epidemiology

See the following -

20 Orlando Health Workers Watched For MERS Symptoms

John Lantigua | Palm Beach Post | May 13, 2014

Nineteen employees at two Orlando hospitals who came in contact with a man infected with the rare MERS virus were sent home under quarantine and are being closely monitored for symptoms. An additional worker who displayed symptoms was put in isolation in the hospital...

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45 New Ebola Cases Caused Daily By Patients Being Turned Away By Overwhelmed Volunteers

Jonathan Benson | Natural News | September 12, 2014

The collapse of Liberia's healthcare system due to the Ebola crisis is spurring as many as 45 new cases of the illness daily, according to new data. Researchers from the UK figure that each patient turned away from already full clinics is inadvertently spreading the disease to 1.5 other people, a rate of reproduction that could result in a full-on "nightmare doomsday scenario."...

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A Real Stand Against Antibiotic Resistance Starts At The Farm, Not The Hospital

Arielle Duhaime-Ross | The Verge | September 30, 2014

The US government made history on September 18th when President Obama signed an executive order establishing a task force to combat antibiotic resistance at the federal level. The order outlined general goals such as tracking the use of antibiotics and creating incentives for drug development. Some applauded the announcement, while pointing out other countries’ continued failure to do the same...

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Boston Trackers Chart Ebola Outbreak

Lindsay Kalter | BizSmart | August 14, 2014

HealthMap.org, a high-tech infectious disease tracking system run by Boston epidemiologists, has emerged as a critical tool in the battle against Ebola in West Africa — tracking its rapid and unusual spread ahead of official reports by monitoring thousands of local news and social media sources...

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Cancer Maps Show The Power And Limits Of Data For Public Policy

Joseph Marks | Nextgov.com | May 7, 2014

...Linda Pickle has spent decades using maps and other spatial analyses to gather insights from cancer data. She likely had the first copy of Geographic Information System software at the National Institutes of Health, NCI’s parent agency, she told Nextgov recently, and she’s watched as visualization data went from “little better than crayons” to Google Maps applications that nearly anyone can use...

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CDC Official Protests Federal Medical Response Cuts

Diane Barnes | Nextgov.com | April 29, 2014

More than half a decade of reductions to spending on state and local public-health agencies has already been "extremely damaging" to capabilities across the country for responding to unconventional attacks and other disasters, Dr. Ali Khan, director of the Public Health Preparedness and Response Office at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Global Security Newswire in an interview. 

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Ebola’s Deadly Spread In Africa Driven By Public Health Failures, Cultural Beliefs

Dick Thompson | National Geographic | July 2, 2014

As the largest Ebola outbreak in history continues unabated, health authorities from 11 West African countries and international agencies began a two-day crisis meeting today in Accra, Ghana, on how to combat the crisis...

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Florida Facing Threat From Two Mosquito-Borne Diseases

Barbara Liston | Reuters | June 4, 2014

Two mosquito-borne diseases - dengue fever and chikungunya - are posing a serious threat to Florida and residents should take steps to control mosquito populations to try to limit the danger, a leading health expert said on Wednesday...

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GMO Debate Grows Over Golden Rice In The Philippines

Miles O'Brien | PBS | September 17, 2014

Vitamin A deficiency is a deadly threat to kids and pregnant mothers in the Third World. In the Philippines, the best nutrient sources are rarely part of the daily diet, so researchers have tried adding vitamin A to rice, a staple food...

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HealthMap Tracks Ebola’s Footprints Online, Preparing For The Next Big Outbreak

Nidhi Subbaraman | BetaBoston | October 6, 2014

Since March, a group of data-savvy epidemiologists at Boston Children’s Hospital have watched Ebola slowly spread through West Africa, ominously lighting up their dials first as a trickle, then a torrent of mentions on social media and online news reports.  The group, HealthMap, has been steadily ahead of the curve tracking this year’s outbreak. One day, they hope to be a step ahead of the next big disease...

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Here’s How Researchers In Boston Spotted The Ebola Outbreak Before The World Health Organization

Timothy McGrath | Los Angeles Daily News | August 13, 2014

On March 23 the World Health Organization announced there was an Ebola outbreak in Guinea. But a team of researchers four thousand miles away in Boston already knew that...

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Keys To Controlling Ebola In The US: Travel Records And Infection Control

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | October 1, 2014

If you’re at all interested in infectious diseases, you’ve probably heard by now that a person traveled to the United States while infected with Ebola, was diagnosed and is now in a hospital in Texas...The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention held a press conference yesterday afternoon (transcript is here), and WIRED’s Greg Miller covered it...

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Liberia Closes Its Borders To Stop Ebola

Jen Christensen | CNN.com | July 28, 2014

The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history continues to plague West Africa as leaders scramble to stop the virus from spreading.  Over the weekend, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf closed most of the country's borders...

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Medical Records Reveal Deceased Texas Ebola Patient Sent Home With High Fever

Lauren Gambino | The Guardian | October 10, 2014

Thomas Duncan, the first person to die of Ebola in the US, was released from hospital with a 103F fever on his first visit, despite telling a nurse he had recently travelled from Africa and exhibiting key symptoms of the deadly virus, it was revealed on Friday...

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Mining Data For State CDC, Maine HIE Pilot Project Aims For Population Analysis

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | September 10, 2012

The Maine HealthInfoNet is aggregating and analyzing health information exchange data at the population level, with the aim of finding trends and specific figures that currently evade most tools of epidemiology. Read More »