Here is a look at some interesting infectious disease and health news, opinion and research reported across the globe:
2015-2016 El Niño Triggered Disease Outbreaks Across Globe

The 2015-2016 El Niño event brought weather conditions that triggered regional disease outbreaks throughout the world, according to a new NASA study that is the first to comprehensively assess the public health impacts of the major climate event on a global scale.
Zika: Silent long-term circulation in Thailand
The circulation of the dengue virus for the past sixty years in South-East Asia is relatively well known. For Zika, the situation is much less clear. In an attempt to shed light on Zika circulation, scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, in collaboration with US teams and the Thai National Institute of Health, decided to investigate the history of the Zika virus in Thailand.
Gonorrhoea: drug resistance compromises recommended treatment in Europe
Gonorrhoea is the second most commonly notified sexually transmitted infection across the EU/EEA countries with almost 500 000 reported cases between 2007 and 2016.
Pan-filovirus T-cell vaccine protects mice from Ebola and Marburg
Vaccines that induce protective T-cell responses could protect against members across the filovirus family, according to a study published February 28 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Tomáš Hanke of the University of Oxford, Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and colleagues.
Subscribe to Outbreak News TV on YouTube
A multi-country study of the economic burden of dengue fever based on patient-specific field surveys in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Cambodia
Dengue fever is a rapidly growing public health problem in many parts of the tropics and sub-tropics in the world. While there are existing studies on the economic burden of dengue fever in some of dengue-endemic countries, cost components are often not standardized, making cross-country comparisons challenging. Furthermore, no such studies have been available in Africa.
- Measles epidemic in the Philippines: Nearly 1,000 additional cases reported
- Meningitis kills two in Macon County, NC
- Hepatitis A cases up in the Boise area
- Anthrax kills two, eight hospitalized in Tanzania
- China: African swine fever reported on Shaanxi Province farm
- Los Angeles: Increase in whooping cough clusters reported
- Illinois: Mumps cases reported in McHenry County