While Costa Rica prepares for its annual high-season, store fronts reopen, restaurants become chaotic, and tourists flock to the elegant beachfront hotels of Guanacaste. Despite the surplus of business and affluent tourists, a devil lurks within the most peculiar of places: the Aedes mosquito. With globalization on the rise, infectious, virulent diseases have become an … Read more
After investigating the eating habits of thousands of Americans, one factor was found to account for a significant difference in the healthiness of Americans: cooking meals at home. In a recent study from Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, people who cooked meals at home were found to eat consume fewer calories, fat, sugar … Read more
One of the most powerful weapons in the ongoing fight against Ebola is considered to be Ebola survivors themselves, who carry antibodies in their blood. Survivors in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone are signing up to work in Ebola treatment units, care for children orphaned by Ebola, and provide counselling to Ebola victims. Their fight … Read more
Japan’s aging population will be cared for by robots–not immigrant laborers, according to the plans of the Japanese government. The Abe government is increasing investments in healthcare robots to meet the nation’s needs, and recently announced subsidies that will cover up to two-thirds of the research and design costs for the development of various healthcare robots. One quarter … Read more
Tuberculosis, the world’s second most deadly infectious disease after AIDS and a disease that killed 1.5 million people last year, has an increased infection rate of 300 percent for sufferers of diabetes, which killed 3 million people last year. The two pose a “looming” threat of a world-wide co-epidemic, warned a report by the International … Read more
The world’s first artificial cow’s milk is being developed by synthetic dairy start up Muufri (“Moo-free”)–a team of Californian vegan bioengineers–and is set to hit the market next year. The artificial milk, nicknamed “out-of-body udder” milk, produces milk that has the same taste and health benefits as regular milk, but is vegan friendly. “If we want … Read more
A recent study by Yale University has found that isolating Ebola victims within four days of symptom onset could achieve disease elimination in Liberia. Setting out to determine how to best use scare resources to combat the Ebola outbreak overwhelming West Africa, and after analyzing the incidence and case fatality of the outbreak, the team … Read more
The Western African nation of Niger is experiencing an outbreak of cholera. To date, 51 people have died of the disease this year–deaths are on the rise, with 38 deaths taking place in September alone. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that 1,300 people have been infected with cholera so … Read more
The Ebola Virus and the related Marburgvirus have been diverging for over 16 million years, according to a recent study by the University of Buffalo. Although filoviruses were once thought to date back only 10,000 years, new research using more reliable dating methods has shown that the origins of the virus go much deeper than … Read more
Tuberculosis is a disease that is seldom heard about these days, but the WHO and MSF have said that forms of TB known as multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) have risen to the level of a global threat. TB is already carried in a latent form in approximately one-third of the global population, and MDR-TB is increasingly the form … Read more
Over 1,000 cases of Malaria have been diagnosed in Yei River County, Central Equatoria State, South Sudan this week. “In total those who are registered on OPD we have is one thousand eighty three cases of malaria, and among these cases we have four hundred and fifty four under five, with three dead which means … Read more
According to a new report by scientists at the University of Bristol, additional daylight savings could have public health benefits. The study looked at daylight savings increases as a possible public health intervention, and found evidence that an increase would increase physical activity among children. “This study provides the strongest evidence to date that, in … Read more