Explore Business Standard
World Health Organization
A rodent-borne illness is suspected of causing an outbreak aboard a cruise ship that has killed three people and sickened others. Studies indicate hantaviruses have been around for centuries, with outbreaks documented in Asia and Europe. In the Eastern Hemisphere, it has been linked with hemorrhagic fever and kidney failure. It wasn't until the early 1990s that a previously unknown group of hantaviruses emerged in the southwestern United States as the cause of an acute respiratory disease now known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. The disease gained attention last year after the late actor Gene Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa, died from a hantavirus infection in New Mexico. The World Health Organisation said in a statement Sunday that detailed investigations of the cruise ship outbreak are ongoing, including further laboratory testing and epidemiological investigations. Sequencing of the virus is also ongoing. The virus is spread by rodents and, more rarely, ...
A suspected outbreak of the rare hantavirus infection on a cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean killed three people, including an elderly married couple, and sickened at least three others, the World Health Organisation and South Africa's Department of Health said Sunday. In a statement to The Associated Press, WHO said an investigation was underway but that at least one case of hantavirus had been confirmed. One of the patients was in intensive care in a South African hospital, the UN's health agency said, and it was working with authorities to evacuate two others with symptoms from the ship. The Dutch company that operates the cruise said the ship was now sitting off the coast of Cape Verde, an island nation off Africa's west coast, and local authorities were assisting but had not allowed anyone to disembark. It said the two sick people onboard requiring urgent medical care were crew members. Hantavirus infections are spread mainly by rodents Hantaviruses, which are found throughout
More than 80 per cent of genomic studies across the world looking into diseases are concentrated in high-income countries, and under five per cent in low and middle-income countries, according to a new global analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 6,500 genomic clinical studies were registered globally between 1990 and 2024 via the WHO's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform, with a steep rise after 2010 driven by advances in sequencing technologies, lower costs and wider applications, it said. China led the list of top ten countries ranked by total number of genomic clinical studies registered over the past three decades, followed by the United States and Italy. India featured among the top 20 countries. "Fewer than five per cent of all studies were conducted in lower middle-income and low-income countries combined, while high-income countries accounted for over 80 per cent of all genomic studies," authors of the 'Human genomics technologies in clinica