Articles Tagged With: Africa
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Limitations to Life-Saving Effect of Azithromycin in Africa
Twice-yearly oral doses of azithromycin reduce the incidence of potentially blinding trachoma and the incidence of overall death in children in West Africa. However, new data analysis suggests that the favorable effect of azithromycin is limited to children without ready access to healthcare.
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Strange Ebola Transmission Spurs Outbreak
An emerging Ebola outbreak in Guinea may have been sparked by a survivor of the historic West African outbreak of 2013-2016. That means the virus would have had to incubate in the index case, without replicating enough to cause acute disease, for at least five years.
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Infectious Disease Alert Updates
Imagine: Multidrug-Resistant GC; A New Borrelia Species in the ‘Old World’
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Childhood Diarrhea Varies Geographically Within Africa
Each year, 30 million preschool-aged children still get sick with diarrhea and 330,000 die. Most diarrheal illness and death is concentrated in a few high-risk areas, including parts of Benin, Lesotho, Mali, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Targeting preventive and therapeutic interventions in areas of risk could markedly reduce morbidity and mortality.
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Encephalitis, Fever, and Doxycycline
Scrub typhus is a significant cause of acute encephalitis in north India and other parts of Asia and Africa. Doxycycline is a safe and effective treatment option.
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The Viral World Keeps on Going — Some Recent Activity
Ebola makes a comeback, but meets a vaccine. Lassa fever and Rift Valley fever also make their mark, while Keystone virus infects a teenager in Florida.
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Rotavirus Vaccine and Intussusception
Using active surveillance, researchers enrolled 717 infants with intussusception from sub-Saharan Africa. The risk of intussusception was no higher in those who received the monovalent rotavirus vaccine than in non-immunized infants.
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Azithromycin Saves Lives in Africa
Approximately 200,000 preschool-aged children in communities in Malawi, Niger, and Tanzania were treated twice yearly with either azithromycin or placebo. Communities in which azithromycin was provided had 13.5% less all-cause mortality than did placebo-treated communities. In children 1 to 5 months of age, the mortality was 25% lower with azithromycin than with placebo.
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Not Just Ebola — Lassa Fever Rears its Ugly Head Once Again
Outbreaks of Lassa fever are occurring in Nigeria and several other West African nations, some of which also are endemic for Ebola virus infections.
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Decreasing Malaria Mortality in Africa
Malaria mortality in Africa has decreased by approximately 57% during the past 15 years, but some areas still have low level use of bed nets, low coverage with antimalarial medication, and higher death rates due to malaria. At the same time, anti-malarial measures are still important for individuals traveling to endemic areas.