In 2017, the Russian Federation (RF) is estimated to have the largest number of HIV-1 infected citizens of any country in Europe. Cumulative reported diagnoses reached over 1.16 million infections by mid-2017, and actual infections, including those that remain undiagnosed and/or unreported, are doubtless substantially higher. In contrast to the global epidemic pattern, the HIV epidemic in the RF and in most countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia continues to expand significantly.

18% of the world's population lives in India, and many states of India have populations similar to those of large countries. Action to effectively improve population health in India requires availability of reliable and comprehensive state-level estimates of disease burden and risk factors over time. Such comprehensive estimates have not been available so far for all major diseases and risk factors. Thus, aimed to estimate the disease burden and risk factors in every state of India as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2016.

The seventh cholera pandemic has heavily affected Africa, although the origin and continental spread of the disease remain undefined. We used genomic data from 1070 Vibrio cholerae O1 isolates, across 45 African countries and over a 49-year period, to show that past epidemics were attributable to a single expanded lineage. This lineage was introduced at least 11 times since 1970, into two main regions, West Africa and East/Southern Africa, causing epidemics that lasted up to 28 years.