Last year over nine million people developed TB around the world, according the World Health Organisation, having risen by almost 500,000 during the past 12 months, although the number of people dying from the condition continues to decline.

None the less, campaigners say that one of the biggest problems in tackling the deadly disease was gauging how many people were affected. About 1.5 million people died from TB in 2013 and it remains the second biggest killer disease from a single infectious agent.

ALC Health attended this year’s popular Mind Body & Spirit Exhibition held at the Andalucia Plaza Hotel in Marbella on the 25 & 26 October.

It was a great opportunity to meet and chat not only with a number of existing ALC Health members but also those people attending the event who were looking for medical insurance cover”.

In Mali, the World Health Organization (WHO) has put under medical observation 82 people who had contact with the two year old girl deceased last Friday after contracting Ebola.

WHO is exploring the possibility of creating a medical treatment center in Kayes. 40 volunteers have already been trained to search for contacts of infected persons.

Mali, which hosts a large Stabilization Mission of the United Nations (UN) and a French military contingent (because of the presence of radical Islamists in the North), is ill-prepared for a potential Ebola cases increase.

Now more than ever, we strongly recommend avoiding or interrupting all travel to the countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

At this stage, we consider there are no resources to support medical and non-medical needs, including for non-Ebola situations in these countries and exiting these countries on an urgent basis is becoming increasingly difficult.

Foreigners requiring medical attention for any emergency condition in these countries are at serious risk of having unmet needs and being subject to uncomfortable or potentially dangerous conditions

Dr. Cai Glushak
International Chief Medical Officer

A leading malaria control expert has said efforts to contain the disease may be jeopardised by the Ebola crisis.

Dr Fatoumata Nafo-Traoré, who heads the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Partnership, said after visiting west Africa: “Understandably, all the health workers’ attention is on Ebola.”

Children’s wards which used to be full of malaria patients were becoming “ghost areas,” she added.

In 2012, malaria killed 7,000 people in the three countries worst hit by Ebola.

Most of these will have been young children – although malaria is curable.

The disease caused almost 4,000 deaths in Sierra Leone in 2012 – as well as around 2,000 deaths in Liberia and approximately 1,000 in Guinea.

SOURCE BBC World

The World Health Organisation has reported that the number of cases in the Ebola outbreak has now passed 10,000 resulting in nearly 5,000 deaths. The three worst-hit countries, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea have accounted for all but 27 deaths

Mali has become the latest West African nation to record a death from Ebola where a two-year-old girl has died. More than 40 people are known to have come into contact with her and have been quarantined.

Liberia remains the worst affected country where there have been 2,705 reported deaths, followed by Sierra Leone with 1,281 fatalities and 926 in Guinea.

The WHO said the number of cases was now 10,141 but that the figure could be much higher, as many families were hiding relatives at home rather than taking them to treatment centres.

Most medical centres are now reported to be overcrowded.

Lower respiratory infections are now the world’s number one killer. Nearly three million people die from the disease each year, about  half of them children under the age of five.

HIV/AIDS comes in at number two, but is responsible for less than half the number of deaths caused by lower respiratory infections with around 1.3 million deaths reported last year.

The number of deaths from diarrhoeal diseases is at number three with tuberculosis close behind at number four.

Estimates suggest that one-third of the world’s population have been infected by TB but are not ill with the disease, at least not yet, with over 95 per cent of deaths reported in developing countries”.

The WHO (World Health Organisation) has declared Nigeria officially free of Ebola after six weeks with no new cases reported, adding that this was a ‘spectacular success story’. The country’s health authority was praised for its swift reaction when a Liberian diplomat was found to be infected after bringing the disease into the country during July.

The Ebola outbreak has now killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone where an estimated 70% of those infected have died.

The WHO officially declared Senegal Ebola-free on Friday.