News & Perspective

– WASHINGTON, DC (CIDRAP News) – Health authorities must remain alert to new and renascent disease threats, experts warned this week at an international medical meeting.

(CIDRAP News) – Lax biosecurity measures around poultry in some countries could lead to an increasing number of H5N1 avian influenza outbreaks that could exacerbate the global food crisis, an official from the United Nations Food and AgricultureOrganization (FAO) said at an international infectious disease conference in Malaysia today.

(CIDRAP News) – The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted today that climate change will increase disease outbreaks by a variety of mechanisms and threaten human health in other ways.

(CIDRAP News) – Brazil's health ministry said this week that it has asked the military to help combat mosquitoes that spread dengue fever, as the number of sick patients with the disease grew to at least 55,000 so far this year.

Though dengue fever is common in Brazil, officials have said this year's outbreak is the worst in recent memory, averaging 1.4 new cases per minute, according to a report today from CNN.

(CIDRAP News) – The United States could be the next country to experience an epidemic of dengue illnesses if the disease keeps aggressively expanding, senior officials from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) warned this week.