The Philippines declared an outbreak of polio on 19th September, after a 3-year-old girl from Lanao del Sur (on Mindanao island) was confirmed to have developed acute flaccid paralysis from vaccine-derived Type 2 poliovirus infection. A second case of polio due to the same virus was announced 2 days later, also on Mindanao but more […]
This topic was previously touched on 2 years ago. The speculation at that time was whether hepatitis E in Singapore is also linked to the consumption of undercooked pork. This seems to be answered by a new study (behind a pay wall) that has just been published in the journal Zoonoses Public Health by investigators […]
For the past several weeks, dengue has been in the news because of the surge in cases – the highest for the past several years. The National Environment Agency (NEA) has attributed this to three main factors: An increase in the Aedes aegypti (the primary vector for the dengue virus in Singapore) population in Singapore. […]
Measles – a highly contagious viral disease with a characteristic rash – has been in the news of late. The most recent outbreak that made the news was in the Philippines, centering around Metro Manila, Luzon and Visayas. There have been at least 87 reported deaths and more than 5,600 cases reported this year, as […]
I was directed to this recently published Science article by a Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine clinician-scientist while we were discussing the Dengvaxia debacle. As highlighted in a previous post, Sanofi Pasteur had reported that dengue-naive people would be at higher risk of a more severe infection if they were infected with dengue following vaccination […]
Sanofi-Pasteur released a media report on 29 November, warning that dengue-naive people would be at higher risk of a more severe infection if they were infected with dengue following vaccination with Dengvaxia – Sanofi Pasteur’s dengue vaccine that is also licensed for use in Singapore. This warning was based on the analysis of 6 years […]
Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) announced the National Adult Immunization Schedule (NAIS) yesterday. This is a welcome extension of the National Childhood Immunization Programme (into adulthood), and the amendment to allow the use of Medisave (Singapore’s compulsory national medical savings scheme) for these vaccines (up to SGD400 a year) will facilitate take up of the […]
Before moving on, I thought it would be good to address the “tick issue”. There were a couple of Facebook comments about the Haemaphysalis longicornus photo from Wikipedia, and how this resembled the dog ticks that are prevalent in Singapore. I am by no means a tick expert, but I understand that the predominant tick in Singapore […]
Had to do quite a bit of reading up about this emerging but obscure (at least for Singapore) infectious disease recently. It is actually pretty interesting. Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is caused by a member of the Phlebovirus family – the eponymous SFTS virus. The first official report of this disease and its […]
MIPHIDIC 