It’s been a busy year for polio around the world.
Some countries have been able to finally put an end to the virus. Other countries, like the Philippines, have found unexpected returns of polio.
But, as we head into a new decade, there’s hope to end polio completely.
Flu season is in full swing and has been causing many to worry about the progression and outcome of the season.
As of December 7th, the CDC revealed there has been “3.7 million flu illnesses, 32,000 hospitalizations and 1,800” flu-related deaths so far in the United States. Typically flu season ramps up in early fall and peaks sometime between December and March. Unless there’s a late surge of the virus like we saw in 2019, the season will die down by May.
The CDC monitors flu indicators, such as influenza-like illnesses and flu related hospitalizations. The organization can track trends and determine when the season has started and peaked.
Due to the recent worldwide rise in measles, it can be hard to distinguish whether a person is infected with the measles or influenza. Both viruses have similar symptoms, and, with measles cases increasing during flu season, it makes identifying the viruses even harder.
Some questions that might arise regarding the two viruses are:
How severe is each virus? What are the symptoms and how can you tell the viruses apart? How are the viruses transmitted? How can you prevent catching one of the viruses? And what treatments are available?
For most people who like to spend their time outdoors, the risks of a tick bite are nothing new. With the rise of tickborne disease in cities, the pests might be a problem for even more people.
Maybe you like to spend weekends hiking with friends and family. Or, even just riding your bikes along scenic trails in the countryside. You know that there’s a chance that you’ll find a tick on your clothes here or there, but are not worried about it because they hardly ever get on you.
Then, you get home and see a tick on the back of your knee.
A new vaccine to fight against typhoid, typhoid conjugate vaccine (TVC), has been introduced in Pakistan. Pakistan is now the first country to use and install this vaccine as a routine immunization for children.
Typhoid is a disease caused by Salmonella typhi, which infects people through contaminated food and water.
The symptoms of typhoid may seem much like a flu infection. An infected person might feel fatigue, stomach pain, headache, diarrhea, constipation, cough and loss of appetite. The disease is most prevalent in areas lacking resources, such as Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
With a constant news stream of virus outbreaks and mutating diseases, the future of healthcare seems dreary and uneasy. Although, artificial intelligence may be a viable solution to help us fight diseases.
Most people may have an idea of artificial intelligence through sci-fi movies, but it is a real part of technology today.
Exposure to the chickenpox virus is nothing new. While there is a vaccine to prevent the common virus, many children catch the virus before they are vaccinated.
In most cases, the bout with chickenpox is manageable, but there is an important long-term effect that goes ignored: shingles. The same virus that causes chickenpox can also lead to shingles later in life. Luckily, like chickenpox, there’s an effective vaccine for shingles.
Shingrix, or the shingles vaccine, offers excellent protection against shingles for anyone over the age of 50. But, like many vaccines and medicines, there can be some side effects to the shingles vaccine.
When it comes to diseases like malaria, citizens and officials alike are still searching for answers.
The mosquito-borne disease remains one of the deadliest in the world. In 2017 alone, malaria caused over 219 million cases worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, those cases resulted in 435,000 deaths. Those numbers look to continue as we still lack treatment and globally-approved vaccines.
We’ve made some recent progress against the virus, including the recent plans to sterilize mosquitoes. In September of this year Kenya also became the third country to administer a licensed malaria vaccine.
Yet, we still have many reasons to fear the virus.
For many of the world’s most dangerous diseases, we struggle to find treatment. Whether it’s vaccines or antibiotics, researchers spend years looking for some way to fight the illness.
When it comes to typhoid fever, treatment and prevention methods aren’t the problem.
There have been a couple of vaccines and treatment plans for this disease for a while now. But, an increasing resistance to different types of antibiotics is making treatment more complicated. With almost 22 million reported cases of typhoid and 200,000 related deaths worldwide every year, it’s proving much harder to fight the disease.
If left alone, this issue can lead to drug resistant typhoid fever becoming even more common than it is now.
Researchers at Temple University recently discovered that an HIV drug may help to suppress the Zika virus, which could lead to treatment of the virus worldwide.
Up until now, there have been no known vaccines or cures for the Zika virus. Current outbreaks and case numbers may not reach the levels we saw in 2016, but any help against Zika could be a breakthrough.
