News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Gunmen in Karachi, Pakistan, today opened fire on a doctor from Ghana working on a polio vaccination campaign and his Pakistani driver, putting both in the hospital, according to an Al Jazeera report.

(CIDRAP News) – Though botulism outbreaks in Europe are often traced to home-canned food, three recent outbreaks were linked to commercially distributed food, raising important food safety issues, investigators reported last week.

(CIDRAP News) – Europe's Escherichia coli O104:H4 outbreak is a reminder that even countries with strong public health systems are vulnerable to epidemics and that systems for detecting and responding to diseases need to be continually strengthened, Dr Marc Sprenger, director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has deleted the name of a German seed importer from a risk assessment report on the recent cluster of Escherichia coli cases in France, out of concern about potential unnecessary harm to the company, CIDRAP News learned today.

(CIDRAP News) – A World Health Assembly (WHA)committee that took up a resolution to destroy the remaining stocks of smallpox virus failed to reach an agreement today, despite a working group's attempts to find an acceptable solution.