The outbreak, linked to skepticism about vaccines, has led to extraordinary measures, including $1,000 fines and bans on unvaccinated children in public.
Author: DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Global Health: New York City Is Requiring Vaccinations Against Measles. Can Officials Do That?
Mandatory vaccination is rare, but it has been done — and upheld by the courts. While judges have allowed health officials to fine citizens for refusing, forced vaccinations are highly unusual.
Global Health: Scientists Thought They Had Measles Cornered. They Were Wrong.
Following intensive vaccination efforts, measles cases plunged across the world. Now clusters of new infections — some linked, some not — have confounded health officials.
Global Health: Cholera Is Spreading in Mozambique, and It’s Far From the Only Health Threat
About two million people are displaced, cholera has broken out, and malaria is expected. But doses of cholera vaccine have arrived, and the humanitarian crisis may yet be contained, aid agencies say.
Global Health: A Twin Inside a Twin: In Colombia, an Extraordinary Birth
What appeared to be a cyst in a healthy fetus turned out to be an unformed twin “absorbed” early in pregnancy, connected by a second umbilical cord and still growing.
Global Health: Bit by Bit, Scientists Gain Ground on AIDS
The “London patient,” apparently cured of H.I.V. infection, has gotten all the attention. But other recently revealed advances are more likely to affect the immediate course of the AIDS epidemic.
W.H.O. Chief Plans to Reorganize a Vast Bureaucracy
A fundamental problem — tension between regional offices and the headquarters in Geneva — cannot be fixed by fiat. Still, staffers are set to move around the globe.
Global Health: Diagnoses by Horn, Payment in Goats: An African Healer at Work
On a continent wracked with epidemics, millions turn to traditional healers. In rural Uganda, not far from the Ebola zone, an herbalist describes his practice.
Global Health: Marburg Virus, Related to Ebola, Is Found in Bats in West Africa
The discovery was part of a U.S.-led effort to spot dangerous pathogens in animals before humans are endangered.
Global Health: An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone
In Vanuatu, 20 percent of children miss their shots because villages are so hard to reach. It has hired an Australian company to fly them in.