Just before news broke in July of a chikungunya outbreak in Foshan, Guangdong province, I was on a field trip with a group of students in Pok Fu Lam. It was a sultry day; recent rains had increased the humidity. It was impossible not to sweat. As we made our first stop to begin an…
The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development is likely to cause enormous human suffering, according to estimates by the agency itself. Among them: up to 18 million additional cases of malaria per year, and as many as 166,000 additional deaths; 200,000 children paralyzed with polio annually,…
The mystery behind an unknown illness that has killed dozens in the Democratic Republic of Congo just 48 hours after they first showed symptoms deepened after the World Health Organization on Friday offered a new theory that seemingly contradicts African medical experts. At least 60 people have died and more than 1,000 have been sickened…
“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.” The projects terminated include H.I.V. treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries…
Bill Gates said there are four things younger generations have to worry about in an interview with Patrick Collison. He identified the climate crisis, unchecked AI, nuclear war, and the spread of disease. Despite his concerns, Gates said he still thinks people will be “so much better off” in the future. If Bill Gates were…
BAYELSA, Nigeria (AP) — Ominike Marvis has lost count of the number of times her 6-year-old son has had malaria. So when Nigeria started offering a malaria vaccine, she was eager to protect her youngest child. She took the 6-month-old baby to get his first shot at a health center in hard-hit Bayelsa state, where…
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The mystery flu-like illness that has killed dozens of people in southwest Congo in recent weeks might be malaria, according to results from laboratory samples of infected people, authorities said Wednesday. “Of the 12 samples taken, nine were positive for malaria but these samples were not of very good quality, so…
KINSHASA, Congo — The mystery flu-like illness that has killed dozens of people in southwest Congo in recent weeks might be malaria, according to results from laboratory samples of infected people, authorities said Wednesday. “Of the 12 samples taken, nine were positive for malaria but these samples were not of very good quality, so we…
Right after Dr Owen Tsang Tak-yin finished his training in infectious diseases, he suddenly found himself on the front lines of Hong Kong’s 2003 Sars outbreak, a time he describes as being lonely and stressful. Tsang, now the medical director of the Hospital Authority Infectious Disease Centre in Hong Kong, recalled that at the start…
Hong Kong authorities announced in October that dinosaur bone fossils had been discovered on Port Island, a remote, uninhabited island off the northeastern part of the special administrative region. Palaeoecological experts believe that the small bone fragments date back to the Cretaceous period (145-66 million years ago), and could be the remains of larger types…