Tag Archives: World Health Organization

Zika reported in travelers who returned to California, Arkansas and Virginia

Travelers who recently returned to California, Arkansas and Virginia from foreign countries have tested positive for the Zika virus, health officials in those states announced Tuesday.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains that there haven’t been any people who have contracted the mosquito-borne virus in the United States, though there have been several cases where travelers got infected overseas and brought the virus back with them.

Zika is collecting the attention of public health officials because scientists are studying a possible link between the virus and a rare condition called microcephaly, in which children are born with smaller-than-usual heads. The birth defect can also be caused by other factors, the CDC says.

Still, the CDC has issued travel notices for 22 countries or territories where Zika is currently being spread, urging pregnant women to consider postponing any planned travel to those areas and asking all would-be travelers to “practice enhanced precautions” to prevent mosquito bites.

The three cases announced Tuesday all involved foreign travel.

In a statement, the Virginia Department of Health said the infection was confirmed in “an adult resident of Virginia who recently traveled to a country where Zika virus transmission is ongoing,” but did not elaborate. The infected individual was the state’s first imported Zika case, but isn’t at risk of transmitting the virus because it isn’t currently mosquito season in Virginia.

The Arkansas Department of Health said one of the state’s residents “recently traveled out of the country and had a mild case of Zika.” Officials confirmed the diagnosis late Monday afternoon.

“Arkansas has the kind of mosquitoes that carry Zika virus, so mosquitoes here in Arkansas can become infected with the virus if they bite someone who has Zika,” Dr. Nate Smith, the Arkansas Department of Health Director and State Health Officer, said in a statement. “For this reason, people traveling to countries with Zika should avoid mosquito bites for 10 days after they return.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said an adolescent girl who traveled to El Salvador last November was the county’s lone confirmed case of Zika, but she has recovered.

“At this time, local transmission is unlikely,” the department said in a statement. “It would require an Aedes mosquito biting a Zika infected person and then biting others.”

The CDC says only about 20 percent of people who are infected with Zika become ill and develop symptoms like fever, rash and joint pain. Most people fully recover from the illness in a week.

The possible link between Zika and microcephaly is a key component of the travel warnings.

The Brazilian Ministry of Health has investigated more than 4,100 microcephaly cases in the past 13 months, according to data released Wednesday. The ministry used to see fewer than 200 cases of the condition every year, though the numbers have surged since Zika arrived in May.

The Hawaii Department of Health has said a child who was recently born with microcephaly there had been infected with Zika, and his mother likely got the virus when she lived in Brazil.

The CDC says it will also be conducting a study to examine a possible link between Zika and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a nerve disorder than can lead to muscle weakness and paralysis. Many fully recover from the syndrome, the CDC says, though it can be fatal in rare instances.

The World Health Organization is holding an information session on Zika tomorrow.

The organization says it’s possible the virus could cause epidemics in new areas it reaches because people don’t have immunity to it. There’s also currently no vaccine to prevent it.

WHO warns Zika to spread across Americas, spurring vaccine hunt

GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) – The mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to brain damage in thousands of babies in Brazil, is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

Zika has not yet been reported in the continental United States, although a woman who fell ill with the virus in Brazil later gave birth to a brain-damaged baby in Hawaii.

Brazil’s Health Ministry said in November that Zika was linked to a fetal deformation known as microcephaly, in which infants are born with smaller-than-usual brains.

Brazil has reported 3,893 suspected cases of microcephaly, the WHO said last Friday, over 30 times more than in any year since 2010 and equivalent to 1-2 percent of all newborns in the state of Pernambuco, one of the worst-hit areas.

The Zika outbreak comes hard on the heels of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, demonstrating once again how little-understood diseases can rapidly emerge as global threats.

“We’ve got no drugs and we’ve got no vaccines. It’s a case of deja vu because that’s exactly what we were saying with Ebola,” Trudie Lang, a professor of global health at the University of Oxford, said on Monday. “It’s really important to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible.”

Large drugmakers’ investment in tropical disease vaccines with uncertain commercial prospects has so far been patchy, prompting health experts to call for a new system of incentives following the Ebola experience.

“We need to have some kind of a plan that makes (companies) feel there is a sustainable solution and not just a one-shot deal over and over again,” Francis Collins, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, said last week.

The Sao Paulo-based Butantan Institute is currently leading the research charge on Zika and said last week it planned to develop a vaccine “in record time”, although its director warned this was still likely to take three to five years.

RIO CONCERNS

The virus was first found in a monkey in the Zika forest near Lake Victoria, Uganda, in 1947, and has historically occurred in parts of Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. But there is little scientific data on it and it is unclear why it might be causing microcephaly in Brazil.

Laura Rodrigues of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said it was possible the disease could be evolving.

If the epidemic was still going on in August, when Brazil is due to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, then pregnant women should either stay away or be obsessive about covering up against mosquito bites, she said.

The WHO advised pregnant women planning to travel to areas where Zika is circulating to consult a healthcare provider before traveling and on return.

The clinical symptoms of Zika are usually mild and often similar to dengue, a fever which is transmitted by the same Aedes aegypti mosquito, leading to fears that Zika will spread into all parts of the world where dengue is commonplace.

More than one-third of the world’s population lives in areas at risk of dengue infection, in a band stretching through Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Zika’s rapid spread, to 21 countries and territories in the Americas since May 2015, is due to the prevalence of Aedes aegypti and a lack of immunity among the population, the WHO said in a statement.

RISK TO GIRLS

Like rubella, which also causes mild symptoms but can lead to birth defects, health experts believe a vaccine is needed to protect girls before they reach child-bearing age.

Evidence about other transmission routes, apart from mosquito bites, is limited.

“Zika has been isolated in human semen, and one case of possible person-to-person sexual transmission has been described. However, more evidence is needed to confirm whether sexual contact is a means of Zika transmission,” the WHO said.

While a causal link between Zika and microcephaly has not yet been definitively proven, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said the circumstantial evidence was “suggestive and extremely worrisome”.

In addition to finding a vaccine and potential drugs to fight Zika, some scientists are also planning to take the fight to the mosquitoes that carry the disease.

Oxitec, the UK subsidiary of U.S. synthetic biology company Intrexon, hopes to deploy a self-limiting genetically modified strain of insects to compete with normal Aedes aegypti.

Oxitec says its proprietary OX513A mosquito succeeded in reducing wild larvae of the Aedes mosquito by 82 percent in an area of Brazil where 25 million of the transgenic insects were released between April and November. Authorities reported a big drop in dengue cases in the area.

(Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Dozens feared exposed as Sierra Leone confirms new Ebola death

FREETOWN (Reuters) – A woman who died of Ebola this week in Sierra Leone potentially exposed dozens of other people to the disease, according to an aid agency report on Friday, raising the risk of more cases just as the deadliest outbreak on record appeared to be ending.

Just a day earlier, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that “all known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa” after Liberia joined Sierra Leone and Guinea in going six weeks with no reported new cases. The three countries had borne the brunt of a two-year epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people.

The WHO warned of the potential for more flare-ups, as survivors can carry the virus for months. But the new case in Sierra Leone is especially disquieting because authorities failed to follow basic health protocols, according to the report seen by Reuters.

Compiled by a humanitarian agency that asked not to be named, the document said the victim, Mariatu Jalloh, had come into contact with at least 27 people, including 22 in the house where she died and five who were involved in washing her corpse. But its account suggested others could also be at risk.

Jalloh, 22, began showing symptoms at the beginning of the year, though the exact date is unknown, the report states. A student in Port Loko, the largest town in Sierra Leone’s Northern Province, she traveled to Bamoi Luma near the border with Guinea in late December.

Sierra Leone’s northern border area, a maze of waterways, was one of the country’s last Ebola hot spots before it was declared Ebola-free on Nov. 7, and contact tracing was sometimes bedeviled by access problems.

By the time she traveled back to her parents’ home in Tonkolili district, east of the capital Freetown, using three different taxis, Jalloh had diarrhea and was vomiting, the report said.

She sought treatment at the local Magburaka Government Hospital on Jan. 8 where a health worker, who did not wear protective clothing, took a blood sample. It was not immediately clear whether the sample was tested for Ebola.

She was treated as an outpatient and returned home, where she died on Jan. 12. Health workers took a swab test of Jalloh’s body following her death, which tested positive for Ebola.

“The sample was tested for the first time on Thursday morning – around the same time as the WHO declared the Ebola outbreak over”, said Tim Brooks of Public Health England, the British agency that tested the sample at its lab in Sierra Leone.

PUBLIC ANGER

The missed diagnosis has led to anger in some quarters. Dozens of young people gathered outside the hospital on Friday in a noisy demonstration, some holding placards accusing the health department of negligence.

“We are demonstrating because we want the authorities to explain to us why the woman was discharged and allowed to go home, where she died, and her corpse was given to her family to bury. We are now concerned that some family members may have been infected,” said local youth leader Mahmud Tarawally.

Asked about apparent errors in handling the case, Sierra Leone health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis said that the patient had been tested for the virus and had received treatment in a government hospital. He did not give further details.

Information campaigns calling upon residents of Ebola-affected countries to respect government health directives have been largely credited with turning the tide of the epidemic. However, safety measures, particularly a ban on traditional burial ceremonies, have faced stiff resistance at times.

The report stated that five people who were not part of Jalloh’s parents’ household were involved in washing her corpse, a practice that is considered one of the chief modes of Ebola transmission.

Almost all the victims of the regional epidemic, which originated in the forests of Guinea in 2013, were in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.

As of Thursday’s WHO announcement that Liberia had gone 42 days with no new cases, all three nations were apparently Ebola-free.

But Liberia had twice been given the all-clear last year, only for a fresh cluster of cases to emerge. And the case in Sierra Leone adds further uncertainty.

“It is really important that people don’t understand this 42-day announcement as the sign that we should all just pack up and go home,” WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said on Friday. “We should stay there and be ready to respond to these possible cases.”

Ben Neuman, an Ebola expert and lecturer in virology at Britain’s University of Reading, said: “A hospital in Sierra Leone completely misdiagnosing a case of Ebola, apparently without sending a sample to one of the many testing labs that are being kept open for just this reason is ridiculous -completely unacceptable.”

He said Ebola was hard to distinguish from many other diseases that cause pain, fever, diarrhea and vomiting.

“The only way to know for sure is by testing whether pieces of the Ebola virus are present in the blood,” Neuman added.

“People still make better doctors and nurses than computers, but people will always make mistakes. Unfortunately this mistake is a big one.”

Ebola is passed on through blood and bodily fluids, and kills about 40 percent of those who contract the virus.

While the WHO has said that another major outbreak is unlikely, it says the risk of flare-ups remains because of the way the virus can persist in those who survive it. Research on survivors has located it in semen, breast milk, vaginal secretions, spinal fluid and fluids around the eyes.

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Emma Farge in Dakar and Kate Kelland in London; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Joe Bavier and Mark Trevelyan)

UN confirms severe malnutrition in Madaya, 32 deaths in one month

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF on Friday confirmed cases of severe malnutrition among children in the besieged western Syrian town of Madaya, where local relief workers reported 32 deaths of starvation in the past month.

A mobile clinic and medical team of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was on its way to Madaya after the government approved an urgent request, and a vaccination campaign is planned next week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Two convoys of aid supplies were delivered this week to the town of 42,000 under a months-long blockade. The United Nations said another convoy was planned to Madaya, sealed off by pro-government forces, and rebel-besieged villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib next week, and that regular access was needed.

“UNICEF … can confirm that cases of severe malnutrition were found among children,” it said in a statement, after the United Nations and Red Cross had entered the town on Monday and Thursday to deliver aid for the first time since October.

UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told a news briefing in Geneva that UNICEF and WHO staff were able to screen 25 children under five and 22 of them showed signs of moderate to severe malnutrition. All were now receiving treatment.A further 10 children aged from 6 to 18 were examined and six showed signs of severe malnutrition, he said.

UNICEF staff also witnessed the death of a severely malnourished 16-year-old boy in Madaya, while a 17-year-old boy in “life-threatening condition” and a pregnant women with obstructed labor need to be evacuated, Boulierac said.

Abeer Pamuk of the SOS Children’s Villages charity said of the children she saw in Madaya: “They all looked pale and skinny. They could barely talk or walk. Their teeth are black, their gums are bleeding, and they have lots of health problems with their skin, hair, nails, teeth.

“They have basically been surviving on grass. Some families also reported having eaten cats,” she said in a statement. “A lot of people were also giving their children sleeping pills, because the children could not stop crying from hunger, and their parents had nothing to feed them.”

She said her agency was working to bring unaccompanied and separated children from Madaya to care centers in quieter areas just outside the capital Damascus.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people in critical condition were evacuated to a hospital in the city of Latakia, on Syria’s government-controlled Mediterranean coast, from Kefraya and al-Foua on Friday.

DYING OF STARVATION

World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said that the local relief committee in Madaya had provided figures on the extent of starvation, but it could not verify them.

“Our nutritionist…was saying that it is clear that the nutritional situation is very bad, the adults look very emaciated. According to a member of the relief committee, 32 people have died of starvation in the last 30-day period.”

Dozens of deaths from starvation have been reported by monitoring groups, local doctors, and aid agencies from Madaya.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday Syria’s warring parties, particularly the government, were committing “atrocious acts” and he condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war in the nearly five-year-old conflict.

“It can also be a crime against humanity. But it would very much depend on the circumstances, and the threshold of proof is often much more difficult for a crime against humanity (than for a war crime),” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

The United Nations says there are some 450,000 people trapped in around 15 siege locations across Syria, including in areas controlled by the government, Islamic State militants and other insurgent groups.

(Reporting by John Davison and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Liberia declared Ebola-free, though threat of flare-ups remain

MONROVIA (Reuters) – Liberia was declared free of the Ebola virus by global health experts on Thursday, a milestone that signaled an end to an epidemic in West Africa that has killed more than 11,300 people.

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned there could still be flare-ups of the disease in the region, which has suffered the world’s deadliest outbreak over the past two years, as survivors can carry the virus for many months and could pass it on.

Health specialists cautioned against complacency, saying the world was still underprepared for any future outbreaks of the disease.

Liberia was the last affected country to get the all-clear, with no cases of Ebola for 42 days, twice the length of the virus’s “incubation period” – the time elapsed between transmission of the disease and the appearance of symptoms.

“All known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa,” the WHO, a U.N. agency, said on Thursday.

The other affected countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone, were declared Ebola-free late last year. There were cases in seven other countries including Nigeria, the United States and Spain, but almost all the deaths were in the West African nations.

“It is the first time since the start of the … epidemic in West Africa two years ago that the three hardest-hit countries had zero cases for at least 42 days,” said WHO’s Liberia representative Alex Gasasira.

The WHO announcement on Thursday is a major step in the fight against a disease that began in the forests of eastern Guinea in December 2013 before spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It overwhelmed medical infrastructure in the region which was ill-equipped to deal with the outbreak, and at its height in late 2014 sparked global fears among the general public.

However the agency urged caution – Liberia had previously twice been declared virus-free, in May and September of 2015, but each time a fresh cluster of cases unexpectedly emerged.

Its capital Monrovia was badly hit during the worst of the epidemic. Inadequate care meant patients lay strewn on the streets or pavements waiting hours for tests and treatment; medical holding pens became growth centers for the disease.

With those memories still fresh, and society and the economy still reeling from the outbreak, the reaction to Thursday’s announcement was muted. There was no signs of celebration such as the “Ebola free” T-shirts that people wore after previous WHO announcements.

“After the first declaration, people were dancing in the street,” said Vivian Lymas Tegli, child protection officer for UNICEF in Monrovia. “But I don’t think there will be any celebrations today. People are tired of Ebola. They feel it is here to stay.”

‘WORLD UNDERPREPARED’

Experts said progress had been made in the region’s response to Ebola, with new cases having dwindled due to public health campaigns, efforts to trace and isolate potential sufferers and the safe treatment and burial of patients and victims.

But it said the countries would still struggle to deal with any future large outbreak of Ebola, which is passed on through blood and bodily fluids and killed around 40 percent of those who contracted the virus.

Hundreds of healthcare workers in both urban and rural communities were among those killed by the disease, a major blow to medical systems in countries which already had among the lowest numbers of doctors per head of population in the world.

“Today’s WHO announcement is welcome news but we must learn from Ebola’s devastating impact and ensure we are better prepared for infectious disease outbreaks,” said Dr Seth Berkley, head of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, an organization that aims to increase access to vaccines in poor countries.

“The world is still worryingly underprepared for potential future health threats and a change of mind-set is required to ensure we invest in research and development today to protect ourselves in years to come.”

Experts also warned other tropical diseases posed future threats, including the previously little known mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to head-related birth defects and is spreading in South America.

Hilde de Clerck, a doctor with Medecins Sans Frontieres who has assisted with five Ebola outbreaks including in Congo, Uganda and the latest epidemic in West Africa, said vigilance was crucial to prevent the re-emergence of the disease, for which there is no proven drug treatment, although researchers have developed a vaccine.

“I think we should not forget about the risk of other outbreaks,” she said. “I am most concerned about some of the basics: hygiene, equipment and training.”

While WHO and other health specialists say another outbreak of this magnitude is unlikely, and much has been learned in terms of monitoring patients and responding to outbreaks, problems remain, including with simple hygiene, such as not washing hands.

“I do really believe that there is a much better understanding, an acceptance that this is a real disease, and what the cause is of this disease, and that is much more embedded in society than before,” said Peter Graaff, head of Ebola operations at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva.

Mohammed Kamara, who lives in Monrovia, lost two relatives and a friend to Ebola in 2014. “I know exactly what it means to have the disease in the country,” he said.

“We must be grateful to God and then to the government and its partners for the country to be declared free of Ebola. I only hope that it is the last time that we experience Ebola.”

(Additional reporting by Keiran Guilbert, Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Miles, Emma Farge, Matt Mpoke Bigg, Kate Kelland and Ben Hirschler; Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Pravin Char)

U.N. war crimes investigators gathering testimony from starving Syrian town

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – Residents of a besieged Syrian town have told U.N. investigators how the weakest in their midst, deprived of food and medicines in violation of international law, are suffering starvation and death, the top U.N. war crimes investigator told Reuters on Tuesday.

An aid convoy on Monday brought the first food and medical relief for three months to the western town of Madaya, where 40,000 people are trapped by encircling government forces.

But Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the U.N. commission of inquiry documenting war crimes in Syria, said his team remained “gravely concerned” about the humanitarian situation there.

“As part of our investigations, the Commission has been in direct contact with residents currently living inside Madaya,” he said in an emailed reply to Reuters questions.

“They have provided detailed information on shortages of food, water, qualified physicians, and medicine. This has led to acute malnutrition and deaths among vulnerable groups in the town,” he said in the email sent from his native Brazil.

The U.N. inquiry, composed of independent experts, has long denounced use of starvation by both sides in the Syrian conflict as a weapon of war, and has a confidential list of suspected war criminals and units from all sides which is kept in a U.N. safe in Geneva.

“Siege tactics, by their nature, target the civilian population by subjecting them to starvation, denial of basic essential services and medicines,” Pinheiro said on Tuesday.

“Such methods of warfare are prohibited under international humanitarian law and violate core human rights obligations with regard to the rights to adequate food, health and the right to life, not to mention the special duty of care owed to the well-being of children.”

Rebel forces are also besieging the government-held villages of Foua and Kafraya in Idlib province, where U.N. supplies were also delivered on Monday, Pinheiro noted. Islamic State fighters are besieging government-held areas of Deir al-Zor, he added.

Aid workers who reached Madaya spoke of “heartbreaking” conditions being endured by emaciated and starving residents, with hundreds in need of specialized medical help.

“It’s really heartbreaking to see the situation of the people,” said Pawel Krzysiek of the International Committee of the Red Cross. “A while ago I was just approached by a little girl and her first question was did you bring food … we are really hungry.”

The World Health Organization said it had asked the Syrian government to allow it to send mobile clinics and medical teams to Madaya to assess the extent of malnutrition and evacuate the worst cases.

A local doctor said 300 to 400 people needed special medical care, according to Elizabeth Hoff, the WHO representative in Damascus who went into Madaya with the convoy.

“I am really alarmed,” Hoff told Reuters by telephone from Damascus, where she is based.

“People gathered in the market place. You could see many were malnourished, starving. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed. There was no smile on anybody’s face. It is not what you see when you arrive with a convoy. The children I talked to said they had no strength to play.”

FOOD WEAPON CONDEMNED

Western diplomats have also condemned the use of food as a weapon of war, with the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, accusing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics”.

Britain’s U.N. ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said “wilfully impeding relief supply and access can constitute a violation of international humanitarian law”.

Legal experts said that could be construed as either a war crime or a crime against humanity, or both.

However, there appears little immediate prospect of such a case being brought before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, since Syria is not a member and any referral to the court by the U.N. Security Council would have to overcome Russian reluctance.

The difficulties in getting aid into Madaya and other besieged places could also set back efforts to hold new peace talks on the five-year-old war in Syria, scheduled to take place under U.N. auspices in Geneva on Jan. 25.

A U.N. road map for the talks calls on the parties to allow aid agencies unhindered access throughout Syria, particularly in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.

An opposition grouping has told the United Nations that this must happen before the talks can begin, lending weight to suggestions that the humanitarian situation could make Jan. 25 a hard target to hit.

Negotiations to get into Madaya and the other two villages near Idlib were lengthy and difficult. There are presently about 15 siege locations in Syria, where 450,000 people are trapped, the United Nations says.

The main opposition coordinator, Riad Hijab, said the United States had backtracked over the departure of President Bashar al-Assad as part of any settlement and this meant the opposition would face hard choices on whether to attend the talks.

The WHO intends to return to Madaya on Thursday as part of a U.N. convoy with more medical and food supplies, Hoff said.

ICRC spokeswoman Dibeh Fakhr also said its next distribution is planned for Thursday. The aid consists of blankets and medicine as well as food.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Additional reporting by Tom Miles, Lisa Barrington, Kinda Makieh and Lou Charbonneau; Writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership and David Stamp)

Different Strain of Swine Flu Could Lead to New Pandemic, Study Shows

A strain of flu that has been circulating in pigs for decades is now capable of sickening humans and could cause to a pandemic similar to the one swine flu caused in 2009, a new study found.

A team of researchers from China and Japan recently found that a type of swine flu virus called EAH1N1 is now capable of sickening humans on a global scale, and published their discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers wrote that the virus has been found in pigs since 1979, but “long-term evolution” in the animals have changed the virus and it’s now capable of not just making humans sick, but efficiently spreading between them.

The researchers warned EAH1N1 is now able “to cause a human influenza pandemic.” Their research indicated that several countries have already reported human cases of the illness.

The study “suggests that immediate action is needed” to prevent humans from getting the EAH1N1 virus, researchers wrote in the article’s summary, because of how it can spread and the fact that none of the humans they tested had developed antibodies for one particular flu strain.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the 2009 swine flu outbreak, caused by the different H1N1 virus, killed anywhere between 151,700 and 575,400 people.

The World Health Organization says pigs have been known to generate new flu viruses because they are capable of getting infected by several different animals and humans. The viruses blend together in pigs, creating new strains that can make humans sicker than the original viruses.

Guinea, Origin of West Africa Ebola Outbreak, Now Free of Virus

Health officials say that Guinea is officially free of Ebola, a milestone achievement for the nation that was the original source of a deadly outbreak of the disease about two years ago.

The World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations, made the announcement on Tuesday, saying it had been 42 days since test results on the West African nation’s final confirmed Ebola patient came back negative. The WHO said the outbreak that ravaged Guinea and the neighboring nations of Sierra Leone and Liberia, killing thousands of people and sickening scores more, originally began in Gueckedou, Guinea, late in 2013 before spreading.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the rare-but-often-fatal disease killed 2,536 people in Guinea, the vast majority of people who fell ill with it. The virus also killed 3,955 in Sierra Leone and more than 4,800 in Liberia. In isolated instances, Ebola arrived in seven other nations and killed 15 more people, including one in the United States.

Though the outbreak received widespread coverage from around the globe, 11,300 of the 11,315 Ebola deaths occurred in the three West African nations most severely impacted by the virus. Likewise, CDC data show 28,601 of the 28,637 suspected ebola cases occurred in those nations.

The WHO deemed Sierra Leone free of the disease in November, according to a statement at the time. The WHO had also declared Liberia free of the disease in September, according to the CDC, though three additional cases of the Ebola virus have surfaced in the past few weeks.

The WHO says that Ebola can linger in the bodies of some male survivors for up to one year, making monitoring important. The organization said officials would be on high alert for the next 90 days to ensure any potential new infections are rapidly discovered to prevent transmission.

Hawaii Reports Additional Cases of Dengue Fever

The number of people infected with dengue fever in Hawaii is climbing, officials said Monday.

The Hawaii Department of Health reported that it was investigating 167 total cases of the mosquito-borne illness, which can lead to fatal consequences in extreme cases. There were 122 confirmed dengue cases as of Dec. 2, signifying 45 additional infections in about three weeks.

State health officials said only three of the 167 cases are currently infectious. The other people got sick between Sept. 11 and Dec. 10, so they are no longer at risk of transmitting the disease.

The health department also reported there were 659 additional potential dengue infections that had been ruled out, either through test results or the illnesses failing to meet the case criteria.

Dengue isn’t endemic (regularly found) in Hawaii, though health officials said it can occasionally be brought in from travelers who got infected in endemic regions. But this latest outbreak on the Big Island is unique because it’s the first cluster of locally acquired cases since 2011, when Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) records indicate five people got sick in Oahu.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an arm of the United Nations, dengue is transmitted when an infected mosquito bites a human. The infection generates a flu-like illness — from which most people usually recover within a week — though it sometimes progresses to severe dengue. In those instances, people can suffer organ impairment and severe bleeding.

The WHO estimates severe dengue hospitalizes about 500,000 people per year, and about 2.5 percent of them die. Dengue is much more common, with some estimates indicating as many as 136 million people falling ill every year, but non-severe cases of the disease are rarely ever fatal. Symptoms can include severe headaches, swollen glands, joint and muscle pain and a high fever.

The Hawaii outbreak reflects a global trend in which dengue is spreading to new locales.

The WHO reports the disease was traditionally found in the tropics and subtropics, but it’s now endemic in more than 100 countries and about half the world’s population is at risk of infection. Still, early detection and access to good medical care keeps the mortality rate below 1 percent. Without those, the WHO says severe dengue can be fatal in more than 20 percent of cases.

Hawaii health officials say it’s still safe to visit the island. The department encourages travelers to use insect repellant and wear long sleeves and pants to help prevent mosquitos from biting.

Cholera Outbreak Threatening World’s Largest Refugee Camp

A cholera outbreak is sweeping through the largest refugee camp in the world.

Doctors Without Borders, a medical charity, reported that seven people have died in Dadaab since the debilitating diarrhoeal disease first hit the Kenyan settlement back on November 23.

In a news release, the doctors said the disease has sickened more than 540 Dadaab residents in all, and doctors built a dedicated treatment center for cholera patients. Doctors said they have seen about 307 in the past three weeks, about 30 percent of whom were children less than 12.

According to the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations, cholera is a bacterial disease that can kill within hours if it isn’t treated. The disease is usually transmitted through contaminated food or water, and is fueled by poor hygiene. Refugee camps are particularly at risk for outbreaks because their residents often lack access to clean water and proper sanitation.

Doctors Without Borders reported that funding cuts have accelerated the outbreak, as Dadaab hasn’t received any soap in two months and there aren’t enough latrines for its residents. More than 330,000 refugees live there, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. The doctors worry seasonal rains could lead to more cases, as the weather has already exacerbated the issue.

“After each heavy rain, we see an increase of patients in our treatment (center),” Charles Gaudry, the head of Doctors Without Borders’ mission in Kenya, said in a statement.

Doctors Without Borders said its staff is working to educate the refugees about cholera and decontaminating the living spaces of infected patients, but called for more long-term solutions and improvements at Dadaab, which is located near Kenya’s eastern border with Somalia.

“The fact that this outbreak has occurred further highlights the dire hygiene and living conditions in the camp and a lack of proper long-term investment in sanitation services,” Gaudry said in a statement.