News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials are in the midst of crafting a framework for funding H5N1 avian influenza gain-of-function studies, and today at a workshop they heard varied feedback from researchers, biosecurity experts, and others.

(CIDRAP News) – The Obama Administration this week unveiled the nation's first national biosurveillance strategy, designed to detect a range of threats, including bioterror attacks, infectious disease outbreaks, agricultural threats, and foodborne illness outbreaks.

(CIDRAP News) – The goal of an integrated national biosurveillance system to detect threats to human and animal health, called for in a presidential directive in 2004, is still a long way from reality and faces complex obstacles, according to a workshop summary recently published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM).

(CIDRAP News) – As children return to school and promptly become infected with H1N1 influenza, emergency-room (ER) physicians nationwide are becoming increasingly anxious over their ERs' capacity to deal with an influx of flu patients.

(CIDRAP News) – With the global outbreak of novel H1N1 influenza (swine flu) entering its fourth week, physicians at emergency rooms, clinics, and hospitals around the United States say they are overwhelmed with "worried well" who have as much as doubled their patient loads.

Maryn McKennaContributing Writer

(CIDRAP News) – This in-depth article investigates the prospects for development of vaccines to head off the threat of an influenza pandemic posed by the H5N1 avian influenza virus. Its seven parts put advances in vaccine technology in perspective by illuminating the formidable barriers to producing an effective and widely usable vaccine in a short time frame.

(CIDRAP News) – At first glance, the Web page looks like an overhead shot of a fantastic game board: a map—identifiably Los Angeles—sprinkled with faceted roundels in a half-dozen colors.

(CIDRAP News) – Governmental plans for an influenza pandemic are missing an important opportunity to improve US preparedness, according to two new reports: They are not reaching out to communities and grass-roots groups that could refine plan details and increase public support.

Editor's note: This story was revised Mar 14 to correct a misquote, introduced in editing, that was attributed to Michael T. Osterholm and to include qualifying details that were omitted from the earlier version.

(CIDRAP News) – A recent study has raised expectations that simple surgical masks might offer a reasonably good substitute for N-95 respirators for healthcare workers seeking protection from airborne viruses, but others say the study is seriously flawed.