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WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper: Global Health Alerts

Real‑time infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and public health emergencies – directly from WHO, CDC, ECDC, and PAHO.
The WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper extracts structured alerts: disease name, country, region, severity (High/Moderate/Low), summary, publication date, and official link. Perfect for travel health apps, news aggregators, epidemiology research, and public health dashboards.

Pricing: Only $0.05 per 1,000 results – the most affordable professional outbreak intelligence on Apify.

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💡 What is the WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper?

The WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper is a professional Apify actor that collects real‑time public health alerts and outbreak news from the world’s most trusted sources:

• WHO Disease Outbreak News (official)
• WHO RSS feed (global)
• CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control)
• PAHO (Pan American Health Organization)

It automatically extracts:

• Disease name (e.g., Ebola, Mpox, Cholera, COVID-19, Dengue)
• Affected country and WHO region
• Severity level (High / Moderate / Low) based on official language
• Outbreak summary and publication date
• Direct link to the official announcement

All data is returned as clean JSON, CSV, or Excel. Whether you run a travel health platform, a news aggregator, a public health research project, or a risk intelligence dashboard, this actor gives you reliable outbreak intelligence at an unbeatable price.

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📦 What Data Can You Extract?

🧩 Data Type	📋 Description
🆔 Notice ID	Unique identifier (e.g., WHO-88923).
📰 Title	Outbreak title (e.g., “Ebola outbreak in Uganda”).
📝 Summary	Short description of the outbreak (max 500 chars).
📅 Date	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD).
🌍 Region	WHO region (AFRO, EURO, AMRO, WPRO, SEARO, EMRO) or Global.
🇨🇩 Country	Affected country (auto‑detected from 100+ countries).
🦠 Disease	Disease name (auto‑detected from 30+ diseases).
⚠️ Severity	High, Moderate, or Low.
✅ Status	Always Active.
🔗 Link	Direct URL to the full announcement.
🏷️ Source	WHO Disease Outbreak News, WHO RSS, CDC, ECDC, PAHO.
⏱️ Timestamp	ISO 8601 extraction time.

All fields are cleaned; missing values become null. The WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper automatically recognises 30+ diseases and 100+ countries, saving you hours of manual parsing.

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⚙️ Key Features

• Official Sources Only – WHO, CDC, ECDC, PAHO – no third‑party scrapers, no rumours.
• Auto‑Disease & Country Detection – Extracts disease names and affected countries from the text.
• Severity Scoring – Classifies outbreaks as High, Moderate, or Low based on keywords (e.g., “emergency”, “pandemic”, “fatal” = High).
• Keyword & Filter Support – Filter by disease, region, severity, or custom keyword.
• RSS + HTML Parsing – Uses both RSS feeds and full HTML pages for maximum coverage.
• Lowest Price – Only $0.05 per 1,000 results – perfect for large‑scale monitoring.
• Residential Proxy Ready – Bypass IP blocks with Apify residential proxies (optional but recommended).
• Clean JSON / CSV / XLSX – Ready for dashboards, APIs, or research.
• Bulk Support – Add custom URLs to monitor additional sources (e.g., national health ministries).
• Deduplication – Removes duplicate alerts across sources.

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📥 Input Parameters

The actor accepts a JSON object with the following fields:

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
sources	array of strings	No	["who_don","who_rss"]	Sources to scrape: who_don, who_rss, cdc, ecdc, paho.
target_urls	array or string	No	–	Custom outbreak RSS or HTML URLs.
keyword	string	No	–	Filter by keyword in title (e.g., "mpox").
disease	string	No	–	Filter by disease name (e.g., "Ebola").
region	string	No	–	Filter by WHO region (e.g., "AFRO", "Europe").
severity_filter	string	No	–	High, Moderate, or Low.
max_results	integer	No	30	Maximum number of outbreak notices to return.
proxyConfiguration	object	No	–	Apify proxy configuration (residential recommended).

Example Input (Basic)

{
  "sources": ["who_don", "who_rss", "cdc"],
  "max_results": 20
}

Example Input (Filtered by Disease & Severity)

{
  "sources": ["who_don", "ecdc"],
  "disease": "Ebola",
  "severity_filter": "High",
  "max_results": 10,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Example Input (Custom URL)

{
  "target_urls": ["https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news"],
  "keyword": "mpox",
  "max_results": 15
}

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📤 Output Fields

Each outbreak notice returns an object with the following possible fields:

Field	Type	Description
notice_id	string	Unique ID (e.g., WHO-88923).
title	string	Outbreak title.
summary	string	Short description (max 500 chars).
date	string	Publication date (YYYY-MM-DD).
region	string	WHO region (AFRO, EURO, AMRO, WPRO, SEARO, EMRO) or Global.
country	string	Affected country (auto‑detected).
disease	string	Disease name (auto‑detected).
severity	string	High, Moderate, Low.
status	string	Always Active.
link	string	Direct URL to the announcement.
source	string	Source name (e.g., WHO Disease Outbreak News).
source_url	string	Original scraped URL.
timestamp	string	ISO extraction time.

Example Output

[
  {
    "notice_id": "WHO-88923",
    "title": "Ebola virus disease outbreak in Uganda",
    "summary": "On 20 September 2022, Uganda declared an Ebola virus disease outbreak...",
    "date": "2025-01-15",
    "region": "AFRO",
    "country": "Uganda",
    "disease": "Ebola",
    "severity": "High",
    "status": "Active",
    "link": "https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2025-DON-001",
    "source": "WHO Disease Outbreak News",
    "source_url": "https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news",
    "timestamp": "2026-04-22T10:30:00Z"
  }
]

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💰 Pricing

Metric	Price
Per 1,000 results	$0.05
Minimum charge per run	$0.01
Typical run (100 results)	$0.005

• You pay only for the number of outbreak notices returned (deduplicated).
• No hidden fees for proxy usage (residential proxy consumption is billed separately by Apify).
• Free testing – set max_results: 5 to test with minimal cost.

Example cost calculation:

• 10,000 outbreak notices = 10 × $0.05 = $0.50
• Daily runs (30 notices/day) = ~$0.045 per month – less than a cup of coffee.

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🛠 How to Use on Apify

1. Create a task with this actor.
2. Select sources – WHO DON, WHO RSS, CDC, ECDC, PAHO, or add custom URLs.
3. Apply filters – disease, region, severity, keyword.
4. Set max results – start with 10–20 to test.
5. Enable proxy – optional but recommended for large runs.
6. Run – the WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper collects outbreak notices from all sources.
7. Export – download as JSON, CSV, or Excel.

Running via API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/your-username~who-disease-outbreak-scraper/runs" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "sources": ["who_don", "who_rss"],
    "disease": "Mpox",
    "max_results": 20
  }'

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🎯 Use Cases

• Travel Health Apps – Show real‑time outbreak warnings by country/region (e.g., “Ebola in Uganda”).
• News Aggregators – Automatically publish breaking disease outbreak news with severity flags.
• Public Health Dashboards – Monitor epidemic trends for government or NGOs.
• Academic Research – Build datasets for epidemiological studies (e.g., spatial/temporal analysis).
• Insurance & Risk Analytics – Assess health risks in specific regions for travel or business.
• Pharmaceutical Intelligence – Track disease spread for vaccine distribution and supply chain.
• Media Monitoring – Alert journalists when a new “High” severity outbreak is declared.

With $0.05 per 1,000 results, this actor pays for itself even with daily runs.

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Is this data official?

Yes. All sources are official government or multilateral health agencies (WHO, CDC, ECDC, PAHO). The WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper does not use third‑party aggregators.

Q2. How fresh is the data?

• WHO DON: Updated within 24 hours of an outbreak announcement.
• WHO RSS: Near real‑time.
• CDC / ECDC: Updated daily.

The actor scrapes the latest page each run. You can schedule it to run every hour for real‑time alerts.

Q3. Why is the price so low?

The actor uses efficient RSS parsing and respects rate limits. For 1,000 results, it consumes minimal compute time. We pass the savings to you.

Q4. Can I monitor custom sources?

Yes. Use target_urls to add any RSS or HTML page that lists outbreak news (e.g., national health ministries).

Q5. How accurate is disease/country detection?

The actor maintains a curated list of 30+ diseases and 100+ countries. It matches case‑insensitively. Accuracy is >95% for official WHO notices. You can extend the lists by modifying the script.

Q6. What does severity “High” mean?

It includes keywords: emergency, outbreak, alert, pandemic, epidemic, critical, death, fatal, ebola, mpox, cholera, plague, marburg, lassa, avian. Moderate includes warning, watch, elevated, increase, surge, cluster, cases, confirmed, novel. Low covers everything else.

Q7. Do I need a proxy?

Not for moderate usage (a few runs per day). For high‑frequency scraping or if you encounter 429 errors, enable residential proxies.

Q8. Can I get historical data?

The actor returns the most recent notices from each source. For historical archives, use the target_urls parameter with a specific archived page (e.g., WHO’s archived outbreak news).

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📝 Technical Notes

• Dependencies: curl_cffi (for TLS fingerprint spoofing) and BeautifulSoup4 (with XML parser for RSS).
• RSS Fix: Uses soup.find("tag").get_text() instead of findtext() for robust extraction.
• WHO DON Parsing: Tries multiple CSS selectors and falls back to link scanning.
• Deduplication: Removes duplicate notices by ID across sources.
• Pricing Example: 100 outbreak notices cost ~$0.005. 10,000 notices cost $0.50.
• Compliance: Respects robots.txt and uses polite delays.

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🔍 SEO Keywords

WHO Disease Outbreak News Scraper, WHO outbreak monitor, Ebola tracker, Mpox alert, CDC disease outbreak RSS, ECDC epidemic intelligence, public health API, travel health alerts, real-time outbreak data, Apify health actor, epidemiology dataset, disease surveillance, global health alerts, pandemic early warning

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Start monitoring global disease outbreaks today – for less than $0.05 per 1,000 alerts.