Antibiotics can be lifesaving. One of the most significant discoveries in the history of medicine, they successfully fought waves of cholera, smallpox, plague, typhoid fever, malaria, leprosy, and syphilis. They are medications that act against bacterial infections, like Legionnaires’ disease (a type of lung infection), Lyme disease, meningitis, strep throat, tuberculosis, whooping cough, bloodstream infections, […]
“Antimicrobials – including antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and antiparasitics – are medicines used to prevent and treat infectious diseases in humans, animals, and plants. “Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites no longer respond to antimicrobial medicines. “As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial medicines become ineffective and infections become […]
Made up of sections of DNA, genes control the life processes of organisms, according to Nobelprize.org In 2012, American biochemist Jennifer Doudna along with French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier developed “a methodology for high precision changes to genes. They used the immune defenses of bacteria, which disable viruses by cutting their DNA up with a type […]
Studies show that animals have evolved mechanisms for protecting themselves from infection and illness. Did you know, for example, that chimpanzees eat plants not just for their nutritional value, but to ward off disease? This is important for humans because we share about 99% of our DNA with these animals, making them our closest living relatives. So instead […]
One of the most devastating diseases known to man is smallpox. More people died from this contagious and sometimes fatal infectious disease than from any other disease in history. But in 1796, Edward Jenner, a country doctor in rural England, developed the smallpox vaccine. Jenner’s vaccine not only makes him the first person to successfully develop […]
Advances to eradicate polio, the viral disease that can affect a person’s nerves, leading to partial or complete paralysis, constitute good news. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over the past 30 years, 20 million volunteers have vaccinated more than 2.5 billion children globally against the disease, saving 16 million people from paralysis. In April […]
Few would have though it possible when former US president Jimmy Carter announced in March that the deadly cancer that had been found in his liver and brain last year had disappeared. A few months earlier, in August 2015, 90-year-old Carter had declared that he had melanoma, a form of skin cancer, and that it had already spread. Soon […]
“11 August 2015 marks 1 year since the last wild polio case was detected on the entire African continent. A polio-free Africa would leave only 2 countries where polio transmission has never been interrupted: Pakistan and Afghanistan.” That’s the great news from the World Health Organization in its update: Africa advances toward a polio-free continent. On […]
The good news? Dr. Deepak Chopra, the alternative medicine expert, says, “In the last decade or so mounting research has shown how lifestyle changes, including exercise, stress management, and diet can prevent almost ninety percent (90%) of chronic illnesses in our society. … We now know that Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular illness in general, and many types […]
The sub-title reads, “The eradication of polio suggests ways to tackle even deadlier diseases.” That good news appeared recently in The Economist” (18 January). The anti-polio campaign in India started in 1995, with massive efforts and money poured into millions of doses of vaccine and the services of millions of vaccinators who administered the oral drops. […]
