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Since 1990, almost 2 billion people globally have gained access to improved sanitation, and 2.3 billion have gained access to drinking-water from improved sources. Some 1.6 billion of these people have piped water connections in their homes or compounds, according to a new WHO/UNICEF report, Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2014 Update, which also highlights a narrowing disparity in access to cleaner water and better sanitation between rural and urban areas.

Most people think parasitic diseases occur in poor and developing countries, or are infections they might pick up on a trip to a foreign country. However, parasitic infections also occur in the United States, and in some cases affect millions of people. Often they can go unnoticed, with few symptoms. But many times the infections cause serious illnesses, including seizures, blindness, pregnancy complications, heart failure, and even death. Anyone-regardless of race or economic status-can become infected.

A new study suggests that people who survived the medieval mass-killing plague known as the Black Death lived significantly longer and were healthier than people who lived before the epidemic struck in 1347. Caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, the Black Death wiped out 30 percent of Europeans and nearly half of Londoners during its initial four-year wave from 1347 to 1351. Released May 7 in the journal PLOS ONE, the study by University of South Carolina anthropologist Sharon DeWitte provides the first look at how the plague, called bubonic plague today, shaped population demographics and health for generations.

Indiana University biologists will receive more than $6.2 million from the U.S. Army Research Office to study how bacteria evolve in response to both their internal, population-influenced environments and their external natural environment.

As of May 3, 2014, the Ministry of Health (MOH) of Guinea has reported a cumulative total of 231 clinical cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD), including 155 deaths. There has been no change in the number of cases confirmed by ebolavirus PCR (127 cases) since the last update of May 2, 2014, but 1 additional death has been reported among confirmed cases (82 deaths).

Did you know that Staphylococci, coliforms, pseudomonads, yeasts, intestinal bacteria and even fecal germs may be on your toothbrush? Appropriate toothbrush storage and care are important to achieving personal oral hygiene and optimally effective plaque removal, says Maria L. Geisinger, DDS, assistant professor of periodontology in the School of Dentistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.