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A potential mechanism to combat diseases caused by hemorrhagic fever viruses has been discovered by researchers at the University of Montreal's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine. These diseases present a dramatic risk to human health as they often spread quickly and kill a high percentage of infected individuals, as demonstrated by the recent Ebola outbreaks. Effective treatments such as vaccines and drug therapies are not available for many of these infections since the outbreaks mostly occur in developing countries with limited financial resources. Moreover, the genomes of many haemorrhagic fever viruses mutate rapidly, enabling them to quickly adapt to potential drug treatments and evade the immune system.

The World Health Organization says its is committed to supporting Nepal’s health system to deliver life-saving and essential services to its people and build back resilient healthcare facilities that will be safe in emergencies, affirms Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the WHO regional director for southeast Asia.

The World Health Organization (WHO) today published the new edition of its Model List of Essential Medicines which includes ground-breaking new treatments for hepatitis C, a variety of cancers and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (TB), among others. The move opens the way to improve access to innovative medicines that show clear clinical benefits and could have enormous public health impact globally.

The American Academy of Ophthalmology today issued a statement following a report in the New England Journal of Medicine about an Ebola patient with uveitis, a type of eye inflammation common in Ebola survivors. The academy is reiterating that the findings do not indicate an increased risk of Ebola infection to the general public through casual contact.

New research has identified correlations between weather conditions and the occurrence of West Nile virus disease in the United States, raising the possibility of being able to better predict outbreaks.

In 2009, healthcare leaders and experts began to focus more intensely on the risks associated with the improper processing (cleaning, disinfection and/or sterilization) of reusable medical devices and equipment. Within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital system, the Memphis VA Medical Center (MVAMC) and other facilities initiated corrective actions to fine tune reprocessing policies, particularly those related to critical and semi-critical devices, to ensure compliance with manufacturers’ instructions for use. Since then, ensuring adequate device reprocessing has continued to be a concern for regulators, providers and medical device manufacturers. Ongoing discussions have led to direction such as an FDA draft guidance document for device manufacturers (FDA, 2011), and a report from the medical device reprocessing summit hosted jointly by AAMI and FDA (AAMI, 2011).