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© Agence France-Presse Health authorities in Paris fumigated areas of the French capital for the first time on Thursday to kill disease-carrying tiger mosquitoes whose rapid advance through northern Europe is thought to have been accelerated by climate change. Roads were closed and people asked to stay in their homes in southeast Paris during the early hours of Thursday as pest control contractors sprayed insecticide in trees, green spaces and other mosquito-breeding areas. Such scenes […]
by Jean Daniel SENAT with Lucie AUBOURG in Washington Agence France-Presse PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) — When humanitarian officials in Haiti try to describe their concerns over a new, fast-spreading cholera epidemic, they struggle to find words strong enough: “alarming,” “chaotic,” even “a catastrophe.” A sizable part of the island’s population has been isolated — and unable to access health care — either by serious fuel shortages or by the brutal armed gangs that control vast […]
Brazzaville, Congo (AFP) The Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday declared an end to an Ebola virus outbreak that emerged in eastern North Kivu province six weeks ago, the World Health Organization said. Only one case of the virus had been confirmed, according to a WHO statement, making the DRC’s Ebola outbreak its “least catastrophic”. Five people died during the previous outbreak — the central African nation’s 14th — which ended in July. Ebola […]
ACCRA, Ghana (AFP) – Ghana has declared the end of a Marburg virus disease outbreak that was confirmed nearly two months ago and caused two deaths, the World Health Organization said on Friday. The health ministry made the announcement after no new cases of the Ebola-like disease were reported over the previous 42 days, the WHO said in a statement. No vaccine treatment exists for Marburg, which is almost as deadly as Ebola. Symptoms included […]
PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 14 percent of the world’s population has had Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne illness, according to a major review of the available research published on Tuesday. Central Europe had the highest rate of infection with 20 percent, while men over the age of 50 living in rural areas were most at risk, the study in the journal BMJ Global Health found. The condition is rarely fatal, but people […]
SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — Monkeypox has caught the attention of US President Joe Biden, who said Sunday that people should be on guard against the disease which has the potential for “consequential” impact, if it were to spread further. Several cases of monkeypox have been detected in North America and Europe since early May, sparking concern the disease, endemic in parts of Africa, is spreading. The US leader, on his maiden trip to […]
by Olivier THIBAULT Agence France Presse The global death toll from Covid-19, which is set to pass five million, is already far worse than most other viral epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries. But there have been notable exceptions. The post-World War I Spanish Flu wiped out more than 50 million people in 1918-19, according to some estimates. That is far more than the coronavirus pandemic, even if — as the World Health […]
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AFP) — There is “no evidence” that a Guinean woman who tested positive for Ebola after arriving in neighbouring Ivory Coast had the disease, the WHO said on Tuesday citing a new analysis from a lab in France. Her diagnosis in mid-August was thought to be the first confirmed case of Ebola in the west African country since 1994. The diagnoses sparked a huge contact-tracing operation by the World Health Organization and […]
CONAKRY, Guinea (AFP) — Guinea has recorded the first known case of Marburg virus, a lethal cousin to Ebola, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) says. Here is a factfile on the disease (source: WHO, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). – What is Marburg? – Marburg virus is a highly dangerous pathogen that causes haemorrhagic fever. According to past outbreaks, the average fatality rate is 50 percent, in a range of 24-88 […]
BEIJING, China (AFP) — China reported the world’s first human infection of the H10N3 bird flu strain on Tuesday but said the risk of it spreading widely among people was low. A 41-year-old man was admitted to hospital with fever symptoms in the eastern city of Zhenjiang on April 28 and was diagnosed with H10N3 a month later, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said in an online statement. “The risk of large-scale spread is extremely […]
by Kelly MACNAMARA Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — A new study looking at male and female immune responses to the new coronavirus may shed new light on why men are more likely to become seriously ill with Covid-19, researchers said Wednesday. Since early in the pandemic it has been clear that men, particularly older men, are at a far higher risk of dying from the virus than women of a similar age, but scientists […]
by Patrick GALEY PARIS, France (AFP) — Intensive farming makes future pandemics such as COVID-19 more likely as wild animals carrying diseases known to infect humans are forced into increasingly close contact with us, research showed Wednesday. Writing in the journal Nature, a team of researchers from University College London warned that animal pathogens are increasingly likely to make the leap to humans as land use changes benefit animal hosts. The United Nations estimates that […]
