Al Jazeera America
11/07/2014
Kissing bug disease creeps into US, but symptoms often missed
Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States have been infected with the potentially fatal kissing bug disease, but U.S. health care workers’ lack of awareness often prevents successful diagnosis and treatment, according to a report released this week.
The Times (South Africa)
11/06/2014
Putting bite on snake venom
Scientists testing a DNA swab were able to identify the species that had bitten someone 100% of the time. Now they are in the process of developing a rapid diagnostic dip stick for snakebite victims. The study was conducted at three medical facilities in Nepal - a country with a high incidence of snakebite.
Salon
11/05/2014
Another horrific tropical disease is making headway in the U.S.
Doctors with recent, first-hand experience treating the only disease anyone wants to talk about right now were barred from attending a major medical conference, leaving the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene a bit light on the Ebola this year. Fortunately, the researchers who did attend had plenty of other scary, tropical diseases to discuss, like Chagas, an emerging threat that most Americans don’t see coming.
Bloomberg
11/05/2014
Some Ebola Patients Should Get Placebo in Drug Tests: FDA
Some Ebola patients need to forgo potentially life-saving treatments so researchers can see how they fare compared to people who get the experimental drugs, a Food and Drug Administration official said today.
VOA (Spanish)
11/04/2014
Test de DNA para mordidas de serpientes
A medical team is collecting genetic information to identify snake bites, a neglected tropical disease. (Translated with Google Translate)
Motherboard (VICE News)
11/03/2014
Deforestation Is Clearing the Way for a Rare Monkey-Borne Malaria
In research presented today at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene annual meeting, [Dr. Balbir Singh, director of the Malaria Research Center at the University of Malaysia in Sarawak] explained how the parasite Plasmodium knowlesi has grown from being a minor cause of malaria in Malaysian Borneo to causing some 68 percent of malaria hospitalizations in the region last year.
The Lancet Global Health Blog
11/03/2014
Malaria eradication: let battle commence
Yesterday in New Orleans, in the keynote speech at the opening of the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Bill Gates framed malaria control as a global health success story and made a call for malaria eradication in his lifetime. Since he has just turned 59, life tables suggest that he means by 2038; assuming of course that he is an average white American male, which he is clearly not! This call for nothing less than malaria eradication comes 7 years after a similar call by both Bill and Melinda Gates at a famous gathering in Seattle in October 2007. Much has changed in the intervening period.
Agence France-Presse
11/02/2014
Bill Gates to give $500 million for malaria, other diseases
U.S. philanthropist Bill Gates announced at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in New Orleanshe that he will donate over $500 million to fight malaria and other infectious diseases in the developing world, saying the Ebola outbreak is a call to action.
The Hindu
10/30/2014
Dengue’s down, but not out in Chennai
According to the Chennai Corporation, the number of dengue cases in the city has dropped from 310 in 2010, to 133 in 2013 and 56 this year as of September.
NPR's Shots
10/30/2014
Ebola Researchers Banned From Medical Meeting In New Orleans
Louisiana health officials say that anyone who's been in an Ebola-affected country over the last three weeks will be quarantined in their hotel rooms. The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene is telling researchers who've recently traveled to Ebola-affected parts of West Africa that they can't come to the society's annual meeting. That wasn't the medical group's idea.