News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released a report detailing the first year of its public health "do not board" (DNB) list, a new tool designed to prohibit those with serious communicable diseases from flying into or out of the country.

Data from the first year of the program, from June 2008 to May 2008, appear today in the Sep 19 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

(CIDRAP News) – Five years after the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic spread around the globe via air travel, significant barriers still stand in the way of tracking down and notifying airline passengers who may have been exposed to an infectious disease.

(CIDRAP News) – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) this week charged that federal pandemic planning efforts rely too heavily on law enforcement and national security approaches, in effect making people, not disease, the enemy.

(CIDRAP News) – US health officials failed to follow international health regulations and made other errors in dealing with Andrew Speaker, the man with drug-resistant tuberculosis who sparked a health scare by traveling overseas in May, according to a report released this week by Democrats in Congress.