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+21 +1
Saudi Arabia Seeks Outside Help to Combat Deadly MERS Outbreak
Saudi Arabia said it’s consulting global experts on how to combat a deadly respiratory virus, as the first case was reported in neighboring Jordan. Specialists from Germany, France, the U.K. and the U.S. are helping tackle the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS, Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Mohammed Zamakhshary said in a telephone interview in Riyadh.
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+10 +1
Family Tree Of Pertussis Traced, Could Lead To Better Vaccine
Scientists tracking the ancestry of whooping cough say it arose abruptly in humans about 500 years ago, caused by a mutated bacterium that once lived only in animals. Genetic tricks helped it spread.
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+23 +2
Egypt reports its first MERS case; virus kills 92 in Saudi Arabia
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome has come to Egypt. State television said Saturday that the country’s first case had been discovered. It said the patient, who was hospitalized in Cairo, had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, where the virus was first identified.
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+21 +1
Antibodies Show Promise Blocking MERS Infection
Lab tests have identified human immune system components that appear to block the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. Infections have risen sharply in recent weeks, not just in the Middle East, but in Malaysia and the Philippines, with more than 100 deaths reported since the disease was first identified in late 2012. MERS has a 30 to 40 percent mortality rate.
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+11 +1
Italy's False 'Ebola Outbreak' Is Spread by Racists and Conspiracy Nuts
On March 21, Guinea’s government declared an outbreak of the Ebola virus. According to a report from the World Health Organization (WHO) the following day, more than 140 people had already died, with a total of 208 clinical cases of Ebola registered throughout the West African country. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general, described the situation as “one of the most challenging Ebola outbreaks that we have ever faced”.
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+18 +1
An $84,000 hepatitis drug is giving states and insurers a major headache
The new hepatitis C drug Sovaldi is being hailed as a potential breakthrough treatment for a disease that affects about 3.2 million Americans. It’s also vexing insurers, who worry about the drug’s $1,000-a-day-price tag. (The full 12-week course of treatment runs about $84,000).
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+19 +1
Mysterious Kidney Disease Slays Farmworkers In Central America
One community has lost so many men that it's now called the Island of Widows. Researchers are struggling to figure out the cause of the disease. Some suspect a popular herbicide.
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+15 +1
Wild Poliovirus International Spread “Extraordinary” After Near-Eradication of Virus Last Year, WHO Says
The IHR Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization met last week on the “extraordinary” international spread of wild polioviruses in 2014, and voted unanimously on measures to stem the resurgence of endemic and internationally exported polioviruses, which were thought to have been nearly eradicated in 2013.
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+6 +1
World Health Organization: Polio on the rise
Less than a week after urging doctors and patients to utilize maximum restraint in the use of antibiotics for fear that such drugs will soon be useless, the World Health Organization has warned the spread of Polio infections now poses such an enormous risk to global health that a "coordinated international response is essential."
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+26 +1
Sichuan man dies in first human case of H5N6 bird flu
A 49-year-old man in Sichuan has died of H5N6 bird flu in the first known human infection of the strain in the world. The man from Nanchong , Nanbu county, had been in contact with dead poultry that had the disease, said China News Service. He died after being diagnosed with acute pneumonia.
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+18 +1
Deadly Illness in Nicaragua Baffles Experts
During the harvest season, when exhausted workers spend seven days a week cutting sugar cane, the signs of illness were hard to spot at first. It was in the off-season, out on the baseball field, that some residents noticed a change. Base-stealers were lethargic. Pitchers were losing their aim. In the evening, outfielders were burning up as if standing under the scorching sun of the day.
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+20 +1
Hep A food outbreak traced with grocery store loyalty card clue
Grocery store loyalty cards aren't just about earning points or getting discounted prices, it appears. Disease detectives in British Columbia were able to spot and halt an outbreak of hepatitis A infections in that province in early 2012 by comparing the foods the infected people had bought in previous months.
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+20 +1
You Can Thank The CIA For The Return Of Polio, Even Though The Media Conveniently Ignores This
Oh, vaccines. Sure, here in the US we're dealing with the return of diseases like measles, mumps and whooping cough due to people who are very confused about how vaccines work. But the big news last week on the vaccine front has to be the return of polio, which has freaked out the World Health Organization, who declared it a public health emergency.
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+19 +1
Mosquito-borne virus spreads rapidly in Haiti
A mosquito-borne virus that was detected for the first time in Haiti last week has quickly spread throughout the Caribbean nation, a health official said Tuesday. Some 1,529 cases of the chikungunya virus have been confirmed, said Ronald Singer, a spokesman for Haiti's health ministry. The bulk of the cases, about 900 of them, were found in the west department, where the capital of Port-au-Prince is located. Another 300 cases were confirmed in northwestern Haiti.
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+21 +1
Ohio measles outbreak largest in USA since 1996
A measles outbreak in Ohio has reached 68 cases, giving the state the dubious distinction of having the most cases reported in any state since 1996, health officials say.
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+20 +2
MERS death toll rises to 163
Saudi Arabia reports three additional fatalities from deadly Middle East respiratory virus.
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+14 +2
Don't delay measles vaccine
There are many myths about vaccinations floating around the Internet.
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+19 +2
Mysterious Illness May Be Carried by the Wind
One of the world’s most baffling diseases may be spread by the wind. A new study has found that Kawasaki disease, which sickens 12,000 children a year in Japan and occurs in other countries including the United States and South Korea, is at its deadliest when the wind blows from northeastern China. The findings suggest that the illness may be caused by an airborne toxin from that region, but just which one remains unclear.
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+24 +1
Deadly Dog Treats From China
In an update released Friday by the FDA, imported jerky treats from China were implicated in over 1,000 dog deaths, plus almost 6,000 cases of serious illness and even three sick humans. Once again, Chinese imports are in the spotlight.
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+17 +1
Scientists Are Creating New, Incurable Diseases in Labs
Swine flu, or H1N1, had been dead for 20 years when it suddenly re-emerged in 1977 with a curious twist. The new strain was genetically similar to one from the 1950s, almost as though it had been sitting frozen in a lab since then. Indeed, it eventually became clear that the late-70s flu outbreak was likely the result of a lowly lab worker’s snafu.
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