News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A recent set of articles in Vaccine has confirmed previous preliminary reports that young children who received influenza shots in the 2010-11 flu season had a slightly increased risk of a febrile seizure after vaccination, especially if they received a new pneumococcal vaccine at the same time.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of US gastroenteritis deaths more than doubled in 8 years, with Clostridium difficile and norovirus as the two most common culprits, researchers reported today at an infectious disease conference.

(CIDRAP News) – Flu activity has taken a notable upswing in some Southern Hemisphere countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Bolivia, and Brazil, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today in its regular update.

(CIDRAP News) – Influenza activity is widespread across most of Australia and is running above baseline levels in New Zealand, though activity patterns and circulating virus strains vary among Southern Hemisphere countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its latest global flu update.

(CIDRAP News) – The number of swine-origin H3N2 (variant H3N2, or H3N2v) influenza cases in the United States has climbed by 9 in the past week, to 305, and another rare swine-origin variant, H1N1v, has cropped up in Missouri, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.

(CIDRAP News) – An annual report released yesterday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) profiles a wide range of CDC influenza-related projects around the world, from flu surveillance in Indonesia to vaccine effectiveness studies in El Salvador and epidemiology training in Ghana.