The Year in Pathogens
Ebola, MERS, and enterovirus D68; polio eradication efforts; new regulations on potentially dangerous research.
The spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa dominated headlines during the second half of the year. To date, more than 18,000 people have been infected with Ebola, and nearly 7,000 have died, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). While grim, these statistics are lower than the dire predictions released by the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) earlier this year. And a recent epidemiological analysis suggested that the number of unreported cases is lower than previous estimates.
In September, the United Nations Security Council declared the Ebola epidemic a “threat to international peace and security,” spurring large-scale international aid efforts, which have helped to curb the spread of the disease, particularly in Liberia. “But the outbreak continues to surge in Sierra Leone, and there has been a troubling spread in Guinea’s capitol city,” CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a statement this week (December 22). “We’ve got a long way to go and this is no time to relax our grip on the response.”
