October 17, 2014
A roundup of news on drug resistance and other topics in global health.
Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed CDDEP Director Ramanan Laxminarayan for a story published Thursday on modeling future Ebola cases in the US. “The damage is not as much in the number of deaths as much as in the panic it creates and all the disruption it creates in trade and travel,” said Laxminarayan. [Bloomberg]
CDDEP fellow Eili Klein wrote a new post for our blog today on why you shouldn’t worry about getting Ebola in the US and should donate to NGOs doing important work in West Africa. Also published on the CDDEP website this week: a visualization showing federal antibiotic legislation in the US in the last decade. [CDDEP]
As Ebola panic spread in the United States with two newly-diagnosed cases in the past week, the WHO declared the end of the outbreak in Senegal today, and pending no new cases over the weekend, will announce the end of Nigeria’s outbreak on Monday. The likely-underestimated official count of cases in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone is now nearly 9,000, and response there is still suffering from a drastic lack of resources. [The Daily Mail, NPR]
The mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus continues to spread around the Caribbean, Central and North America, and will very likely be found in Mexico soon, according to health ministry officials. The virus, most frequently found in Africa and Asia, is typically not fatal but does not currently have an established treatment or approved vaccine. [Reuters]
Key findings from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys published this week by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found significant links between diabetes and obesity in the US adult population. [CDC]
PBS Frontline aired a new documentary last Tuesday entitled “The Trouble With Antibiotics”, which focuses on antibiotic resistance and agricultural antibiotic use in the US. It is now available to watch online. [PBS Frontline]
The CDC finished developing a faster lab test for the respiratory illness-causing Enterovirus-D68 this week, which primarily affects children and has had confirmed cases in 46 US states and the District of Columbia. [Infection Control Today]
According to a recent announcement by Dr. Neeru Singh, director of the Indian Regional Medical Research Centre for Tribals (ICMR), 47 percent of malaria deaths in India occur in tribal-dominated districts, which account for just 8 percent of the Indian population. [The Times of India]
A new and highly-effective treatment has been found for infections from C. difficile, the antibiotic-resistant bacteria widely known as “deadly diarrhea”, according to a study published this week in JAMA. The treatment, a pill capsule filled with frozen human feces that restores healthy gut bacteria, cured symptoms in 19 out of 20 patients within one week. [The New York Times]
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