Ebola – the not so new virus
Ebola, now largely confined to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea claimed more than 9300 lives in West Africa in a year. I have selected key facts & insights from February’s national symposium “Ebola: The 21st century plague?" [Royal Society of Medicine, London, UK], held by international experts handling the epidemic. Covering the history of the disease, lessons learnt from 2014, and what strategies are in place for preventing future outbreaks, there was also an explanation finally as to why a rural outbreak became a regional urban epidemic, and an understanding of the complexity of medical volunteering and running ebola treatment centres.
MERS the next pandemic threat?
10 years ago it was SARS, now the new coronavirus worrying pandemic planners is theMERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) coronavirus, that emerged in Saudi Arabia, last year. The number of cases is gathering momentum and we don’t yet know how it is transmitted or what animal is harbouring it. As Saudi Arabia is the host…