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Health Check: Ebola One Year On

Ebola

25/03/2015

Ebola One Year On

BBC World Service - Health Check, Ebola One Year On

Dr Oliver Johnson warns that the spike in Ebola cases in Guinea are a cause for concern

Dr Oliver Johnson warns that the spike in Ebola cases in Guinea are a cause for concern. Could we train our brains to improve our eyesight? New research suggests we could.

One year on, those at the forefront of fighting ebola in Africa warn that all countries need to be clear of the disease before the danger is over. Dr Oliver Johnson,  programme director of the Kings College London Sierra Leone Partnership and works in Freetown tells Claudia Hammond that neighbouring Guinea, which has recently seen a spike in cases, is causing real concern. And he describes the enormous work that is needed to tackle the damage done by conflict and the ebola epidemic to Sierra Leone’s fragile health service.

Human Genome
One of the largest studies in sequencing the human genome in Iceland has been published this week - including data from more than 100,000 people. James Gallagher, describes how such information could be used.

Train Eyes to See Better
Failing eyesight means increased falls and increased car accidents among the elderly. People over 75 are even more likely to have car crashes than young novice drivers. One of the problems is that people start to find it hard to see contrast and to detect the detail in what they are seeing. But psychologists at the University of California Riverside have found that after one and a half hours training each day for five days, the eyesight of some older people had improved.

Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is one of the world’s deadliest, yet preventable communicable diseases. There are nine million new cases ever year, but three million of those do not get treatment, some because they never get a diagnosis. Meera Senthilingam reports from Kampala, Uganda, where there is a new drive to find these hidden cases. Using new techniques to help with the extraction of sputum from children, they are targeting clinics across the capital.

(Photo: Ebola health workers wearingprotective suits. Credit: Getty Images)

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