News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – The CIA has good evidence that four nations—Iraq, North Korea, Russia, and France—have secret stores of smallpox virus, according to a Washington Post report based on comments from officials speaking anonymously.

(CIDRAP News) – The world's last naturally acquired case of smallpox occurred almost exactly 25 years ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes in today's issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The smallpox case occurred in the Merca District of Somalia on Oct 26, 1977, the CDC says. Less than 3 years later, in May 1980, the World Health Organization declared the world free of naturally occurring smallpox.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States deserves good marks for its efforts to improve core aspects of public health preparedness in the past year, but the nation performed generally poorly in international aid and cooperation to reduce threats to public health, according to the American Public Health Association (APHA).

Federal health authorities provide opportunities in the next month for input as they revise the current policy regarding vaccination of the general population.

(CIDRAP News) – It is 13 days since the emergence of a hypothetical smallpox epidemic caused by the release of virus in three US shopping malls. Some 16,000 cases have been reported, 1,000 people have died, and the nation is running out of vaccine. Hospitals are overflowing, and federal and state officials are at odds over how to contain the epidemic.

Science article says more than twice as many cases of inhalational anthrax could have occurred last fall if workers had not been given prophylactic antibiotics.

(CIDRAP News) – A report that paved the way for the World Health Organization's (WHO's) recent recommendation to keep intact the two known collections of smallpox virus cites a wide range of ongoing research on smallpox, including genome sequencing, molecular diagnostic techniques, antiviral drugs, and new vaccines.