The health impact of Hurricane really consists of two parts – injuries and deaths caused by the actual impacts of the storm and then the follow-on impact of the damage caused by the storm. The damage is what will really...
Dr. Peter Hotez is one of the world’s leading experts on so-called Neglected Tropical Diseases. These are a set of diseases, often times parasitic, that have historically afflicted the absolute poorest people on the planet. Some of these diseases are...
This week has seen the first reports of Zika in Florida and new reporting from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Zika in Puerto Rico. The news isn’t good. The number of people infected with Zika...
Over the past week, a number of scientists and bio-ethicists expressed deep concern that holding the Olympics this summer in Rio de Janeiro could enable the Zika virus to spread far and wide. I caught up with one of the world’s...
Yesterday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published an article that confirmed Zika virus causes microcephaly, a neurological disorder in which babies are born with abnormally small heads. We’ve been hearing about the link between Zika and...
Zika has now spread to 28 countries in the Americas. It is showing no signs of slowing down. “The outbreak continues to increase in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Dr. Marcos Espinal, Director of Communicable Diseases and Health Analysis, Pan American...
Earlier today, World Health Organization executive director Margaret Chan announced that the WHO would hold an emergency meeting on Monday on the Zika virus. Zika, said Chan, is now present in 23 countries and is “spreading explosively” in the Americas....
Zika is a virus that spreads via mosquito rather than person-to-person. Historically it has been confined to a narrow area around the equator in Africa and Asia. It almost never leads to death, and its symptoms are usually mild or...