Year: 2015

By Ben Hirschler DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – United Nations agencies need a final $1 billion to fight West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic as experts move to a new phase involving a massive detective operation to trace remaining cases, the U.N. Ebola chief said on Wednesday. David Nabarro estimated that an overall total of $4 billion in new money, equivalent to all the aid committed so far, was needed by relief agencies and the worst affected countries themselves to end the epidemic and "help these countries to get back to the economic trajectory they had". Nabarro, who heads the U.N. response, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the World Food Programme now needed the same amount again. Jeremy Farrar, director of Britain's Wellcome Trust international medical charity, said the epidemic would have "a long and bumpy tail".

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By Emma Farge and Umaru Fofana FREETOWN (Reuters) – Here at the front line of the Ebola epidemic, the tide seems to be turning against the disease. Police halt vehicles at checkpoints in the tumble-down streets to check temperatures, while posters proclaim in the local Krio language: "Togeda we go stop ebola." Aid workers also report success in changing behavior in rural areas, notably discouraging people from burial rituals involving direct contact with the dead – a major source of transmission. As a result, transmission of the hemorrhagic fever has slowed sharply in the West African country, which has recorded more than 10,000 cases since May. There were just 184 new cases in the week to Jan. 11 – the lowest in five months. More than half of beds in treatment centers across Sierra Leone are now empty – a stark contrast from a peak in November when centers in Freetown overflowed, patients waited days for ambulances and bodies were unburied, or interred secretly in backyards.

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When a panel of health and nutrition experts ranked 35 diets for Best Diets 2015, they considered not only weight loss, but also whether diets were …
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Kathy Nichols was diagnosed with terminal cancer on Wednesday. She attended the Patriot’s playoff game on Sunday.
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GLENDIVE, Mont. (AP) — Authorities scrambled to decontaminate a water system serving 6,000 eastern Montana residents after a cancer-causing component of oil was found downstream of a Yellowstone River pipeline spill.

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By Kate Kelland LONDON (Reuters) – The chemical bisphenol A, used to stiffen some plastic food containers, poses no health risk to consumers of any age, including unborn children, at current levels of exposure, Europe’s food safety watchdog said on Wednesday. Some studies have suggested possible links to everything from cancer to heart disease to infertility to kidney and liver problems, prompting European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to re-evaluate the potential risks of BPA. BPA belongs to a broad class of compounds called endocrine disruptors. It is found in plastics used to make food containers, bottles and coatings in tin cans, and is also commonly used in thermal paper in cash register receipts.
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