News & Perspective

(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.

(CIDRAP News) – Health officials in the Washington, DC, area today said they were working to identify people who may have been exposed to a patient with measles, as officials in other states, including Virginia, Iowa, and Pennsylvania, were responding to three other recent measles exposures.

(CIDRAP News) – Close to half of local public health workers who responded to a survey in three Maryland counties last year said they probably would not come to work during an influenza pandemic, according to a study published today.

(CIDRAP News) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the recent detection of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian cow shows that active surveillance programs for BSE are working.

"The identification of a single case of BSE is not a cause for panic," Andrew Speedy of the FAO's Animal Production and Health Division said in a news release from the agency's Rome headquarters.