Officials are trying — and failing — to squelch a simmering Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the death toll passed 1,000 on Friday. The outbreak has been taking place for nearly a year.
Why it matters: The longer this outbreak goes on, the greater the likelihood of it spreading to highly populated areas within the DRC, moving beyond the country to neighboring areas or becoming endemic to the sprawling country. It is already the second-largest outbreak of the highly lethal and contagious virus on record, and officials from the World Health Organization issued new warnings Monday that they do not have the money or the security resources to fight it.
A jury yesterday found John Kapoor, the founder and former CEO of Insys Therapeutics, and 4 other executives guilty of a scheme that involved bribing doctors to prescribe the company's powerful opioid, Subsys, for patients who didn't need it and tricking health insurers to pay for it, Reuters reports.
Why it matters: This trial was a high-profile affair that many people viewed as a referendum on Big Pharma's role in the national opioid crisis.
