EXPLORE: How Yemen's Cholera Outbreak Spread to a Half-million People ( STAT) The numbers are mind-boggling: Over the past four months, half a million people are suspected of having contracted cholera in Yemen and 2,000 have died from the diarrheal disease. Go to article

Vietnam Battles Dengue Outbreaks with 42 Percent More Cases ( ABC News) Vietnam has been battling raging dengue fever outbreaks with more than 10,000 new infections reported over the past week stretching its medical system. The number of admitted patients represents a 42-percent increase over the same period last year along with seven more deaths, the Ministry of Health said Friday. A total of 90,626 people have been infected, of whom 76,848 have been hospitalized and 24 have died. Go to article

WHO Details Recent Saudi MERS Hospital Outbreak ( CIDRAP) In new MERS-CoV developments today, the WHO shared details about the latest hospital outbreak in Saudi Arabia and researchers from Thailand reported on the workup of an imported case in 2015 that highlights the diagnostic challenges inherent with the disease. Go to article

Planning for the Community vs. Planning for the Plan ( Domestic Preparedness) Imagine a family losing their home, their belongings - everything. With nowhere to go, they find the nearest shelter, only to be turned away due to shelter restrictions. Maybe it was because they have a dog, or one of their children has a disability, or they have an elderly parent with them. Regardless of the reason, they are turned away. When planning for a community, that should never happen. Go to article

FY 2019 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities ( Executive Office of the President) This memorandum highlights the Administration's R&D priority areas for formulating FY 2019 Budget submissions to the Office of Management and Budget. These priorities should receive special focus in agency budget requests. This memorandum also provides additional guidance on balancing new priorities with existing demands, encouraging agencies to focus on R&D investments that best serve the American people and are budget neutral. Go to article

The Night the Oxygen Ran Out in an Indian Hospital ( New York Times) It was around 6 a.m. last Friday, said Mohamed Jahid - the father of a very sick little girl being treated at a government hospital - when the oxygen stopped. The situation was desperate, but the parents of children in the intensive care unit did not panic, because they had no idea what was going on. Go to article

After Smallpox and Polio Faux Pas, Delhi Govt Sets Health Report Right ( Hindustan Times) All deaths attributed polio and smallpox in Delhi last year were removed from the revised 'Annual Report on Registration of Births and Deaths - 2016', a week after HT pointed out the error. The Directorate of Economics and Statistics, which prepares the report every year, admitted that there had been a mistake in codifying the diseases by the civic bodies. Go to article

Drones and Phones: How Mobile Tech Is Fighting Global Diseases ( London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) When Cosmas Bunywera went to school in the Kenyan Rift Valley more than 20 years ago, few children wore glasses, opticians were rare and most pupils' eye problems were not picked up until it was too late. Now Cosmas, 28, is part of a huge eye health screening operation in his home country, known as Peek, where ordinary people - school leavers, teachers, health workers -- can test people's sight and identify if further investigation is needed - with a swipe of a smartphone. Go to article

When Will Yellow Fever Strike Brazil Again? Monkeys and Mosquitoes Hold Clues ( Science) Brazil recently experienced its worst outbreak of yellow fever in decades with hundreds of cases, some just east of Ilha Grande. So scientists plan to test local howler monkeys (called bugios) for the virus to learn whether it has spread here, too. If they can catch one. Go to article

Engineering Better Refugee Health Care ( Project Syndicate) A resurgence of nativism and xenophobia in countries around the world has created a toxic environment for those fleeing from geopolitical crises. But among the many challenges that refugees must confront while they await resettlement, finding access to high-quality physical and mental health care tops the list. Go to article

Zika Pandemic Online Trends, Incidence and Health Risk Communication: A Time Trend Study ( BMJ Global Health) We aimed to describe the online search trends of Zika and examine their association with Zika incidence, assess the content of Zika-related press releases issued by leading health authorities and examine the association between online trends and press release timing. Go to article

Discovery of a Highly Divergent Coronavirus in the Asian House Shrew from China Illuminates the Origin of the Alphacoronaviruses ( Journal of Virology) Although shrews are one of the largest groups of mammals, little is known about their role in the evolution and transmission of viral pathogens, including coronaviruses (CoVs). We captured 266 Asian house shrews ( Suncus murinus) in Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces, China, during 2013 to 2015. Go to article

Revisit NIH Biosafety Guidelines ( Science) To celebrate the anniversary of an arcane federal guideline is a rare event. For an agency to use that moment to invite reflection on modifying policies is even rarer. Last month, the US National Institutes of Health did just that, with a workshop that marked the 40th anniversary of its Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant or Synthetic Nucleic Acid Molecules. The meeting was an inspiring start for charting future oversight of nonclinical applications. Go to article

Exclusive: Inside the Lab Where Scientists Are Editing DNA in Human Embryos ( NPR: Shots) Human eggs are the key starting point for the groundbreaking experiments underway in this lab. It's run by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a biologist who's been on the cutting edge of embryonic genetic research for decades. Mitalipov and his international team electrified the world this summer when the group announced it had successfully - and seemingly safely - figured out how to efficiently edit the DNA in human embryos. Go to article

Antifungal Development Gets New Attention ( CIDRAP) Fungal diseases may not get as much attention as bacterial or viral infections, but they affect millions of people. And as resistance to current antifungal treatments emerges, the problem is likely to get worse. Go to article

Deriving Genomic Diagnoses Without Revealing Patient Genomes ( Science) Patient genomes are interpretable only in the context of other genomes; however, genome sharing enables discrimination. Thousands of monogenic diseases have yielded definitive genomic diagnoses and potential gene therapy targets. Here we show how to provide such diagnoses while preserving participant privacy through the use of secure multiparty computation. In multiple real scenarios (small patient cohorts, trio analysis, two-hospital collaboration), we used our methods to identify the causal variant and discover previously unrecognized disease genes and variants while keeping up to 99.7% of all participants' most sensitive genomic information private. Go to article

North Korea's Bioweapon Program: What Do We Actually Know? ( Outbreak News Today) Discussions on North Korea's military arsenal -nuclear and conventional- has been headline news, particularly with threats coming from the Hermit Kingdom of missile launches towards Guam. North Korea's tight borders make it tough to know great detail on what capabilities they really have. What about a biological weapons program? What do we know and not know? Go to article