March 2015

The UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Government of India Department for Biotechnology (DBT), have decided to collaborate  to fund three major global research centres on three major diseases. The first is to tackle the problem of Tuberculosis for which a partnership between the University of Cambridge and the National Institute for Research in …

New multimillion India-UK research centres Read More »

  In a statement to The Hindu in 2011, Peter Hotez  had said that with more than half of the major Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs ) attaining endemic proportions in India and South Asia, the economic loss attributed to these diseases was significant He  indicated that close to $1 billion per year was lost due …

A look at Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) or Kala -azar and Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs ) in India Read More »

EcoHealth Alliance released new research on the Ebola virus in fruit bats in the peer reviewed journal, Emerging Infectious Diseases, a monthly publication by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). EcoHealth Alliance is a nonprofit organisation that focuses on local conservation and global health issues.The study found Ebola virus antibodies circulating in ~4% …

Ebola now closer to home? Also: a look at the real burden of Ebola Read More »

The European Union has nearly doubled its assistance to combat the raging Ebola virus in West Africa to 1 billion euros. The heads of state and government of the 28-nation bloc agreed upon the move at their two-day summit concluded in Brussels on Friday.

Tens of thousands of doses of experimental Ebola vaccines could be available for “real-world” testing in West Africa as soon as January as long as they are deemed safe, a top World Health Organization official said Tuesday.

Cases of Ebola in Europe are unavoidable, but the risk of the disease spreading is extremely low, a top UN health official said.

Closing borders will not effectively curb Ebola infections, the head of the Red Cross said on Wednesday, amid debate over whether bans on travel from hardest-hit African countries would help combat the spread of the deadly virus.

Republican lawmakers on Thursday pressed for a ban on travel to the US from the West African outbreak zone.

The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States took a turn for the worse on Saturday, slipping from serious to critical condition in a Dallas hospital, as health officials reported tracking scores of possible cases around the country that proved to be false alarms.

Terming the spread of the Ebola virus an “unprecedented situation”, a top UN official said that despite best efforts, the outbreak is “running” ahead of the world’s response to curtail it and funding for the international response is also lagging.