Employees at 345 hotels across Costa Rica are conducting cleaning campaigns in their communities to eliminate potential breeding sites for mosquitoes that transmit the dengue and chikungunya viruses. The good news is that the number of dengue cases has dropped by 79 percent this month compared to the same period last year.
"We are so much at the breaking point," said Joanne Liu, international director for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders. "My people are telling me, 'We don't know how much longer we're going to last.' "
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador – At least 16,000 patient have contracted the chikungunya virus in El Salvador, prompting health officials in the Central American country to step up the fight Monday to eliminate disease-carrying mosquitoes.
A new study has found alarmingly high levels of pesticides in the urine of pregnant Costa Rican women working in and living near the banana industry in Matina, Limón. The chemical ethylene thiourea (ETU) found in the fungicide mancozeb, which is sprayed over banana plantations here, can be detrimental to fetal brain development, according to the report released Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives.
"What I wasn't prepared for," Roland Griffiths says, "is people would come in two months later and I would say, 'Well, so what do you think of the experience?' And they'd say ... 'It was one of the most important experiences in my life.' "
Women arguably have been hit hardest by Alzheimer's disease: Two-thirds of those with the dementia-causing disease are women, and women serve more often than men as their caregivers.
High care costs in the United States for patients with Alzheimer’s disease are prompting many families to look to other countries, including Costa Rica, as an alternative treatment option.
Ebola is now spreading from the remote provinces and into the teeming cities such as Freetown, where 1.2 million people jostle for space. Previous outbreaks had been limited to remote villages, where containment was aided by geography. The thought of Ebola taking hold in a major city such as Freetown or Monrovia, Liberia's capital, is a virological nightmare.
The death of 11-year-old Florida resident Jordan Smelski from a brain infection in July has prompted the Florida Health Department to issue an advisory alert after tests confirmed the infection was caused by an amoeba he contracted while vacationing in Costa Rica.
The declaration by the World Health Organization on Friday of the outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa as an international public emergency prompted local health officials to implement a series of measures to prevent the possible spread to Costa Rica.
