Margaret Chan, assistant director-general of communicable diseases at the WHO, hinted on Wednesday that further funding for new stockpiles of anti-virals was likely to be announced soon, including additional money from the World Bank.

ECONOMIST: Calls for more money as the threat looms ever larger | The

Dr. Siedner is a postdoctoral fellow in the division of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

WSJ: Mark Siedner: About That Baby Who Was 'Cured' of HIV

According to the General Register Office, respiratory diseases alone accounted for 59% of the increase in deaths registered in the week ending 13 December and 76% in the following week.

BBC: News, London

Researcher Dr Isaac Bogoch, who specialises in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Toronto General Hospital, told the BBC he had read about smartphone microscopes being trialled in a laboratory and decided to "recreate it in a real world setting".

BBC: Worms detected by converted iPhone microscope

One in eight admissions to general hospitals in the UK are for gut conditions and diseases, and almost one in four main operations within general hospitals are performed on the digestive tract.

BBC: NEWS | Health | People 'ignoring' gut illnesses

Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the WHO, said these ancient diseases were already being "brought to their knees with stunning speed".

BBC: Plan to cut burden of tropical disease

If, nevertheless, a wide range of diseases now put down to the general process of ageing do turn out to be infections, a new field of treatment will open.

ECONOMIST: Bugged by disease

Subsequent follow-up work might examine if a higher level of abstraction exists such that more general purpose properties of an antibiotic can be determined to be effective against entire bacterial diseases (i.e. penicillin).

FORBES: Written by David Lowenstein and Risu Na

However, there is "general agreement that the placenta plays a key role in preeclampsia, and women with chronic hypertension and certain metabolic diseases like diabetes are more susceptible, " according to the Preeclampsia Foundation.

CNN: Eclampsia: 5 things you need to know