News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials yesterday announced a plan to supply mail carriers with antibiotics so they will be protected and prepared to deliver the drugs to others in case of an anthrax attack.

The program will start with a $500,000 pilot project involving carriers in Minneapolis and St. Paul, which were chosen because of their extensive bioterrorism preparations, according to an Associated Press (AP) report yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Seven universities will share $10.9 million in federal funds to study the ability of state and local public health systems to respond to emergencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Two biotechnology companies—Crucell, based in the Netherlands, and Integrated BioTherapeutics, based in Germantown, Md.—recently announced that they have received $30 million and $22 million contracts, respectively, from the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop single vaccines that would protect against both Ebola and Marburg viruses.

(CIDRAP News) – The Rand Corp., responding to a request from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), recently unveiled a set of proposed standards for cities to use as they establish plans to distribute antibiotics to the public in the event of a bioterrorist attack or other public health emergency.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent Associated Press (AP) report revealed that, in the name of preventing biological attacks, the United States has rules barring the exportation of vaccines for avian influenza, smallpox, yellow fever, and many other pathogens to five countries classified as sponsors of terrorism.

(CIDRAP News) – Two of the nation's five biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) labs lack outer-ring security controls to protect against a terrorist attack or theft of some of the world's most dangerous pathogens, such as the Ebola and smallpox viruses, according to a new report from the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO).

(CIDRAP News) – The federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has opened the door to voluntary anthrax vaccination for first responders, revising an 8-year-old recommendation against that step.

See related article posted today: "Experts stress vigilance over emerging, unpredictable diseases"

(CIDRAP News) – Saying Americans are threatened by a rising tide of emerging and resurging infectious diseases, the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH) today issued a report calling on the US government to launch a comprehensive campaign to battle the microbes at home and abroad.