Mali

New funding has been provided for more trials of Novartis’s combination malaria treatment in west and central Africa, adding to ongoing efforts to tackle the disease on the continent. 

If nations around the world continue to help accelerate the response to Ebola in West Africa, the outbreak, in which more than 15,300 people have been sickened, with 5,500 dying, could end by mid-2015, Dr Ban ki-Moon, United Nations secretary-general, told a news conference on 21 November.

A single inoculation of an experimental vaccine provided 100% protection in macaques five weeks after exposure to a lethal dose of the Ebola virus currently hitting West Africa, researchers reported on 7 September in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.