WHO releases a new progress report, entitled “Global report on neglected tropical diseases 2023” highlighting the progress and challenges in delivering NTD care worldwide, against a backdrop of COVID-19-related
<p>Dengue—a viral disease that can refer to both dengue fever and the more severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF)—swept away records again this past spring as it raged across Brazil, infecting more than 160,000 people and killing more than 100. The reports were similar to those out of Southeast Asia in the summer of 2007, South America the previous spring, and India the fall before that. Although it may not be the most devastating of the mosquito-borne diseases—malaria strikes 10 times more people and yellow fever kills more of its victims—dengue has become a major public health concern for two reasons: the speed with which it is spreading and the escalating seriousness of its complications.</p> <p><a href="http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/116-a382/" target="_blank">Original Source</a></p>
Isolates of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (Typhi), a human-restricted bacterial pathogen that causes typhoid, show limited genetic variation. We generated whole-genome sequences for 19 Typhi isolates using 454 (Roche) and Solexa (Illumina) technologies. Isolates, including the previously sequenced CT18 and Ty2 isolates, were selected to represent major nodes in the phylogenetic tree. Comparative analysis showed little evidence of purifying selection, antigenic variation or recombination between isolates.
A two-day international conference on neglected tropical diseases (Kala azar, filariasis and soil transmitted helminthiasis) will begin at Biam auditorium in the city on July 28, says a press release. Directorate General of Health Services will organise the conference. Resource persons from WHO head office, regional offices in India, Nepal, Thailand, India, Japan and Bangladesh, public health managers working at different regional offices and hospitals will participate in the conference.
India has got a pat on back from the World Health Organisation (WHO) for eliminating yaws, one of the most neglected tropical diseases, affecting poor countries. A chronic skin infection that affects skin, bone and cartilage, yaws can cause irreversible destruction of tissue and deformities in late stages. The disease can be prevented and cured by a single shot of long-acting Penicillin.
<p>Dengue is spreading in the Americas. Incremental changes in climate could help explain the disease's expansion, according to environmental scientists. But some dengue experts have called the link with climate "alarmist' and scientifically unsound.</p> <p><strong><a href="http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(08)60435-3.pdf" target="_blank">Original Source</a></strong></p>
This study re-examines the notions in colonial India about the causes of malaria, specifically discussing the environmental reasons pointed to at the time. It shows how and to what extent some of the widely held ideas of the colonial era on environmental causation contributed to and, at the same time, shaped a kind of environmental awareness, which became a part of medico-social thinking in India. It also adds a new dimension to the thinking on malaria in colonial India by situating the environmental paradigm within a social and economic context.
This paper identifies paradigmatic shifts in the conceptualisation of fevers in British Ceylon, from agues and fevers in the early 1800s and fevers of particular regions in the mid-1800s to a powerful notion of malaria in the early 1900s. In the early colonial records, agues and fevers were seen primarily as a threat to European visitors to the tropics, including the colonisers. In contrast, the fevers of specific regions were identified as localised ailments endemic among the local population and somehow connected to the specifics of local ecology and the indolent nature of the natives.
THE second part of Frontline's interview with David Baltimore, the reputed American biologist and Nobel laureate, includes a discussion on a wide range of issues including his own research; funding
Hundreds of millions of people live and work in forests across the world. One vital aspect of their lives, yet largely unexamined, is the challenge of protecting and enhancing the unique relationship between the health of forests and the health of people.
There is a logic to the idea of neglected diseases. Historically the diseases poor people get largely in the poorer parts of the world haven t got enough attention from policy makers in national governments and multilateral agencies precisely because they
