returned to West Africa to fight the disease in July. “When I went to West Africa the second time, people might have thought: 1) I’m masochistic and don’t have any sense of self-preservation, …
MSF doctor feels safe working in field fighting Ebola Read More »
Ebola experts at the ASTMH conference in New Orleans concerned about the effect of Ebola on the health systems in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — as the Ebola response has drawn physicians and nurses away from the normal care system. “A lot of the health infrastructure has collapsed in these countries. For instance, maternal …
Ebola’s impact on West African countries health infrastructure Read More »
“The number of things that need to go right for an outbreak to be controlled is significant — a lot of working pieces are interdependent,” said Dr Armand Sprecher of Médecins Sans Frontières at the 63rd Annual American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Conference this November in New Orleans. The health promoters and the …
Operational aspects of the response: MSF in West Africa Read More »
Tuberculosis (TB) is largely under control in the industrialised countries of the ‘Global North’, which means that most of the effort to eliminate TB will fall on the shoulders of those emerging middle-income countries where TB is still an epidemic. HOW CAN BRICS PROMOTE RESEARCH TO END TB? In January this year (2013), the health …
The critical role of the emerging middle-income countries in eliminating TB Read More »
Changing the perspective of research to end TB: a global venture “Suboptimal tools to detect, treat or prevent TB necessitate development of new tools,” said Professor Gilla Kaplan, speaking at the Stop TB Symposium, that was held on October 30, 2013, a day before the 44th Union World Conference on Lung Health. Prof Kaplan is …
While the previous presenters at the Stop TB Symposium, held on October 30, 2013, just before the 44th Union World Conference on Lung Health in Paris, focused on the new Global Strategy — and the new target of TB elimination by 2035 (see recent posts) — Dr Christian Leinhardt of WHO’s Global TB Programme set …