Archive for category: Health

Information and stories on health topics.

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Rotary International Continues Fight Against Poverty

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For the past 110 years, Rotary International has brought together business leaders, philanthropists and other individuals to promote interdisciplinary discussion to find solutions to the world’s biggest problems.

Started in the United States, the group now operates on a global scale. Through monetary donation or helping on the ground, Rotary’s 1.2 million members have positively impacted the world’s poor in a variety of ways.

Promoting Peace, Fighting Disease, Providing Clean Water, Saving Mothers and Children, Support Education and Growing Local Economies are Rotary’s biggest campaigns—made up of thousands of initiatives that work in different, but important, ways. Rotary International recognizes poverty is an intricate problem, and combatting it requires employing a litany of methods that enable individuals and countries alike to attain economic security.

Their greatest achievement is highlighted by the role they’ve played in the worldwide fight against polio. Launched in 1979, Rotary International has contributed $1.3 billion and countless volunteer hours to the campaign to eradicate polio. Since then, the number of polio-ridden countries has plummeted from 179 to three.

In January of this year, Rotary contributed an additional $35 million for immunization efforts that many believe will fully eliminate the disease.

Rotary can be just as effective on the ground. Their Clean Water campaign has provided millions with access to toilets, sanitation facilities and other water infrastructure.

Clean water also has many residual health and economic benefits. Healthy children mean less premature deaths, which stabilizes population growth. It also prevents the spread of infectious diseases, such as dysentery, diarrhea and ulcers. Access to local and clean water allows children to attend school instead of walking miles to retrieve it.

Since Rotary has expanded its Clean Water campaign in Ghana, the country has experienced a stark drop in waterborne diseases. Not surprisingly, 85 percent of Ghana’s citizens have access to a reliable water supply due to the newly drilled wells.

Rotary’s part in ending polio and bringing water security to Ghana are just the surface of what the group’s achievements. Its unique structure creates solutions at the local level, but change on a global scale. Going forward, they will have a substantial role in reducing and eventually eliminating global poverty.

Based on the past century, that role will be in safe hands.

Here is the link to Rotary’s website. Check it out to learn more about their mission and campaigns.

– Kevin Meyers

Sources: End Polio Now, Forbes, Rotary International 1, Rotary International 2, Rotary International 3

Photo: Rotary International

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Do Bilinguals Have Increased Executive Control Skills?

Learning to be Smarter: How Bilinguals Have a Cognition (and Communication) Advantage
Charlemagne once said, “To have another language is to possess a second soul.” Learning a language is something most of us strive to do. Whether it’s travel, business, new friends or even literature, learning a new language is something that appeals to people for a wide variety of reasons. At its core, language learning is kind of like finding a key that unlocks new countries, cultures, and people.

However, recent studies have shown that there’s an advantage to being bilingual beyond the ability to immerse oneself in new places. Researchers have found that those who learn a second (or third, or fourth) language have more gray matter in the “executive control areas” of their brains in the frontal and parietal regions. This extra tissue supports memory management, reasoning, planning and problem-solving. The cognitive control required to determine which language is spoken in what context requires increased tissue growth that leads to better control over other brain functions as well.

The study, led by Dr. Olumide Olulade, found that this advantage was only present in individuals who spoke both languages out loud. English-American Sign Language bilinguals did not have increased brain matter while English-Spanish bilinguals did. Communication, the greatest part of language learning, is key to increased development.

Beyond enforced executive control skills, people who speak more than one language have been shown to have improved listening skills, multi-tasking abilities, attention spans and vocabulary in their mother tongue. Beyond this, they learn to perceive the world in a whole different way and come into contact on a deeper level with a greater number of people.

And the fastest, easiest way to learn a new language? Visit a new country. Live amongst new people, visit local haunts, read books in the new language. Fully immerse yourself not only in a new language, but a new way of life. That way, when you become proficient enough to speak to your new friends, you’ll be a true inhabitant of this new place. Becoming a global citizen not only means being able to interact with people from around the world, but also sharing their mindsets, cultural references and perspectives. Global citizens are knowledgeable and, more importantly, compassionate about people in all corners of the world.

– Jenny Wheeler

Sources: PsyBlog 1, PsyBlog 2
Photo: ZDNet

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Potential to Cure Parkinson’s Disease Found in Existing Drug

Potential to Cure Parkinson’s Disease Found in Existing Drug

In a recent report, researchers found that the current drugs Chloroquine and Amodiaquine, two common anti-malaria drugs, could also provide treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s disease itself is a disease caused by a loss of cells in a part of the brain called the subtantia nigra. This loss of cells causes the reduction of the neurotransmitter called dopamine, or the chemical in the brain that regulates movement and mood.

One of the study’s authors, Dr. Yoon Ho Sup, stated, “Our discovery brings hope for the millions of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, as the drugs that we have found to have worked in the laboratory tests have already been used to treat malaria in patients for decades.”

Dr. Sup continued, “Our research also shows that existing drugs can be repurposed to treat other diseases and once several potential drugs are found, we can redesign them to be more effective in combating their targeted diseases while reducing the side effects.”

This monumental breakthrough could lead to an inexpensive alternative treatment to many individuals who suffer from Parkinson’s on a daily basis. Creating the new treatment would be beneficial not only from a financial standpoint but also because many of the current treatments involve a varied concoction of many drugs and surgery.

Another of the study’s authors, Professor Kwang-Soo Kim stated, “…[existing] pharmacological and surgical treatments address the patient’s symptoms, such as to improve mobility functions in the early stages of the disease, but the treatments cannot slow down or stop the disease process.”

With the current research and backing of scientific evidence, these drugs are seen to be a potential drug target to treat Parkinson’s itself.

The researchers hope that the drugs can be further modified to continue to better treat Parkinson’s and hopefully slow and stop the process.

– Alysha Biemolt

Sources: Spring, WHO, PNAS
Photo: Medical Press

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Alwaleed Philanthropies to Support Childhood Immunization

On July 13, 2015, Alwaleed Philanthropies announced their commitment to protecting the lives of children through immunization programs. They have signed an agreement with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, worth $1 million.

According to its website, “Alwaleed Philanthropies supports and initiates projects around the world, regardless of gender, race, or religion. [They] collaborate with a range of philanthropic, governmental and educational organizations to combat poverty, empower women and the youth, develop communities, provide disaster relief and create cultural understanding through education.”

Alwaleed Philanthropies has supported thousands of projects in over 90 countries and served millions of people across the globe for over 35 years.

The agreement with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance was negotiated in January at the Gavi Pledging Conference. This is the first time Alwaleed Philanthropies has provided support to Gavi.

The contribution from Alwaleed Philanthropies is multiple projects to support the vaccine needs in Timor Leste, Kiribati, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and Guyana for the 2016 to 2020 period.

Gavi’s Resource Mobilization and Private Sector Partnerships Managing Director Marie-Ange Sarakao-Yao say, “We are very pleased that His Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has decided to support Gavi through Alwaleed Philanthropies. Immunization is one of the most effective ways of reducing preventable deaths in the poorest countries and thanks to this contribution, Gavi will be able to support developing countries with vaccines that protect children against preventable diseases.”

Every year, nearly 22 million children do not receive a full course of even the most basic vaccines. These children are mainly in poor countries. More than one in five of all children who die before the age of five lose their lives to vaccine-preventable diseases.

Since 2000, Gavi has invested more than $3.8 billion to introduce vaccines to the members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). For the 2016 to 2020 period, Gavi predicts that 60% of its funding will support immunization programs in OIC who are eligible for Gavi support.

Since its introduction in 2000, Gavi has helped developing countries immunize over a billion children, saving seven million lives. World leaders joined German Chancellor Angela Merkel in January to raise $7.5 billion to ensure Gavi supported programs anticipated for the 2016 to 2020 time period

With this contribution, Gavi will be able to support an additional 300 million children with vaccines. Because of the funding it is receiving, Gavi is taking the steps to ensure all children will survive vaccine-preventable diseases. Because not all families can afford vaccines, Gavi is the bridge between healthy children and the future of vaccinated children.

– Kerri Szulak

Sources: Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulazaz Al Saud, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Photo: Alwaleed Philanthropies

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How Theranos Has Simplified Blood Testing

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Getting a blood test is never pleasant. But what if I told you there is a new way of getting blood tests that does not involve big needles, just a prick on your finger? Well, that is exactly what Theranos has done.

Theranos is a private health-technology and medical-laboratory services company in Palo Alto California, founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes. Earlier this year, Elizabeth Holmes was inducted into the newest class of Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship. She is the youngest female self-made billionaire.

Holmes and her team have reduced blood tests from many vials of blood to just a few drops. Theranos focused on reducing the blood sample size, making it inexpensive, and transparent about its prices.

Why is so much blood drawn? Holmes explains, “The entire system was designed around that, when clinical lab infrastructure began to develop similar to mainframe computing, where you have large highly centralized systems that require that much blood.”

The company’s goal is to have patients test their blood more often so doctors will be able to see any indicators for a condition, disease or something much earlier than when the physical symptoms appear. According to Holmes, “40-60 percent of Americans do not go get their lab test when their doctor has told them to.”

Holmes also adds that “doctors do not usually order lab tests unless patients report systems for a given condition because, in order for them to have the insurance pay for it, they have to justify it on the lab form with a code that describes a patient’s symptoms. By the time a test is ordered, you are probably at risk.” Holmes seeks to make the process better, to engage people, so that data can be used as a preventative measure as opposed to a reactive measure.

Holmes argues that these small samples are more accurate than the larger ones. Theranos has worked in eliminating the error in variability that is associated with the human processing of samples, which according to Holmes is the cause of 93 percent of the errors in today’s lab industry. Theranos has used advances in technology to automate many of the processes and decentralize and distribute the infrastructure to reduce the errors of human processing.

Theranos has also made the tests cheaper through advancements in technology, by redeveloping the chemistry, hardware and software that is used in the traditional infrastructure. The prices compared to medical reimbursement rates start at 50 percent off Medicare reimbursement rates and go to 90 percent off Medicare reimbursement rates.

Some are skeptical about Theranos’ technology and wonder how it is able to offer tests for less with a faster turnaround time than lab giants such as Laboratory Corp. of America and Quest Diagnostics.

Theranos’ partners include Walgreens, Capital Blue Cross Pennsylvania, the Carlos Slim Foundation and AmeriHealth Caritas.

Capital Blue Cross Pennsylvania has been very thorough in vetting the Theranos technology. The Senior Vice-President of the company, Aji Abraham, had his blood tested with Theranos and then compared the results to a recent traditional blood test, and no significant differences were discovered.

The Carlos Slim Foundation is using Theranos technology in clinics across Mexico, in an attempt to provide blood tests for cholesterol, kidney proteins and other lab results to 1 million people to fight health problems caused by obesity.

To date, Theranos has raised $92 million in VC funding from investors such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Larry Ellison. Its locations include Theranos wellness centers in Walgreens and other locations in Arizona and California with new locations coming soon.

– Paula Acevedo

Sources: Business Insider, CNN Videos, Forbes.com
Photo: USA Today

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Study Finds Inhalation of New Ebola Vaccine Kills Virus in Monkeys

New Ebola Vaccine Kills Virus in MonkeysA recent study published by the Journal of Clinical Investigation has reported that a new prototype aerosol Ebola vaccine was found to successfully neutralize the deadly virus within monkeys during clinical test trials.

The study, led by Dr. Michelle Myer and conducted collaboratively by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, determined that the experimental vaccine activated immune cells within the respiratory system that subsequently provided full protection against the virus. The study also notes that this is the first time researchers have attempted to use an aerosol vaccine within monkeys to fight a hemorrhagic viral fever such as Ebola.

Co-author of the study Dr. Alexander Bukreyev, a medical virologist from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, recently stated, “This is one of the few vaccines that works. The initial several decades of attempts to develop a vaccine against the Ebola virus were unsuccessful.”

Vaccination researchers within the medical community have become familiar with the notion of failure, as an experimental drug designed to treat Ebola patients proved ineffective in fighting the virus. The experimental drug, known as TKM-Ebola-Guinea, was designed by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and reportedly was, “Not likely to demonstrate an overall therapeutic benefit,” for patients infected with Ebola.

The drug was designed to utilize RNA interference, a process in which the functions of certain genes within the Ebola virus are disrupted and subsequently renders the virus incapable of attacking human cells. Prior to the failure of the trials within human subjects, many researchers considered the experiment the single most promising lead in the race to stop Ebola, as the drug had proved effective in stopping the virus in monkeys during clinical test trials

Since the unprecedented outbreak of the disease in West Africa last year, the virus is estimated to have killed over 11,000 people and infected an additional 27,000 people in the nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.

As the aerosol vaccine does not require the assistance of trained medical professionals, the distribution of the vaccine within developing regions that lack adequate health infrastructures and large personnel staffing will prove to be notably less challenging. Dr. Igor Lukashevich, a medical virologist from the University of Louisville, recently argued that “This aerosolized form of the vaccine is really what the field needs right now. The discussion […] right now is if this Ebola outbreak will be some kind of game-changer for vaccine development, or will it only be one more scare that will be forgotten.”

Dr. Meyer explained in a recent interview that human cells “in the lungs are acting as the first barrier for protection. That’s ideal to combat the virus at the site of the infection.”

Four of the monkeys used for the study were given a single dose of the vaccine, while an additional four were given two doses of the vaccine. Two other monkeys were given a liquid form of the vaccine, while two more monkeys were not vaccinated in order to serve as controlled variables for the study. Four weeks after the administration of the vaccines, all 12 of the monkeys were administered 1,000 times the fatal dose of the Ebola virus.

Two weeks after the injection of the Ebola virus into the test monkeys, all of the vaccinated monkeys had remained healthy while the two unvaccinated monkeys became infected with the disease and were euthanized.

Dr. Daniel Bausch, a medical virologist of Tulane University, noted that the study was “a positive step forward,” but cautioned that “it’s not a breakthrough or ‘Eureka!’”

The success of the aerosol vaccine during the clinical trials on the monkeys indicates the next step will now be for testing to begin on humans in the coming months.

– James Thornton

Sources: New York Times 1, New York Times 2, MB
Photo: Red Orbit

Barbara Bush and Global Health Corps

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Former President George W. Bush is remembered for his efforts to combat AIDS in Africa during his time in the Oval Office, but, as it turns out, he isn’t the only Bush with a passion for global health.

It was on a trip with her father to Uganda in 2003 that Barbara Bush, the elder of the former president’s twin daughters, was shocked by the toll AIDS was taking on population and the health inequality in the country.

One of the 43rd president’s lasting legacies is his creation of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which as of September of last year had supported life-saving treatment for seven point seven million people with the virus, in addition to helping provide over 56.7 million people with testing and counseling.

After graduating from Yale with a humanities degree in 2004, Barbara worked at the Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Capetown, South Africa, where she frequently worked with kids with AIDS, before returning to the United States to try to mobilize the global health movement and get more people involved.

The end result was she and five friends creating Global Health Corps, which she became chief executive of at the age of 26. The organization gives young professionals the chance to work at the front of the fight for global health equity and places fellows in Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the United States, and Zambia.

According to Global Health Corps website, the goal of the organization is “to mobilize a global community of emerging leaders to build the movement for health equity.” The website also says that health is a human right.

Fellows are placed with organizations, such as Partners in Health, in either of the two continents, where two fellows work together for a year. One fellow is from the host country, whereas the second is from abroad.

For example, young professionals with expertise in logistics worked to improve drug access in Tanzania by working on the supply chain. In Rwanda, architects designed medical clinics with less airflow, making it less likely that those with tuberculosis would infect others.

Today, Global Health Corps is booming, receiving praise from health professionals around the world. In addition, the organization gets around 6,000 applications a year for fewer than 150 fellows positions.

– Matt Wotus

Sources: Global Health Corps, The New York Times, PEPFAR
Photo: Huffington Post

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Deworming Rwanda

Deworming campaign Improving School Attendance in Rwanda
Unquestionably, one of the most effective weapons fighting global poverty today is education, and in Rwanda, a small country in central eastern Africa, it’s essential. Absence is commonplace however, with children suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhea and nausea. Attendance in school is difficult for children with soil-transmitted helminth infections.

In collaboration with Ministries of Health, a campaign to combat the disease was launched by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has shown success in getting students back in school.

According to WHO, soil-transmitted helminth infections are among the most common infections worldwide and affect the poorest and most deprived communities. They are transmitted by eggs present in human feces, which contaminate soil in areas where sanitation is poor. The disease is easily contracted by walking barefoot on contaminated soil or eating contaminated food.

The main species that infect people are the roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), the whipworm (Trichuris trichiura) and the hookworms (Necator americanus and Ancylostoma duodenale).

Soil-transmitted helminth causes a spectrum of health problems, from the indiscernible to the severe, which can includ abdominal pain, diarrhea, blood and protein loss, rectal prolapse and physical and mental retardation. The severity of infection is directly related to the worm burden.

The disease, one of the most common parasitic ailments in the world, affects approximately 2 billion people, nearly two thirds of the world’s population, and it is estimated that 4 billion others are at risk.

In Rwanda, illnesses can be extraordinarily bad. According to WHO, ninety-five percent of school aged children living in the Musanze District were suffering in 2007, one of the highest rates in the country.

There, soil-transmitted helminth is contracted mainly from dirty water, fetched from nearby Lake Ruhondo and those who use the stagnant water from the former banks of the Mukungwa River. Open defecation is still practiced in the area and sanitation is almost non-existent.

In 2007, whole families were getting sick. Parents stayed home caring for sick children, which prevented them from being able to work, and children were too sick to go to school or earn a menial income raising livestock or growing vegetables.

Worldwide, the WHO has been working tirelessly to control the spread of soil-transmitted helminth by facilitating wider access to preventive medicine such as albendazole and mebendazole. According to Dr. Antonio Montresor, Medical Officer for WHO in the Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases, the deworming campaign reached more than 395 million children in 2014, making it one of the largest global public health interventions.

In the Musanze District of Rwanda, the WHO provides the necessary medications to local schools, which are then disseminated to the population. Since the program started, the rate of children with intestinal worms has been reduced by nearly 20 percent.

Education is essential in alleviating global poverty. Every day a child is absent from class, the likelihood they can break the endless cycle disappears a little more. The WHO is striving to keep students in school and families healthy, making a chance to prosper a reality.

– Jason Zimmerman

Sources: WHO 1, WHO 2
Photo: TheGuardian

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Bolivian Healthcare: Percentages over People

Bolivian-Healthcare

Although the Bolivian government’s new and improved universal healthcare plan has made a considerable dent in child and maternal mortality numbers, the plan still seems to be more suited for improving statistics than the lives of rural Bolivian women.

With one of highest rates of maternal and child mortality in the Latin America, second only to Haiti, Bolivia remains one of the worst places in the world to give birth, especially in rural areas. Mortality rates have historically totaled to 390 mortalities for every 100,000 live births in central cities (like the capital, La Paz), and reach as high as 887 per 100,00 live births in rural areas, according to UNICEF.

Beginning in 1994, Bolivian government officials centered in La Paz developed a series of free healthcare plans—or, more aptly, three free service packages—intended to keep mothers and children alive past the ordeal of childbirth. The most recent addition to these packages is the “Universal Maternal and Child Heath Insurance plan (SUMI).”

Upon its creation, SUMI was lauded as the symbol of iconic change of fate for Bolivian mothers. Targeted at pregnant women and children under the age of five, the program boasted that it would cover 500 common ailments. Additionally, SUMI was the first Bolivian public health program that did not come from a presidential decree, meaning that it would have longevity through congress even as presidential power shifted.

“The system was created to fight child mortality, to fight that economic barrier that prevented the mother from having proper attention from the start,” said Dr. Dante Ergueta, who works with SUMI at the Bolivian Health Ministry, in an interview with the U.K. Guardian. “It is an icon for Bolivia and I might even say for Latin America.”

Initially, SUMI managed to cut the alarming child mortality statistics. After its introduction, Bolivia saw reduction in infant mortality between 37.7% in urban areas. Even in rural areas, the program saw a 29.9% drop in infant mortality, which, although still less than the drop in metropolitan areas, represented a significant change.

However, the effects of SUMI have been blunted, if not entirely counteracted, since this initial drop.

The seeds for this decline can be found written into SUMI itself. According to a study done by Focal, SUMI’s plan to attack statistics was limited to quick fixes. Every service that SUMI provided was a double-edged sword, all of which left the deep roots of maternal health barriers in Bolivia untouched.

Where SUMI expanded the number of ailments covered by insurance, it also drastically tightened the program’s membership requirements, restricting it to women who had given birth within the past six months and children under the age of five. Previously, Bolivian health insurance had covered all women of childbearing age as well as the general population for endemic disease. SUMI cut the general public endemic disease coverage entirely, along with several family planning services for non-pregnant women.

Focal reports that “health indicators worsened after its [SUMI’s] implementation, particularly in rural areas. Inequity in health outcomes also grew because the services of high complexity that the SUMI plan made available in urban areas never reached the segment of the population [rural, indigenous communities] that needed them most.”

This “icon for Bolivia” is perhaps one of the most stark examples of one of the most common failures in public health: the rush to address startling statistics, instead of attacking underlying socioeconomic, or even cultural, gender-based problems.

According to UNICEF, Bolivian women exist in a culturally persistent subordinate role to men. Their rates of illiteracy are significantly higher, ranging as high as 37.91%, compared to 14.42% of men. This gap also drastically decreases the number of women who are capable of participating in the workforce, giving women less access to employment-based private healthcare options.

These socioeconomic and cultural forces show that the answer to improving Bolivian maternal health is more complicated than implementing a system of health-services handouts. It is not about the number of services the state can provide; it is about changing the situations of people receiving those services.

– Emma Betuel

Sources: Unicef, The Guardian, ITG, WHO, Focal
Photo: Projects Abroad

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Pilot Program Trains Health Workers for Post-Ebola

Pilot Program Trains Health Workers for Work Post Ebola

After tending to Ebola patients in West Africa for over a year, health workers have begun returning to their regular jobs. Because of the disease’s decline, a pilot training program to prepare these employees to return to work took place in May 2015 in Liberia.

The training program’s aim was to “refresh important skills but also address weaknesses exposed by the Ebola outbreak,” according to Foday Kanneh, a Ministry of Health training coordinator. Dr. April Baller, head of World Health Organization’s (WHO) clinical management and infection control—along with other prevention teams and Ministry of Health and WHO staff—created the training program. It was a rigorous course designed to “support the restoration and strengthening of the health system which virtually collapsed during the epidemic, while also giving health workers the confidence and capacity to respond in the event that Ebola re-emerges,” said Baller.

Although Ebola is in decline, no one knows when it could return. This disease first appeared in 1976 and did not resurface in human beings between 1977 and 1994. With such erratic exposure, health workers need to be trained for the post-Ebola environment.

Doris Sannoh, a trainee and social worker in Liberia, said that she normally worked in an outreach capacity to prevent HIV and gender-based violence. During the outbreak, she found herself working in the triage area of the hospital, counseling and assisting sick patients. “I never had any infection prevention training as a social worker, but I needed it. As health workers, we all need training like this.”

The training sessions were led by 40 trained facilitators and assisted by Ebola survivors. The survivors role played the parts of patients and critiqued the trainees on the quality of care they administered. In order to ensure that the training acquired during the sessions was used regularly and effectively, on-site mentoring and monitoring was crucial, according to Kanneh. Currently, the Ministry of Health and the WHO are evaluating the course and, if appropriate, will refine it and expand it throughout the country.

According to the WHO, “The West African Ebola outbreak has been the largest, most severe and most complex in human history.” When the outbreak began in March 2014, health workers from all over the world stepped up to work with the WHO to stop the epidemic. It peaked in September 2014 and is now in decline. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone reported a combined total of 27,705 confirmed, probable and suspected cases up to July 19, 2015. Deaths from confirmed as well as probable and suspected cases totaled 11,269.

The good news is that in the week before July 19, Guinea reported only 22 new confirmed cases, and Sierra Leone reported four. This good news gets even better: Liberia has not reported any new cases in the week before July 19. Currently in Liberia, 56 people who have had contact with Ebola patients are under follow-up care. Eighteen have completed the 21-day surveillance period. If no new cases arise, all contacts will complete follow-up by August 2.

– Janet Quinn

Sources: WHO 1, WHO 2, WHO 3
Photo: World Health Organization