Indonesia's quake-hit Lombok battles with malaria, 137 infected

MATARAM, Indonesia - A malaria outbreak has infected at least 137 people in Indonesia's West Lombok after the island was rocked by a series of earthquakes in recent months, an official said Sunday. 

The quakes and aftershocks since July have killed about 500 people and forced hundreds of thousands into evacuation shelters or tents. 

As a result the number of malaria cases is twice as high as in the same period last year, prompting the West Lombok government to declare a health emergency.

Among the 137 infected are babies and pregnant women. 

The government has taken steps to prevent the disease from spreading such as taking blood samples, distributing mosquito nets and fogging.

Amaq Aniyah, 65, was diagnosed with malaria after feeling unwell for a week. 

His house was destroyed by a 6.9 magnitude quake in early August and since then he has been living in a tent. Paramedics have given him a mosquito net. 

"Ideally we should give mosquito nets to everyone but because we only have a few, we have to be selective," said paramedic Farlin, who like many Indonesians goes by one name. 

The head of West Lombok regency, Fauzan Halid, told AFP they only have 3,000 mosquito nets but need about 10,000. 

Declaration of a health emergency will allow West Lombok to seek 3.4 billion rupiah ($230,000) in aid from the provincial and central government to tackle the crisis. 

Indonesia's rainy season is expected to start next month, raising fears malaria-carrying mosquitos could breed in stagnant water. 

str-rws/sm

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Honduras, Nicaragua report first cases of Zika in pregnant women

MANAGUA/TEGUCIGALPA - Nicaragua and Honduras have both detected their first cases of the Zika virus in pregnant women, the Central American countries' governments said on Thursday.

In Nicaragua, government spokeswoman Rosario Murillo, who is also first lady, said three women who were three to four months pregnant had been infected by the mosquito-borne virus and that the country was forging ahead with a fumigation program.

Nicaragua has detected a total of 29 cases of Zika to date.

In Honduras, Health Minister Yolani Batres said on Thursday authorities had detected six cases of Zika in pregnant women, again the first such cases. Honduras has registered more than 3,200 cases of Zika overall.

The World Health Organization has declared a global health emergency over the Zika virus rampaging through the Americas, saying it strongly suspected Zika infection in pregnancy causes microcephaly, a condition marked by abnormally small head size in newborns that can cause permanent brain damage.

El Salvador is grappling with more than 7,000 cases, and last month urged women to avoid getting pregnant until 2018.

(Reporting by Ivan Castro in Managua and Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa; Writing by Simon Gardner)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Race for Zika vaccine gathers momentum as virus spreads

Vaccine is seen as months, if not years, away
U.S. CDC activates Zika emergency response center
Geneva-based WHO plans emergency meeting Monday

Companies and scientists are racing to create a Zika vaccine as concern grows over the mosquito-borne virus that has been linked to severe birth defects and is spreading quickly through the Americas.

Zika is now present in 23 countries and territories in the Americas. Brazil, the hardest-hit country, has reported around 3,700 cases of the devastating birth defect called microcephaly that are strongly suspected to be related to Zika.

The Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), stung by criticism that it reacted too slowly to West Africa's Ebola epidemic, convenes an emergency meeting on Monday to help determine its response to the spread of the virus.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has activated an emergency operations center staffed around the clock to address Zika, agency officials told Reuters.

On Thursday, the WHO said as many as 4 million people in the Americas may become infected by Zika, adding urgency to the research efforts. Vaccine developers made clear a vaccine for widespread public use is at least months, if not years, away.

The closest prospect may be from a consortium including drugmaker Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc that could have a vaccine ready for emergency use before year-end, according to one of its lead developers. Inovio's share price gained more than 15 percent in Friday trading.

Canadian scientist Gary Kobinger told Reuters on Thursday the first stage of testing on humans could begin as early as August. If successful, the vaccine might be used during a public health emergency by October or November, said Kobinger, who helped develop a trial vaccine for the Ebola virus.

Privately owned vaccine developer Hawaii Biotech Inc said it began a formal program to test a Zika vaccine last fall as the virus started to gain traction in Brazil, although it has no timetable yet for clinical trials.

"Right now, we are in the pre-clinical stage, as I suspect everyone is," Chief Executive Officer Dr. Elliot Parks told Reuters.

Another private vaccine developer, Boston-based Replikins Ltd, said it was preparing to start animal studies on a Zika vaccine in the next 10 days. Data from the trials on mice and rabbits would likely be out in the next couple of months, Replikins Chairman Samuel Bogoch told Reuters.

"No one has the $500 million on hand to take it (a vaccine) all the way to human trials. Somewhere along the course we hope to have big pockets join us," Bogoch said.

'FIGHT THE MOSQUITO'

Zika had been viewed as a relatively mild illness until Brazilian health officials identified it as a matter of concern for pregnant women. While a direct causal relationship has not been established, scientists strongly suspect a link between Zika and thousands of children born in Brazil with abnormally small heads, brain defects and impaired vision.

There is no treatment for Zika infection.

Efforts to combat Zika are focused on protecting people from being bitten and on eradicating mosquitoes, a tough task in many parts of Latin America, where people live in poverty and there are plentiful breeding grounds for the insect.

"We do not have a vaccine for Zika yet. The only thing we can do is fight the mosquito," Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Friday, reiterating her call for a national eradication effort.

Rousseff said tests for the development of a vaccine would begin next week at the Butantan Institute, one of Brazil's leading biomedical research centers in Sao Paulo.

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke on Friday with Rousseff about the spread of the virus, the White House said.

"The leaders agreed on the importance of collaborative efforts to deepen our knowledge, advance research and accelerate work to develop better vaccines and other technologies to control the virus," the White House said in a statement.

Zika has hit Brazil just as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro on Aug. 5-21, an event that draws hundreds of thousands of athletes, team officials and spectators. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) assured teams on Friday the Olympics would be safe from Zika, but urged visitors to carefully protect themselves.

U.S. lawmakers have begun to press the Obama administration for details of its response to Zika. At least 31 people in the country have been infected, all of them after travel to affected countries.

The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is planning a hearing on Zika "very soon," said Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who called the threat posed by the virus to the United States a "big concern."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said he did not expect the United States to be hit hard like other some countries in South America and the Caribbean.

"We prepare for the possibility of a major outbreak but we believe it is unlikely to happen," Fauci said.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Natalie Grover in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Toni Clarke in Washington, Karolos Grohmann in Berlin, Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Jeffrey Dastin in New York; Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Will Dunham and Lisa Shumaker)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Dengue fever spreads around the world

PARIS - Dengue fever, the world's fastest growing mosquito-borne disease, has spread its wings from being a tropical disease, endemic in just nine countries, to a worldwide threat.

Globalization, urbanization, climate change and jet travel have enabled it to move into more temperate zones.

Following are some basic facts:

- What is dengue fever ? -Dengue fever is a flu-like infection, caused by the flavivirus in the same family as yellow fever.

Dengue fever has four separate strains -- DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4. Once cured, the patient is protected for life but only against the strain he was stricken by.

- How is the virus transmitted ? -Dengue is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the Aedes aegypti, which originate in Africa but which are now present in all tropical and subtropical areas.

- The symptoms - Dengue can trigger a crippling fever along with headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle and joint pain, and skin rashes similar to measles.

- The most severe form -The most severe form of the disease, dengue haemorrhagic fever, accounts for one percent of cases, killing 22,000 people a year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. It results in bleeding and blood plasma leakage. It can be fatal, in particular among children.

- How many cases ? -The number of cases in the world has risen 30-fold over the last 50 years, according to the WHO, making it the world's fastest growing mosquito-borne disease and leaving more than half of the world's population potentially at risk.

The WHO says that half a million people are hospitalised by the illness every year, many of them children of which around 2.5 percent die.

- Treatment and vaccination -There is currently no specific treatment for dengue fever.

The world's first-ever dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, manufactured by French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, secured its first regulatory approval in Mexico on December 9.

The Philippines became the first Asian country on Tuesday to approve the sale of the vaccine.

Other pharmaceutical companies are developing dengue vaccines, including US firm Merck, Japan's Takeda and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Dengue cases more common than thought

There may be nearly four times as many people infected with the tropical disease dengue globally than was previously believed, according to a new study.

The World Health Organization has estimated there are about 50 million to 100 million cases of dengue every year. But new research puts the number at around 390 million - though about two-thirds of those people have only mild illness and don't need medical attention. The study was published online in the journal Nature.

The data won't change how patients are handled but could prompt a speedier search for a vaccine for the mosquito-borne disease.

The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the US Department of Homeland Security and others.

WHO said it wasn't surprised by the higher estimates. 'We fully agree the spectrum of dengue is very wide and there was every chance we were missing cases,' said Raman Velayudhan, the agency's global dengue co-ordinator. WHO was not involved in the new research.

'The new numbers are not out of the realm of what was expected,' said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, one of the study authors. He said the figures came from analysing more evidence than was used in the past and included other factors that influence dengue.

Dengue causes symptoms including fever and severe joint pains. The disease mostly affects people in Asia, Africa and Latin America though it has also recently popped up in parts of Western Europe and the US.

There are four kinds of dengue and catching it once doesn't ensure immunity; subsequent infections raise the risk of severe dengue and may include haemorrhaging. The death rate is usually below one per cent if patients get treated quickly, but can rise to 10 per cent if not.

source: skynews.com.au