News

Thanks to preparedness activities by Equatorial Guinea’s Ministry of Health, FIFA and WHO, the 1 million people gathered in Equatorial Guinea for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations are able to focus more on footie than on fears of Ebola.

New World Health Organization (WHO)-led global estimates for herpes simplex virus type 2, published by the journal PLOS ONE, show that more than 400 million people worldwide were infected with the virus in 2012. The estimates underline the extent to which herpes simplex virus type 2 – the virus which causes genital herpes – is widespread throughout the world, causing a significant global burden of disease.

Females of the malaria-spreading mosquito tend to obtain their blood meals within human dwellings.  Indeed, this mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, spends much of its adult life indoors where it is constantly exposed to human odor – from used clothing, bedding, etc. – even when people are absent.

Two successive emergency response campaigns in Sierra Leone to distribute anti-malarial drugs to people living in areas affected by the Ebola virus disease outbreak have successfully reached more than 2.5 million people, and significantly reduced the number of people with fever that might be mistaken for Ebola virus disease (EVD).

Meningitis research efforts two decades in the making could soon come to fruition through a partnership between investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a medical device startup, with assistance from the UAB Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.