Israel’s military field hospital, regularly dispatched to disaster zones to provide humanitarian relief — and to win the Jewish state some rare international brownie points — may soon be awarded the World Health Organization’s highest ranking, which would make it the first in the world to be so recognized.
When Hurricane Matthew strikes Florida, it is expected to boost the volume of Zika-infected mosquitos in the U.S., wipe out the effectiveness of anti-Zika pesticide spraying, and potentially spread the so-called Zika “danger zone” up the East Coast.
In a reported bid to protect public health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has enlisted a Texas Tech University food center to monitor commercially-sold meat for pathogens and superbugs.
The World Health Organization reports no confirmed cases of Zika associated with the Rio Olympics.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed that six infants have been born in U.S. states with birth defects following their mother’s infection with the Zika virus. 234 women in the continental United States have tested positive for Zika.
The United States is already home to hundreds of Zika patients, with a local transmission hub in the territory of Puerto Rico. But health officials are warning that Zika-carrying mosquitos could be sweeping the continental U.S. within the next month, making it extremely difficult for the government to track who has Zika and prevent it from spreading.
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, is criticizing the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for allowing refugees to enter the United States without screening and treatment for latent tuberculosis.
The mayor of Rio de Janeiro, the host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, insisted that the spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus “is not a big issue” days after Brazilian researchers warned the disease has mutated into something “more dangerous.”
A new study has allowed scientists to watch the Zika virus destroy nascent brain cells in mice fetuses, proving definitively the link between the virus and birth defects in humans as well as cementing suspicions that the strain of Zika spreading in Latin America is a more dangerous mutation than those seen previously.
Blasting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) silence on the Zika virus in Latin America as “deplorable, incompetent and dangerous,” professor Amir Attaran writes in the Harvard Public Health Review that there is no way to continue with the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on schedule without exposing millions to the threat of contracting Zika virus.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that it has been able to confirm that the Zika virus causes microcephaly and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
The government of Colombia has confirmed 32 cases of infant birth defects tied to the Zika virus, while a total number of 50 cases are investigated for ties to the disease. While birth defects tied to Zika have been rampant in Brazil, these are the first cases outside the epicenter of the Zika outbreak currently underway in South America.
Bangladesh authorities have confirmed they found the Zika virus in a blood sample from an elderly man who did not leave the country.
The government of Guinea has confirmed four cases of Ebola and two deaths, the first in months following the official conclusion of the 2014 outbreak in that country that took the lives of over 11,000 people.
The Florida Department of Health has confirmed that three pregnant women have Zika after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the Zika outbreak could get worse before it gets better.
Microcephaly, babies born with small heads and underdeveloped brains, is one of the grim consequences that has been laid at the feet of the Zika viral outbreak.
An American researcher, who identified the Zika virus as a potential threat in 2009, tells the journal Wired that it would have been impossible to attain funding to research Zika exclusively five years ago, as few believed it had the potential to cause an outbreak as large as that currently underway in Latin America.
A handful of Zika virus cases have turned up in the United States, but so far, all but one of those infected are people who have recently traveled to affected countries.
Health professionals from just one clinic in Houston are saying they are screening about 300 pregnant women per day for the Zika virus. About half of these women are from countries where the Zika virus has been prevalent.
The responsibility for protecting our communities in Texas from the Zika virus is local and municipal, say mosquito experts. The problem is that poorer areas do not have the expertise or the manpower because of their low tax base. Texas counties without formal mosquito districts or like services are ill-equipped to address Zika virus concerns.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus has shed light on serious shortcomings in the public health systems of the affected countries, most of which are located in Latin America.
Aggressive tropical mosquitos–a breed that can carry the Zika virus–have been found in Orange County, California. The invasive species–which can also carry yellow fever, dengue fever and chinungunya–could pose a risk to the public.
On Monday, California health officials admitted that six people in California who contracted the disease abroad have been diagnosed with the Zika virus since 2013.
Brazilian Health Minister Marcelo Castro admitted the Zika outbreak is worse than previous reports made it appear.
The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus a public health emergency due to the thousands of cases of the virus linked to birth defects in newborn children.
The government of Colombia has announced that the Zika virus has infected more than 2,100 pregnant women, doubling the cases in over a week.
The National Institutes of Health confirmed that the Zika virus outbreak has reached pandemic levels in Latin America.
Health officials in Bexar County (San Antonio, Texas) have confirmed they are investigating six cases for the Zika virus in this single Texas county.
While the process of fully legalizing a vaccine to combat the pervasive Zika virus may take a decade, experts say emergency-use vaccines against the scourge currently ravaging Latin America may arrive by the end of the year.
The Zika virus outbreak in Latin America has governments on the other half of the globe panicking. From Singapore to Taiwan to Russia, governments are taking precautionary measures to stop the virus, which experts have linked to significant neurological defects in infants, from spreading out of tropical regions across the continent.
