The banana crop is an important commodity in Tanzania and much of East Africa, with many in the region eating up to 400 kilograms of bananas per person per year. Plant diseases are a major threat to the sustainability of the crop, and over the past decade, a bacterial infection once found only in Ethiopia has risen in prominence in all countries around Lake Victoria, including Tanzania.
Researchers at the University of Florida and several peer institutions have developed a model mapping the spread of Zika virus in the Americas and predicting that the virus arrived in Brazil in late 2013 or early 2014 before spreading throughout the region. The model also projects the number of microcephaly cases that will occur by the end of the year, with hundreds of cases in Mexico, Haiti and Colombia, and thousands of cases in Brazil due to Zika virus infection.
On October 13th and 14th, 2016, the Minister of Health and Population of Haiti, Dr. Daphnee Benoit, convened an expert panel to consult on the control of cholera in Haiti with specific reference to the use of vaccines in the aftermath of Hurricane Mathew; the consultation resulted in the following consensus.
Responding to the announcement yesterday that the New World screwworm fly has been detected in Florida for the first time in a half-century, experts with the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and College of Veterinary Medicine are taking steps to educate ranchers, property owners and residents about the pest, and assist in eradication efforts in the Florida Keys, where the fly’s larvae were found infesting wild deer.
Despite intransigence in Washington over Zika funding, the National Institutes of Health have awarded more than 1.75 million dollars to the University of Florida to study the Zika virus.
Nearly 400 non travel-related Zika infections will occur in Florida before the end of the summer, according to a new study by biostatisticians at the University of Florida and other institutions.
On January 12, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing thousands of people and displacing millions more.
The Zika virus could become endemic in parts of Central and South America, but the long-term global threat posed by the virus remains unclear without more research, according to the authors of a paper published online in today’s issue of the journal Science.
One out of every 10 people worldwide suffer from foodborne diseases annually, and children and the poor suffer most, according to the findings of a World Health Organization task force headed by a University of Florida senior researcher.
A new study has confirmed the presence of a unique, potentially vaccine-evasive strain of anthrax in central Nigeria.
