USA News – Ebola

Ebola found living in Eye of US Doctor

Written on May 8, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, Science News, USA News.

Before he contracted Ebola, Dr. Ian Crozier had two blue eyes. After he was told he was cured of the disease, his left eye turned green. The medic, who caught the bug while working in Sierra Leone, had blurred eyesight and pain two months after being declared Ebola-free. The announcement on Thursday said the virus reappeared in Crozier who was diagnosed with Ebola in September 2014 while working with the World Health Organization. The test results...

5.3M Hens to Be Killed to Slow Bird Flu Outbreak

Written on April 21, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, Personal Safety, USA News.

In an effort to stop an outbreak of bird flu that could devastate Iowa’s poultry population, state health officials announced they will destroy up to 5.3 million hens to keep the virus from spreading. The fast-moving virus was confirmed on Monday at a chicken laying facility in Osceola County, Iowa. The birds compromise nearly 10 percent of Iowa’s egg-laying poultry population, according to the Associated Press. However, officials are...

US Healthcare Worker With Ebola in Serious Condition at NIH

Written on March 14, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, USA News.

The NIH said the health-care worker was admitted at 4:44 a.m. Friday to its high-containment facility on its Bethesda, Md., campus, after being evacuated to the U.S. by chartered jet. Physicians have evaluated the patient with Ebola virus disease and have determined that the patient’s condition is serious. No additional details about the patient are being shared at this time. The patient has been admitted to the NIH Clinical Center’s Special Clinical...

App for Simulating the Potential Spread of the Measles Virus

Written on March 4, 2015. Posted in Featured, Health News, Personal Safety, USA News.

To help the public better understand how measles can spread, a team of infectious disease computer modelers at the University of Pittsburgh has launched a free, mobile-friendly tool that lets users simulate measles outbreaks in cities across the country. The tool is part of the Pitt team’s Framework for Reconstructing Epidemiological Dynamics, or FRED, that it previously developed to simulate flu epidemics. FRED is based on anonymized U.S. census...

Free of Ebola, but Nina Pham Files Lawsuit Against Texas Health

Written on March 2, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, USA News.

The 26-year-old nurse says she has nightmares, body aches and insomnia as a result of contracting the disease from a patient she cared for last fall at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. She says the hospital and its parent company, Texas Health Resources, failed her and her colleagues who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United States diagnosed with Ebola. “I wanted to believe that they would have my back and...

8 of 10 Americans Polled Support Mandatory Measles Vaccines

Written on February 24, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, USA News.

A new CNN/ORC poll shows nearly 8 of 10 Americans believe parents should be required to vaccinate their healthy children against preventable diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella and polio. If the children are not vaccinated, most agree the child should not be allowed to attend public school or day care. These results come as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting a total of 154 cases of measles in the country, from...

Are You Upset About Measles? Next Controversy HPV Vaccines

Written on February 13, 2015. Posted in Featured, Health News, Science News, USA News.

While measles and the human papillomavirus (HPV) are vastly different diseases, failing to get vaccinated against them can have equally serious consequences, suggests Bradley Stoner, PhD, a medical anthropologist who studies infectious disease transmission at Washington University in St. Louis. “HPV vaccine is highly safe and highly effective, yet vaccination rates in the US are embarrassingly low. Other countries have done a much better...

Medical Marijuana for Depression? Study Shows Likely Benefit

Written on February 10, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, Science News, USA News.

Scientists at the University at Buffalo’s Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) are studying chronic stress and depression, with a focus on endocannabinoids, which are brain chemicals similar to substances in marijuana. The findings raise the possibility that components of marijuana may be useful in reducing depression that results from chronic stress. “In the animal models we studied, we saw that chronic stress reduced the production of...

Measles Outbreak Was Inevitable but Can Be Halted, UAB Dr Says

Written on January 28, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, Science News, USA News.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – An ongoing, multistate measles outbreak linked to a California amusement park has already caused 68 confirmed cases between Jan. 1 and 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One University of Alabama at Birmingham pediatric infectious diseases specialist says this outbreak was inevitable, and it is likely to worsen. “We’ve been seeing increasing numbers of cases — last year the numbers nationally...

Why you should worry less about Ebola and more about Measles

Written on January 23, 2015. Posted in Breaking News, Featured, Health News, Personal Safety, USA News, World News.

Officials stressed the Ebola epidemic in Africa was going to be contained. Then it mushroomed to the worst Ebola outbreak in history and jumped an ocean, as a Liberian man named Thomas E. Duncan brought the disease to Texas. It’s clear the United States has already messed up several times in the fight against Ebola. There will probably be blunders in coming weeks, too. Of course, a mass Ebola outbreak in the United States never materialized. But...