Taking it all in - obstetrics and gynecology in Senegal

This is my first time in Senegal and my first time providing clinical care outside of the United States.  I have made a fair number of rather long journeys to similar locals, but never in a clinical capacity.  In the past I had generally embarked on the journey expecting that I had an...

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Editor's Note #16: VDU takes a break...

Hard to believe it's been 1 year since I blogged my first blog. 500 posts ago.To celebrate, I'm taking some time off!Feel free to read through earlier material. There  are plenty of posts that remain relevant, unanswered questions to ponder and knowledge to abso...

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Ebola outbreak in Guinea: 13-lab confirmed cases, 73 more suspect, includes 59 deaths

Schematic of an Ebola virus virion.Its a work in progress but feel free to use.Just cite Ian M. Mackay, PhD and http://newsmedicalnet.blogspot.com.au/Click to enlarge.There's an outbreak of Ebola virus (species Zaire ebolavirus) haemorrhagic fever going on in Guinea just now (see the map for where that...

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Avian influenza A(H7N9) virus cases hit 400

While everyone was looking at Guinea and the Ebola Zaire outbreak, that stealthy H7N9 has gone and infected a total of 400 people that we know of. It is of course, just another milestone and not an indication of anything changed about the virus. In fact the trend for few cases per...

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Google Flu Trends: What did you expect?

I posted this on Crawford Kilian's H5N1 blog in response to his positing yet another story whacking Google Flu Trends for its "failure".In case you can't tell - I'm a little sick of the number of electrons being wasted on writing the same thing about this paper in Science. I know, there is no shortage of electrons. Still, I hope to see this same degree of ire elicited by and directed toward other...

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Learning about Task Shifting

Pictured above: Sangath, GoaNeuropsychiatric diseases like unipolar depressive disorders, addictions, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia make up 28% of the global burden of disease among noncommunicable diseases and are economically more disabling than cardiovascular disease or cancer. When you add...

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More camel mentions among MERS-CoV cases...

Click on image to enlarge.Special thanks to Professor Andrew Rambaut ([4]; @arambaut) for keeping such great track of the number of human cases in which camels has been mentioned. Also thanks to Prof Rambaut and Ellen Knickmeyer  (@EllenKnickMeyer) for putting up with my stupid questions.The...

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