Zoonotic Infections News

The pediatric population is one that relies primarily on adults for health advocacy and care, and as such, their protection and medical treatment is an ethical as well as a scientific mandate. Yet despite global improvements in research and disease control, the risk, burden and mortality associated with pediatric infectious diseases remain considerable. “Diseases of poverty,” such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS, continue to take a toll on children in the world’s poorest countries.

Diphtheria is a vaccine-preventable disease affecting mainly children. The primary immunization of three doses of the diphtheria toxoid in infancy is routine throughout the world, except where it isn’t. With proper childhood immunization and boosters, there should be little or no diphtheria. Although it is possible for immunized people to develop diphtheria, the disease is much less severe. In the unimmunized population, the mortality rate is 5% to 10%, and deaths occur mainly in the very young and the very old.

For the first time, doses of an investigational vaccine will be administered to help stop an outbreak of Ebola virus that continues to spread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, raising fears of a larger outbreak.

Officials are preparing for the “worst-case scenario” while racing to contain an Ebola virus outbreak in a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo that may have killed at least 18 people already, including one health care worker.

Nigeria’s largest-ever Lassa fever outbreak has been contained, with the number of cases declining over the last 6 weeks, according to WHO.

Infectious Disease News has won two awards from the American Society of Healthcare Publication Editors, which recognizes outstanding editorial and design excellence and achievements in health care publications.

The number of illnesses caused by the bite of infected mosquitoes, ticks and fleas has more than tripled in the United States, and the country is not fully prepared to handle the increased burden, CDC officials said today.

A rare tick-borne disease commonly associated with sleeping in rustic mountain cabins has shown up in caves around Austin, Texas, potentially placing cave workers and the public at risk for infection.

One dose of albendazole improved the stamina of women farmers with hookworm in sub-Saharan Africa, according to researchers.

In 2016, a man walking through a field in Spain was bitten by a tick carrying the virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, or CCHF. The man died of the disease, and a nurse who treated him also was infected. It was the first time local transmission of CCHF was documented in Spain, expanding the geographic range of the often fatal infection and giving researchers more evidence of the shifting ranges of some ticks.