Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
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US Provides $40 Million To Tackle Infectious Diseases
Developing countries will receive extra support to prevent, detect and respond to health threats as the US government announced plans last month (13 February) to boost funding for nations at high risk from infectious disease. Read More »
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US Senate Releases Draft Future Pandemic Preparedness Plan - Asks for Feedback
On June 10, 2020 the US Senate released a white paper titled "Preparing for the Next Pandemic" under the signature of Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. The white paper has five recommendations to address future pandemics based on lessons learned from COVID-19 and the past 20 years of pandemic planning. "The five recommendations...along with a series of questions at the end of this white paper, are intended to elicit recommendations that Congress can consider and act on this year," Senator Alexander said in a statement, adding that "I am inviting comments, responses, and any additional recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to consider. This feedback will be shared with my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican." This feedback from the public will be accepted until June 26, 2020... Read More »
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US Will Screen Air Passengers For Signs Of Ebola. Will It Work?
If you’ve been following the Ebola story, you may have noticed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a move yesterday to try to keep the disease off US soil. At the five US airports that receive most passengers from the three countries where Ebola is circulating, passengers will be singled out on the basis of their travel records; interviewed by means of a questionnaire; and have their temperature taken, to see if they have a fever...
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Using Open Technology To Build a Biodefense Against the Coronavirus
As the number of US cases of the coronavirus rises, how will healthcare professionals be able to tell the difference between which panicked patients with similar symptoms has what? Even if the patient hasn't traveled to Wuhan or China recently, what if they sat at a Starbucks with someone who did? With the incubation time-lag before symptoms appear, who would even know? The challenge of monitoring 330 million people for infectious disease outbreaks is daunting. Take the flu as an example. During the last flu season which, as already discussed, was not as complex as this year's season, approximately 35.5 million Americans had flu symptoms, 16.5 million received medical care, 490,600 were hospitalized and 34,200 died.
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VA Plans To Build Nationwide High-Frequency Radio Network To Communicate During Emergencies
The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to build a nationwide high-frequency radio network to connect its medical facilities in case of an emergency that knocks out other forms of communications -- applying century-old technology to current needs...
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VA Top Scientist Worries That Ebola Has Mutated To Become More Contagious
...[Peter Jahrling] has been watching this Ebola epidemic with a mixture of horror, concern and scientific curiosity. And there's one thing he's found particularly worrisome: the mutations of the virus that are circulating now look to be more contagious than the ones that have turned up in the past...
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VanRoekel Talks Firsthand Of Ebola-Plagued West Africa
Steven VanRoekel, about two months into his detail as chief innovation officer of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its battle against Ebola, recently spent seven days in Ebola-stricken Liberia. Despite painting a disastrous and bleak picture of a region crippled by the epidemic, VanRoekel did say, in some ways, things were beginning to return to normal...
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Viral Intelligence
The CDC thinks that American hospitals are prepared to handle Ebola. RNs beg to differ...
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Virus Hitting The U.S. Could Be 'Tip Of Iceberg,' CDC Official Says
A respiratory virus is sending hundreds of children to hospitals throughout the Midwest and beyond, health officials say. The unusually high number of hospitalizations reported could be "just the tip of the iceberg in terms of severe cases," said Mark Pallansch, a virologist and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Viral Diseases...
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Waste from Pharmaceutical Plants in India and China Promotes Antibiotic-Resistant Superbugs
Superbugs, disease-causing microbes that have mutated to become resistant to antibiotics, are a threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people today and many millions tomorrow. These organisms turn curable illnesses such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and pneumococcal pneumonia into deadly ones. This looming public health disaster has many causes. Overuse of antibiotics by humans and the routine use of antibiotics to help farm animals grow faster are key causes in the United States. One worrisome cause that has received virtually no attention until now is wastewater from drug manufacturing facilities in India and China, where a large portion of the world’s antibiotic supply is produced...
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We May Have Reached The 'Apocalyptic Scenario' With Antibiotics
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden made headlines last year when he proclaimed that the United States would "soon be in a post-antibiotic era," meaning we'd be plagued by everyday infections that our drugs could no longer handle...
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We're Running Out Of Antibiotics
It’s difficult to imagine a world without antibiotics. [...] Yet in 1945, while accepting a Nobel Prize for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming warned of a future in which antibiotics had been used with abandon and bacteria had grown resistant to them. Today, this future is imminent. Read More »
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White House Actions On Antibiotic Resistance: Big Steps, Plus Disappointments
The United States government proposed several important steps last week that, if accomplished, will significantly change how this country attempts to counter the advance of antibiotic resistance, bringing us within reach of the more complete programs which exist in Europe. But as significant as it is, the new program has some perplexing gaps that left experts attending to the issue disappointed...
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WHO Credits mHealth App With Helping Nigeria Get Rid Of Ebola
The World Health Organization has declared Nigeria free of the Ebola virus transmission, and public health agencies are declaring that an mHealth initiative deserves much of the credit...
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WHO Sounds Alarm On Widespread 'Superbug' Infections
Disease-causing bacteria that resist antibiotic treatment are now widespread in every part of the world and have reached "alarming levels" in many areas, says the first global report on the issue from the World Health Organization. Read More »
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