Up at 5AM: The 5AM Solutions Blog

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) wrapped up its annual World Immunization Week. The WHO kicked off the once-yearly effort to re-ignite the world’s public health agencies’ commitment to ensuring that their constituents’ are immunized against vaccine-preventable illnesses on Monday. 

Liberia was poised to be the first of the three hardest-hit countries stricken with the Ebola epidemic to declare itself free from the deadly virus that has ravaged the region for a year. The West African nation had gone two weeks without a new infection; and then a 44-year-old street vendor developed a fever. Her teenaged daughter, who'd tended to her sick mother developed a telltale headache.

There is some good news in West Africa, as cases of Ebola are on the decline,  even in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, the continent's hardest hit areas.

On Tuesday, I blogged about the measles outbreak that began at two Disney theme parks in California last month. In researching the piece, I stridently avoided using a term that I'd seen in lots of articles that characterized vaccine skeptics as "anti-vaxxers." To me, the term seemed unnecessarily hostile in a debate that, to my ears, seems like hardly anything to debate at all: of course I vaccinate my children and you should too! Who could argue with that?

Lately, the happiest place on earth is a little less buoyant. The reason is that beginning around December 20, 2014, Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure Park became Ground Zero for the latest measles outbreak in the United States. Last week, the California Department of Public Health reported 59 cases of the highly infectious disease in the state, 42 of which originated in the Disney parks. 

"Don't want little Johnny or Betty to develop a crippling disease with the potential for lifelong paralysis? Then sign here and be a pioneer in improving global health!"

According to the World Heath Organization (WHO), 207 million people contracted malaria and  627,000 died from it in 2012. Additionally, there were 50 - 100 million cases of dengue in the world's tropical and sub-tropical regions. The good news: infection and mortality rates for both mosquito-borne illnesses are declining. The better news is that researchers may be on to a solution that targets these dangerous diseases at their source: the mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue pathogens. 

With the death toll topping 3000 in West Africa, health agencies around the world are working to speed the development of treatments and vaccines against Ebola. According to the UN Security Council, the epidemic is "...a threat to international peace and security." Normally, taking medical treatments and vaccines from laboratories to patients is a lengthy process that can go on for years. Ebola is different.