“European drug regulators gave their backing on Friday to two new medicines for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), an infectious disease that affects some 450,000 people worldwide each year and for which there are few effective treatments,” Reuters reports. “The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said its support for marketing authorizations for Otsuka’s…

“The European Union signed a development grant with Ethiopia on Monday worth 212.4 million euros ($287.26 million) to help finance road construction and projects targeting maternal health and drought resilience,” Reuters reports. “The package includes 49 million euros earmarked for road building. Another 50 million euros will be [available] to…

The WHO on Monday “confirmed the first two Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) cases in Kuwait, while a media report said Spain now has its second probable case in a woman who participated in the recent hajj in Saudi Arabia,” CIDRAP News reports (Roos, 11/18). In addition, “Saudi health…

“Spain’s Health Ministry says the country has its first case of the new respiratory virus known as MERS and the female victim is believed to have contracted the virus in Saudi Arabia,” the Associated Press reports. “A ministry statement says the Moroccan-born Spanish resident was admitted Nov. 1 to a…

“In [an article] published Thursday in the medical journal The Lancet, two German public health experts warn that Syria’s [polio] outbreak may threaten Europe,” National Journal reports (Koren, 11/7). “Dr. Martin Eichner of the University of Tubinge in Germany and Dr. Stefan Brockmann of the Reutlingen Regional Public Health Office…

ScienceInsider reports on a “legal battle between Ron Fouchier and the Dutch government over the publication of controversial research on the H5N1 avian influenza virus.” According to the news service, “On Friday, Fouchier’s employer, Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, formally appealed a ruling by a Dutch court that the government was…

“Health care systems in Eastern Europe and Central Asia remain woefully unable to cope with HIV/AIDS as the region’s raging epidemic — the fastest growing in the world – takes on a new dimension, a senior U.N. official has told [Inter Press Service],” the news service reports (Stracansky, 11/4). “HIV…

The following is a summary of two editorials and a blog post addressing polio in Syria, where the WHO on Tuesday confirmed 10 of 22 suspected cases of the disease.Baltimore Sun: “The re-emergence of polio in Syria, which had been virtually eliminated in that country over the last two decades,…

“France [on Tuesday] reported a probable Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) case in a person who recently traveled to Saudi Arabia, while the [WHO] offered new details on a MERS case reported in Qatar [on Monday],” CIDRAP News reports. “The patient in France is a 43-year-old who recently returned…

“Eastern Europe is facing quadruple, intersecting epidemics of injecting drug use, HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and hepatitis C, and governments must act to tackle these problems in the only region of the world where the HIV epidemic is still expanding, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on HIV in Central and Eastern…