News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – In a new chapter in a 2-year legal battle over the US military's anthrax vaccination program, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has reaffirmed its earlier finding that the anthrax vaccine used by the military is safe and effective for preventing all forms of anthrax.

(CIDRAP News) – If public health emergency preparedness were a college class, the federal government would be considered a poor pupil by the nonprofit organization Trust For America's Health (TFAH), which gives the government a D+ in a new report released yesterday.

That grade was based on a survey of 20 leading public health experts, who used 12 criteria to measure preparedness.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently reconstructed the 1918 pandemic influenza virus for research purposes, has classified the virus as a "select agent," imposing special rules on groups that handle it.

(CIDRAP News) – Recent US government contracts to test two experimental anthrax drugs could lead to the purchase of up to 100,000 doses of each.

(CIDRAP News) – Hospital residents did poorly on a test of their ability to recognize and manage diseases potentially related to bioterrorism, but they fared much better after taking an online training program, according to a report in Archives of Internal Medicine.

Aug 11, 2004 (CIDRAP News) – Government officials and scientists yesterday recognized the formal opening of construction on a laboratory that will house research on the most dangerous emerging infectious diseases and potential bioterrorism agents.

(CIDRAP News) –Weather and soil conditions in several areas of the United States are leading to record livestock losses from anthrax. This summer, approximately 400 animals have died in North and South Dakota, Texas, and Minnesota.

(CIDRAP News) – The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) is calling the US government's stockpile of antiviral drugs "totally inadequate" in the face of a potential influenza pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – An anthrax outbreak in the small African country of Guinea Bissau has killed 4 people and sickened more than 80.

Thirteen patients have been hospitalized, according to a World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) news release issued this month.

(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Defense (DoD) is seeking a federal appeals court's permission to revive its mandatory anthrax vaccination program, which was stopped by a lower court's ruling in October 2004.