Infectious disease

The World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER) serves as an essential instrument for the rapid and accurate dissemination of epidemiological information on cases and outbreaks of diseases under the International Health Regulations and on other communicable diseases of public health importance, including the newly emerging or re-emerging infections

The Environmental Health Project (EHP) is sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to assist the Agency to: * achieve reductions in illness and death among children under five in developing countries from diarrheal disease, malaria, and acute respiratory infections – three major diseases related to environmental conditions and * reduce the burden of infectious diseases of public health importance.

An international research laboratory set up to investigate health issues facing Africa, in particular infectious diseases, opens in South Africa today (10 September). The facility, housed at the University of Cape Town, is the third component of the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), a United Nations research, training and technology-sharing agency. The ICGEB headquarters are in Trieste, Italy, and there is a second laboratory in New Delhi, India.

The government has lashed out at patients with a deadly strain of tuberculosis who absconded from Brooklyn Chest hospital. It was reported on Wednesday morning that three patients with XDR-TB had absconded from the hospital where they were in isolation and being treated for the highly infectious and often deadly form of the disease. It was reported that they had all returned to their families.

In the context of extensive local and international comment on the contentious issue of detention of patients with XDR-TB in South Africa, the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) wishes to state that:

THE national Department of Health has urged all private and public sector health professionals to be on high alert for cases of polio after an outbreak of the disease in neighbouring Namibia.

The burden of malaria in Gauteng is not known, as the province is a non-endemic malaria region. As a result, healthcare workers and professionals in the province often misdiagnose patients who have contracted the disease in other areas.

Health authorities will remain on high alert for the next 10 days in respect of hospital and emergency services staff who had contact with the man who died of Congo fever.

South Africa's biggest killer is HIV and AIDS, according to a new Medical Research Council report on cause-specific death rates for each of the nine provinces.

Africa is a notorious incubator of frightening, exotic new diseases like Ebola and Marburg, but the real killers on the world's poorest continent are easily preventable illnesses like malaria and cholera.