Africa - Meningitis
The World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa recently reported updated meningitis numbers for the countries of the African Meningitis Belt and surrounding areas. For the first three months of 2018, 7,403 suspect and confirmed cases were reported, including 566 deaths for a case fatality rate of 7.6 percent.
Typhoid - Pakistan
The first known epidemic of extensively drug-resistant typhoid is spreading through Pakistan, infecting at least 850 people in 14 districts since 2016, according to the National Institute of Health Islamabad.
The typhoid strain, resistant to five types of antibiotics, is expected to disseminate globally, replacing weaker strains where they are endemic. Experts have identified only one remaining oral antibiotic — azithromycin — to combat it; one more genetic mutation could make typhoid untreatable in some areas.
Prior to this outbreak, only four isolated cases of extensively drug-resistant, or XDR, typhoid had previously been reported worldwide.
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