On Thursday, Uganda confirmed an outbreak of the Ebola virus in its capital city Kampala, with the first confirmed patient dying from it a day before. As per the new developments, the officials are now preparing to deploy a trial vaccine to put an end to this outbreak.

Groups of scientists are working on the vaccine and deployment of more than 2,000 doses of a candidate vaccine against the Sudan strain of Ebola has been planned and confirmed by the Uganda Virus Research Institute. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), Uganda has access to 2,169 doses of trial vaccine. For now, however, there are no approved vaccines for the strain and officials are still investigating the source of the outbreak.

The WHO had also allocated $1 million from its contingency fund for emergencies to support quick action and contain the outbreak in the country.

Confirmed Case

On Wednesday, the Sudan strain of Ebola killed a nurse employed at Kampala's main referral hospital. It is after his death that Ebola was declared an outbreak in the country. Post-mortem samples too have confirmed the Sudan Ebola Virus Disease and at least 44 contacts of the deceased man have been listed for tracing. 30 of these are health workers.

Ebola is a highly infectious hemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids and tissue. Symptoms include headache, vomiting of blood, muscle pains and bleeding.

it was in the late 2022, when Uganda had last suffered an Ebola outbreak. It killed 55 of the 143 people who were infected and was declared over on January 11, 2023.

What Is Ebola Virus Disease?

As per the WHO, Ebola virus disease (EVD) is a rare but severe illness in humans and is often fatal. People can get infected with the virus if they touch an infected animal when preparing food, or touch body fluids of an infected person such as saliva, urine, faeces or semen, or things that have body fluids of an infected person like clothes or sheets.

How Does Transmission Work?

Ebola enters the body through cuts in the skin or when one is touching their eyes, nose or mouth. Early symptoms include fever, fatigue and headache.

It was first discovered in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreak, when in Nzara, South Sudan and other in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter occurred near a village near the Ebola River, which is where it gets its name from.

It is highly infectious and transmissible disease, in fact, there have been cases of health-care workers who have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola. This occurs through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not practiced strictly.

Cases of people conducted burial ceremonies, involving direct contact with the body of the deceased too can lead to the transmission of Ebola. Even after the long suffering and recovery, there is a possibility of sexual transmission. Pregnant women who get acute Ebola and recover may still carry the virus in their breastmilk, or in pregnancy related fluids and tissues.

Symptoms:

• feeling tired
• headache
• muscle and joint pain
• eye pain and vision problems
• weight gain
• belly pain and loss of appetite
• hair loss and skin problems
• trouble sleeping
• memory loss
• hearing loss
• depression and anxiety

Nearly 3 in 4 US adults felt very tired or exhausted on at least some days, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey.

The report from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) analyzed data from the 2024 National Health Interview Survey, which included approximately 27,000 adults aged 18 and older.

Fatigue is generally defined as physical or mental tiredness or exhaustion that does not improve with additional sleep or rest.

However, it should be distinguished from sleepiness, which is the experience of feeling drowsy or having difficulty staying awake, the report stated.

How Common Is Fatigue Among US Adults?

• 28.5% never felt very tired or exhausted.
• 54.9% felt very tired or exhausted on “some days.”
• 10.7% felt this way on “most days.”
• 5.9% felt very tired or exhausted “every day.”

About 1 in 6 adults experienced frequent fatigue, defined as feeling very tired or exhausted on “most days” or “every day.”

Who Is Most Affected?

• Women were more likely than men to report frequent fatigue (20% vs. 13%).
• American Indian and Alaska Native adults had the highest rate of frequent fatigue (25.5%), followed by White adults (18%), Black adults (17.3%) and Hispanic adults (12.9%). Asian adults had the lowest rate (9.1%).
• Frequent fatigue was highest among adults aged 18–34 years (19.5%) and lowest among those aged 65 and older (12.9%).

What Other Difficulties Are Linked To Frequent Fatigue?

The report showed that among adults with frequent fatigue, 69.6% reported symptoms of anxiety, 46.1% reported cognition difficulty and 45% reported symptoms of depression.

Compared with adults without frequent fatigue, those with frequent fatigue were more than three times as likely to have symptoms of depression, more than twice as likely to have cognition difficulty and twice as likely to report symptoms of anxiety.

How Does Fatigue Affect Daily Life?

Fatigue also affected work and social activities, with 36% of adults with frequent fatigue reporting work limitations, compared with 15.3% of those without frequent fatigue.

Meanwhile, 16.2% of adults with frequent fatigue reported some difficulty with social activities, compared with 5.3% of those without frequent fatigue.

Another 12.8% reported a lot of difficulty with social activities or said they could not engage in them at all, compared with 2.6% of adults without frequent fatigue.

What Experts Say About Fatigue

“Fatigue is one of the most frequently reported health concerns in primary care,” Natalie A.E. Young, the report’s author, said.

She added that people who report regular fatigue “are at higher risk of activity limitations and disability, including permanent work disability,” while pointing out that there had not been much attention to the frequency of general fatigue symptoms in the US adult population.

While fatigue symptoms can be associated with various conditions, Young noted that some may not be linked to a specific medical condition.

“Stress can cause surges in hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which can wear a body down. That increasing stress contributes to an uptick in fatigue,” Jennifer Caspari, a clinical psychologist licensed in Denver and Vancouver, British Columbia, was quoted as saying to NBC News.

Pennsylvania has reported a third measles-related death amid an expanding outbreak that has infected hundreds of people across the state. The latest casualty involved a 40-year-old woman.

The woman, a resident of Jefferson County, died on Saturday from complications associated with measles, according to the county coroner. The case is now being reviewed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

The death comes as Pennsylvania's measles outbreak continues to expand. As of September 11, the state had recorded 676 confirmed cases across 37 counties, including 124 hospitalisations.

Measles Is Not Just A Childhood Illness

Measles is often perceived as primarily a childhood infection. The latest fatality of the 40-year-old reminds us that measles is not just a childhood disease.

“Many people associate measles with a childhood illness, but it can lead to severe complications in individuals of any age,” Jason Stiver, Jefferson County's chief deputy coroner and public relations officer, told WTAE.

He added, “Measles is highly contagious and can result in serious respiratory illness, hospitalization, and in rare cases like this, death. We encourage residents to stay informed, follow guidance from public health officials, and take appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families.”

The two earlier Pennsylvania deaths occurred in August and involved infants in Lancaster County. One infant died from measles infection, while the other died from a ruptured spleen, with measles listed as a significant contributing condition.

Neither infant was old enough to receive the routine measles vaccine, which is generally first given around 12 months of age.

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The Outbreak Is Still Spreading

Measles is among the world's most contagious infectious diseases. It spreads through respiratory droplets and airborne particles when an infected person coughs, sneezes or breathes.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health says two doses of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine are 97% effective at preventing measles. The state has identified four breakthrough infections among appropriately vaccinated people during the current outbreak.

The outbreak has been particularly concentrated in Lancaster and Mifflin counties, although infections have now been reported across more than half of Pennsylvania's counties.

The health department previously warned that nearly 20% of people who contract measles may require hospitalisation, while measles-related death occurs in roughly one to three people per 1,000 cases. Complications include pneumonia and inflammation of the brain.

Also read: World Leaders Call For Obesity & NCD Prevention At BRICS 2026 Summit: Why Focus Is Growing?

Pennsylvania And CDC Counts Differ

There is also an ongoing dispute over how measles-related deaths are being counted nationally. Pennsylvania health officials have counted three deaths as measles-associated in 2026.

However, the CDC's national data currently does not include these deaths, and as of September 10 it reported 3,294 confirmed measles cases in the US without listing a measles death in 2026.

Pennsylvania officials are reviewing the latest death using the state's epidemiological definition for a measles-associated death, which has also been shared with the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

Measles was eliminated from the US in 2000. But the growing outbreak is a reminder that elimination does not mean the virus can never return. Sustained high vaccination coverage remains critical to preventing further infections.

Your eyes may explain a lot about how your brain handles attention. A new Indian study suggests that tiny fluctuations in the pupils may provide a physiological clue to attention related differences in children with ADHD.

Researchers from the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi analysed eye-tracking data from 50 children aged 10 to 12, including 28 children with combined-type ADHD and 22 without a neurodevelopmental diagnosis. These findings were published in Scientific Reports.

Instead of just looking at the size of the pupils, researchers examined how pupil responses shifted from one trial to another while children performed a working-memory task.

What ADHD-Related Clues Do Pupils Hold?

During the experiment, children watched dots appear on a grid and had to remember their positions while ignoring distractions. An eye tracker recorded their pupil diameter 1,000 times per second.

After accounting for age, IQ and memory-task difficulty, the researchers estimated that unmedicated children with ADHD had about 23% greater trial-to-trial variability in their pupil responses than children in the control group.

Among the unmedicated children with ADHD, greater pupil variability was also associated with poorer accuracy on the task.

The pattern was, however, more complicated. Within individual trials, pupil variability was actually lower in the ADHD group. This suggests that different measures of pupil dynamics may capture different aspects of attention and brain activity.

Also read: Increased Screen Timings Have Lead to ADHD: Key Symptoms

Effect Of ADHD Medication On The Pattern

The researchers also looked at 17 children with ADHD who completed the task both after taking their usual methylphenidate medication and after stopping it for 24 hours.

When the children were taking medication, their pupils showed a stronger response during the task and less variation between trials. Their overall pupil-response pattern also became more similar to that of the control group. But the researchers caution against interpreting this as proof that medication normalising attention span.

Methylphenidate can itself influence physiological systems that affect pupil size, meaning the study could not completely separate the drug's direct effects on the pupils from changes related to attention.

Also read: Using AI Apps To Manage ADHD? How They Can Help And Why Experts Urge Caution

Can A Pupil Test Diagnose ADHD?

There is no single biological test for ADHD currently. Diagnosis involves clinical assessment, developmental history and behavioural symptoms across different settings and circumstances.

The study itself has several limitations. For instance, it was based on a small sample, used existing eye-tracking data and involved a controlled laboratory task rather than everyday environments like classrooms.

Although the statistical model found greater trial-to-trial pupil variability, the direct participant-level difference between the ADHD and control groups did not remain statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons.

The researchers therefore describe pupil dynamics as a useful source of additional physiological information, rather than a diagnostic test.

First author Saumya Yadav said, "It is still too early to consider pupil measurements as a clinical diagnostic tool.”

Larger studies will need to determine whether these pupil patterns can reliably distinguish ADHD from other conditions and whether they remain consistent outside laboratory settings.