For how we live.
Outbreaks, vaccine access, and global health funding across the continent.
Ervebo was licensed against Zaire ebolavirus. WHO says it is not known whether it protects against Bundibugyo virus in humans — which is why a trial is running alongside the wider rollout.
THESUS-HF II enrolled 1,578 patients across 50 hospitals in 17 countries. Guideline drugs were prescribed at discharge in most patients, and target doses were reached in fewer than half.
WHO's latest update records 1,129 more confirmed cases in twelve days and a case fatality ratio of 48.1%. Transmission is now confined to Congo, across 60 health zones in six provinces.
A frontier analysis of two decades attributes 97.6% of nutritional disparities between countries to inefficiency rather than to resources. The policy reading is contestable; the decoupling is not.
In South Kivu, ophthalmologists examined 310 patients with confirmed clade Ib mpox at four time points. Periorbital lesions and severe acute malnutrition tripled the risk of ocular involvement.
A geostatistical re-estimate puts the global toll at 2.1 million envenomings and 274,000 deaths a year at minimum, with African incidence nearly three times South Asia's — against a short antivenom supply.
Each 1 degree C rise in average maximum wet bulb globe temperature across pregnancy was associated with 64% higher odds of a higher stress category — an association, in one cohort, with no mechanism established.
Nigerian adults scored well below US and Norwegian comparison samples on a six-dimension sleep health measure. In South Africa, students with backup power were far less likely to report worse sleep during outages.
A 100-child randomized trial in Uganda found a cheap supplement lowered infection rates on top of standard hydroxyurea therapy — though the authors say it needs a bigger trial before it changes practice.
Seventy-seven thousand fewer children got PEPFAR-supported HIV treatment in 2025 than the year before. UNAIDS warns permanent cuts could mean millions of additional infections and deaths by 2029.
The Bundibugyo virus epidemic is now the largest Ebola outbreak in Congo's history. WHO's emergency committee met again this week; MSF says the response still isn't reaching people fast enough.
VPM1002 did not show non-inferiority to BCG for preventing tuberculosis infection in a phase 3 trial across sub-Saharan Africa. Far fewer infections occurred than planned, leaving the comparison unresolved.
The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index global score is the field's default outcome. Tested in a large South African cohort, its single-factor structure fit poorly and internal consistency was modest.
Nine countries have launched lenacapavir for HIV prevention, with roughly 66,000 people newly started on it. In at least two countries, demand has already outrun the available doses.
Sixteen years of PCR-confirmed data show Buruli ulcer incidence down nearly 80%. Over the same period open water surfaces shrank 25–30% and mean air temperature rose by more than 1°C.
Blood samples from a West African vaccine trial show both licensed Ebola vaccines generate antibodies that bind Bundibugyo virus — the species with no vaccine of its own, now causing DRC's largest outbreak on record.
Two months after the emergency declaration, confirmed cases in DRC have passed 2,100 and spread to 46 health zones. There is still no approved vaccine or treatment — but patients are now being enrolled in one.
A New England Journal of Medicine review of the ongoing outbreak lays out what is and isn't known about treating Bundibugyo virus disease — and why Ebola virus countermeasures may offer partial cover.
Five weeks into the Bundibugyo virus emergency, WHO says some new cases reflect transmission that had gone undetected for weeks — a sign the outbreak may be larger than the count shows.
WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on 17 May. By early June, confirmed cases had climbed past 500 and Africa CDC put a price tag on the continental response: $518 million.
After 12 months, HbA1c was 6.5% among people managed by community health workers versus 7.1% among those referred to clinics. With 103 participants analysed, the confidence interval crosses zero.
A modelling analysis puts 2.75 million children under five in sub-Saharan Africa living with sickle cell disease. Seven African countries have transplant programmes; approved gene therapies cost millions.
A review of 42 studies on South Africa's Comrades Marathon finds medical encounters at up to 20 per 1,000 starters — mostly dehydration and cramping, not the cardiac events that draw the most attention.
Eight confirmed cases, 246 suspected, and 80 suspected deaths in eastern DRC were enough for the Director-General to invoke his highest level of alarm — before convening the emergency committee that usually comes first.
A Lancet evaluation of the RTS,S introduction in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi reports a 13% drop in mortality among vaccine-eligible children — achieved with third-dose coverage of 71% and fourth-dose uptake under 40%.
WHO's latest tally puts the 2026 year-to-date count at 58,740 cases and 732 deaths across 22 countries, down sharply from last year except in conflict-affected states.
A Nature Communications review of the continent's biomedical data science capacity found none of 36 surveyed groups using cloud high-performance computing, and named electricity outages among the most common obstacles.
Sub-Saharan Africa received $11 billion in external assistance for community health worker programmes over two decades. More than three-quarters went to single-disease work, and the annual financing gap never closed.
The estimate covers only populations in humanitarian need across Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Niger and Nigeria — and it assumes nothing replaces the lost money.
Fourteen months after an undiagnosed febrile outbreak alarmed the world, sequencing and PCR on 108 patients found no novel pathogen — half had falciparum malaria and many had a respiratory co-infection.
A scoping review found 36 studies on heat and health, only 13 with Gauteng data. Rather than wait for more, the authors borrowed designs from Victoria, Maharashtra and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The Ministry of Health declared the end on January 26, two incubation periods after the last confirmed patient was buried. No vaccine or drug for Marburg is approved anywhere.
Washington intends to provide up to $792 million over five years. Malawi commits the rest — and the money is meant to flow through the government rather than NGOs.
A year of wearable data from 76 subsistence farmers shows adaptation happening in real time. The women in the study had less room to slow down, and their strain readings show it.
The Bulape outbreak in Kasai Province ended 88 days after it was declared, with a case fatality ratio above 70% and nearly 48,000 people vaccinated.
Across 11 surveillance sites in sub-Saharan Africa, nighttime heatwave mortality risk rose between 2005-2010 and 2011-2015 — the opposite of the adaptation trend reported in wealthy countries.
WHO has graded the regional resurgence a level 2 emergency. Only 5.7% of the 20,412 suspected cases were laboratory-confirmed, and the antitoxin that prevents most deaths is in global short supply.
Six laboratory-confirmed cases and three probable ones have been reported from Jinka town. All deaths involved unsupervised burials — the step in the chain that historically turns a cluster into an outbreak.
In 59 facilities across Malawi and Uganda where 431,394 women gave birth, the APT-Sepsis programme reduced infection-related death, near-miss events and severe illness from 1.9% to 1.4%.
WHO reports 404 confirmed human cases across the two countries in six weeks. The case fatality ratio is 30% in Mauritania and 7.8% in Senegal — a gap that says more about detection than about the virus.
Among 1,000 adults in Mwanza, overnight oximetry found sleep apnea in 17% of people with HIV and 19% without. Excessive daytime sleepiness, oddly, was more common in those without HIV.
The experimental recombinant antivenom outperformed a plasma-derived product in mice and cut tissue necrosis. It has not been tested in a single human, and the paper does not address cost or manufacturing at scale.
Age-standardised incidence was 42.3 per 100,000 in Ghana and 43.1 in US non-Hispanic Black women, against 24.0 in white women. ER-positive rates diverged sharply in the other direction.
The modelling study puts 719,384 people on PEPFAR-funded oral PrEP in 28 African countries at the end of 2024. Most projected infections fall on key populations whose coverage was already under 6%.
A prospective cohort of 88 index cases and 432 household contacts found a secondary attack rate of 6.15%, three times higher in under-15s. The estimated R0 inside households was 0.30.
A high-resolution model of East Africa's most densely settled basin finds that two-thirds of the projected rise in exposure comes from temperature and population growth acting together.
In a 400-pair trial in Uganda where every family already had a bed net, insecticide-treated wraps reduced clinical malaria in infants from 2.14 to 0.73 cases per 100 person-weeks.
Across 165 clinics in four African countries, HIV testing fell by up to 35% and treatment starts by up to 32%. Most services had not returned to baseline two months after the orders were lifted.
In a 774-person randomised trial, community health workers delivering medication at home nearly doubled the share of patients whose blood pressure was controlled at six months.
Sequencing points to a fresh spillover from wildlife rather than a resurgence of the province's earlier outbreaks. Four of the dead are health-care workers.
WHO counted 409,222 cases and 4,738 deaths across 31 countries by 17 August. The divergence between the two trends is the finding, and it points at case management, not transmission.
In 12 clusters, 6% of girls in the intervention group experienced a maternal or perinatal death against 13% in control. The trial was a pilot, and the authors present it as such.