A humanitarian group says the escalating Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo could become “the worst ever seen in East Africa.” The stark comments follow reports claiming the deadly virus is spreading quickly in conflict-hit areas.
A company that claimed its miracle hand sanitizers and antiseptic lotions would protect people from all sort of nasty diseases, including Ebola, is now being taken to court by the federal government.
Bill Gray, a 75-year-old, Stanford-trained doctor based in California, claims on his website that he can treat almost any patient’s health problems through personalized, “homeopathic” audio recordings sent via email. But the California medical board is having none of it. Earlier this month, it filed a five-page …
The latest Ebola outbreak has claimed yet another life in the Democratic Republic of Congo, raising the death toll to 12—though the actual number may be as high as 27. Using a strategy known as “ring vaccinations,” officials began treating doctors and other frontline healthcare workers in Bikoro, the town where the…
An ongoing outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Africa has become much more worrying, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported Thursday. While previous cases of the often fatal viral disease had been found in rural areas during this most recent outbreak, the first urban case of Ebola…
Ebola has once again resurfaced. On Friday, the World Health Organization reported that there have been at least 34 suspected cases of the viral disease and 18 deaths since early April in the Bikoro District of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). But Ebola’s resurgence, hardly unexpected, can’t help but bring…
In December, the headlines were euphoric: After a deadly West African Ebola epidemic two years ago, scientists had not only developed a vaccine, but it appeared to be 100 percent effective. That effectiveness was quickly disputed—but now, as a new Ebola outbreak is rattling the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the…
Like humans, gorillas and chimpanzees can get infected by Ebola. To protect our closest relatives from this dreaded disease, and to prevent the virus from spilling over into human populations, scientists have now developed an oral vaccine to combat Ebola in the wild. It sounds very promising, but the researchers have…
A new Ebola vaccine provides 100 percent protection against one of the two most common strains of the Ebola virus. The results of this trial were released in The Lancet on Thursday. Although the vaccine—known as rVSV-ZEBOV—has yet to be approved by regulators, the New York Times reports that scientists have already…
Scientists have learned that upwards of 25 percent of all people who become infected with Ebola show none of the typical symptoms. The finding suggests the recent West African Ebola Epidemic was more widespread than previously thought, and that new methods need to be developed to diagnose and contain the dreaded virus…
A new analysis of the Ebola genome shows the dreaded virus acquired several new mutations during the course of the 2013-2016 West African Epidemic, making it even better at infecting human cells.
Much like their human hosts, some deadly pathogens just can’t let go. That’s apparently true of the Ebola virus, which was detected in a Liberian man’s semen an incredible 565 days after he recovered from illness, according to a new CDC report.
While the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has officially ended, isolated cases have appeared in Sierra Leone and Guinea earlier this year, prompting worries that the virus will likely have a constant presence in the region. A new study brings up some additional concerns: the virus might lie dormant in survivors longer…
With summer approaching, the risk of a surge in cases of the Zika virus has become a major concern for US officials, and the White House has announced that they would be redirecting money earmarked for Ebola to efforts combatting Zika.
While the West African Ebola Outbreak largely came to an end back in January, isolated cases are still appearing, including two cases which emerged this week in Guinea.
Just hours after West Africa was declared Ebola-free, officials in Sierra Leone have confirmed that there has been a new death from the disease in the north of the country.
It’s been a long, hard fight, but the World Health Organization has finally announced that West Africa is Ebola-free.
The past few months have seen a dramatic rise in the number of experts researching the prevention or treatment of Ebola. That rise hasn’t been dramatic enough, in part because Ebola has to be tested at expensive, highly specialized facilities. Now there’s a plan to change that.
Mutated viruses have long been the bogeyman of science fiction films, but in the case of Ebola, mutation could be its downfall. New research suggests the virus’s own tendency to mutate could one day lead to an effective treatment.
Bats are suspected, although not proved, to have been the origin of multiple human diseases, including Ebola and rabies. New maps show the hot spots where outbreaks are most likely to occur, and which diseases are most likely to be transmitted from bats to humans. One of those is the region of the devastating 2014…
