severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
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A Disease That’s Three Times More Deadly Than SARS Just Reached The United States
A viral and often fatal respiratory disease in the Middle East has taken a turn for the worse and is spreading throughout the region, as well as to parts of Asia, Europe and now the United States. US officials have just confirmed that a man who fell ill after returning from Saudi Arabia about a week ago has Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
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A Major Lesson from Ebola: Pandemics Are Strongly Driven by Inequality
After more than a year since the Ebola pandemic appeared in West Africa, Liberia – one of the worst hit countries – has been declared free of the virus. However, the initial global response was not encouraging. Despite having the knowledge and technology needed to contain the outbreak, help was initially sluggish and poorly effective. This situation illustrates one of the major lessons from the history of pandemics: that they are strongly influenced by health inequalities. Pandemics are epidemics that spread widely and cross borders. In many respects, the world is a safer place for those concerned about these emerging infectious diseases – advances in science, particularly molecular biology, information technology, and epidemiology give us unprecedented tools for understanding, tracking and managing emerging threats...
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Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola
In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...
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Camels And Contagion: Inside Global Hunt For Source Of MERS
With another case of the virus confirmed in the U.S., virus detectives are tracing its spread.
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Censorship Doesn’t Just Stifle Speech — It Can Spread Disease
In October, Saudi Arabia will host millions of travelers on the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holy sites. The hajj carries deep meaning for those observant Muslims who undertake it, but it also carries risks that make epidemiologists blanch. [...] Read More »
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HealthMap Tracks Ebola’s Footprints Online, Preparing For The Next Big Outbreak
Since March, a group of data-savvy epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital have watched Ebola slowly spread through West Africa, ominously lighting up their dials first as a trickle, then a torrent of mentions on social media and online news reports. The group, HealthMap, has been steadily ahead of the curve tracking this year’s outbreak. One day, they hope to be a step ahead of the next big disease...
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New Diseases And National Transparency: Who Is Measuring Up?
[...] I opened my morning mail to find a note from a private list I subscribe to, published by a company that monitors hazards for businesses with expatriate employees. The note flagged new news from Saudi Arabia... Read More »
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Patient With Deadly MERS Virus Waited Hours In Florida ER
The second US patient to be diagnosed with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) waited four hours before he was seen by doctors in Florida as 20 health care workers await test results for the deadly virus.
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Second MERS Case Shows Hospitals Are Ground Zero For MERS
The patient started feeling ill as he sat on a packed flight from Jeddah to London. Things didn’t get any better after he boarded another flight to Boston, or a third flight to Atlanta, or even as he took one last miserable leg to Orlando...
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Superbugs Spread Across U.S.
As Americans worry about Ebola, the swiftly spreading virus that has traveled from West Africa to Texas, a more silent killer poses a greater danger...Drug-resistant bacteria killed 23,000 people in America last year and caused 2 million illnesses...
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The Underreported Side Of The Ebola Crisis
Amid the media accounts of the worst Ebola outbreak ever recorded some significant context is largely missing from the major media reporting. Atop this list are links of the outbreak to the climate crisis and global inequality, mal-distribution of wealth, and austerity-driven cuts in public services that have greatly contributed to the rapid spread of Ebola...
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The World Knows an Apocalyptic Pandemic Is Coming
A new independent report compiled at the request of the United Nations secretary-general warns that there is a "very real threat" of a pandemic sweeping the planet, killing up to 80 million people. A deadly pathogen, spread airborne around the world, the report says, could wipe out almost 5 percent of the global economy. And we're not ready. The ominous analysis was compiled by an independent panel, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), which was assembled last year in response to a request from the office of the U.N. secretary-general, and convened jointly by the World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO). Co-chaired by the former WHO head and former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and the head of the international Red Cross, Elhadj As Sy, the GPMB commissioned expert studies and issued a scathing attack on the political, financial, and logistical state of pandemic preparedness affairs.
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Worse Than Ebola: U.S. Not Preparing for the Next Bio-Threat
The U.S. government is slacking off on preparing for the next big pandemic or biological terrorism attack and is not only endangering its citizens but also missing out on a great opportunity to score political points, experts said Monday. Protecting the United States from the next pandemic of killer flu, or from a bioterrorist strike, is something Republicans and Democrats can easily agree on, a top congressional appropriator told a biodefense panel...
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