Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Two Ebola Patients Who Fled Quarantine May Have Exposed Dozens to Virus (
Washington Post) Health officials in Congo are anxious to contain the country's deadly Ebola outbreak - which has already spread to an urban area - before the situation gets any worse. But controlling the virus may have just gotten tougher. On Thursday, a senior Doctors Without Borders aid worker said that two patients infected with Ebola who fled their hospital on Monday night potentially exposed dozens of more people to the virus.
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10 Dead from Nipah Virus in Southern India (
NPR the two-way) At least 10 deaths in the southern Indian state of Kerala are being blamed on an outbreak of the Nipah virus - a disease thought to be transmitted by bats and other animals. Kerala Health Minister K.K. Shylaja told reporters Tuesday that two other people are in critical condition from Nipah, which has a mortality rate ranging from 40 to 70 percent. There is no vaccine for the disease, which was first seen in Southeast Asia in 1998.
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Domestic Preparedness & Response
Implementation of the Major Disaster Declaration Process for Federally Recognized Tribes (
GAO) According to tribal officials GAO surveyed and interviewed, there are several factors they considered when deciding whether to make a direct request or to join a state's request for a major disaster declaration. Key factors that tribes reported considering were the (1) importance of tribal sovereignty, (2) financial matters such as the timeliness with which they receive funds, (3) the level of support they anticipated receiving from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and (4) their own emergency management capacity.
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The Midwest Is Getting Drenched, And It's Causing Big Problems(
FiveThirtyEight) Minnesota is getting wetter. Over the last 100 years, the state has seen more storms that produce heavy rainfall, and its strongest storms have grown more intense. One of the more dramatic changes is the increasing number of "mega-rain" events - rainstorms during which at least 6 inches of rain falls over at least 1,000 square miles and the center of the storm drops more than 8 inches of rain.
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Global Health & Security
The Gathering Health Storm Inside North Korea (
CSIS) Health realities in North Korea are grim, poorly understood, and seldom studied as part of the larger problem of potential instability on the Korean peninsula. Yet, while accurate health data is often elusive and there is evidence of recent gains, the advanced state of deterioration is undeniable. Moreover, North Korea's health decay is genuinely exceptional: in the dangers it poses, its unusual root causes, the astonishing contrast between North and South Korea, and the limited number and limited impact of key external organizations.
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WHO and World Bank Group Join Forces to Strengthen Global Health Security (
WHO) WHO and World Bank Group today launched a new mechanism to strengthen global health security through stringent independent monitoring and regular reporting of preparedness to tackle outbreaks, pandemics, and other emergencies with health consequences. WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and World Bank Group President Dr. Jim Yong Kim co-led the creation of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, launched today on the margins of the 71st Session of the World Health Assembly.
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Why the World Needs More Than One Ebola Vaccine (
Reuters) In the life-and-death race to make the first effective vaccine against Ebola, one company - Merck - seems bound to win. But others drugmakers, such as Johnson & Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, are also in the running - and must stick with it even though they are unlikely to make a profit, experts say, because the world needs more than one Ebola vaccine.
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Government Affairs & National Security
FDA Finalizes Guidance on Developing Anthrax Treatments (
RF Regulatory Focus) The US Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday finalized guidance on developing drugs to protect against inhalation anthrax. The guidance finalizes a draft released in 2016 and has been updated to revise the indication of prophylaxis of inhalation anthrax to cover both the pre- and post-exposure settings. The indication now reads "to reduce the risk of disease in persons who have inhaled, or are likely to imminently inhale, aerosolized
B. anthracis spores, but who do not yet have the established disease."
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Effort to Encourage Development of New Antibiotics Falls Short in Senate (
STAT Plus Subscription Required) An effort to use congressional legislation to incentivize the development of new antibiotics fell short Wednesday, despite lobbying pressure from pharmaceutical companies and medical societies. Antibiotics are rarely moneymakers for drug makers, and yet there's wide agreement that there's a need for more given that some bacteria are increasingly resistant to the therapies currently on the market.
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US Health Chief Pledges More Action If Ebola Spreads (
ABC News) President Donald Trump's top health official said Wednesday that the US and global partners will "take the steps necessary" to try to contain a new Ebola outbreak, asserting that the fight against infectious diseases is one of the administration's top priorities for the WHO, the UN agency taking the lead.
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Medicine & Public Health
Mosquito Saliva Alone Has Profound Effects on the Human Immune System (
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases) Mosquito saliva is a very complex concoction of greater than 100 proteins, many of which have unknown functions. The effects of mosquito saliva proteins injected into our skin during blood feeding have been studied mainly in mouse models of injection or biting, with many of these systems producing results that may not be relevant to human disease.
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Science & Technology
Why Bill Gates Is Betting on a Start-up that Prints Synthetic DNA (
CNBC) In 2014, Ginkgo Bioworks entered Y Combinator as the first biotech company ever accepted by the famed accelerator. Four years later the Boston-based synthetic biology start-up, founded by a team of MIT scientists in 2009, has raised $429 million, including from Cascade Investment, the asset management firm of Bill Gates, and is reportedly worth $1 billion.
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