News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) offers a few predictions on when certain new countermeasures against biological threats will become available, including a forecast for two novel influenza drugs and possibly a next-generation anthrax vaccine within the next 5 years.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials are inviting the public to weigh in on whether research on H5N1 avian influenza viruses, including strains modified in the lab to make them more transmissible, is risky enough to require new safety regulations and precautions.

(CIDRAP News) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revised its list of potentially dangerous biological agents and toxins and the regulations covering them, and some of the changes have public health laboratories concerned.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently updated its strategy for developing and acquiring countermeasures against threats such as bioterror attacks and pandemic flu, a document that spells out the federal game plan for the next 5 years.

(CIDRAP News) – A dramatic 78% drop in measles deaths since the start of the decade has global health officials eyeing eradicating the disease, but two major setbacks— resurgence of the disease in Africa and shrinking disease-fighting funds —threaten the efforts, experts said today.

(CIDRAP News) – After a second round of committee negotiations today, the World Health Assembly (WHA) agreed to postpone setting a date for destruction of the world's remaining smallpox virus stocks for another 3 years.

(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) – At the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva today, the full group adopted a review of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) performance during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, while a committee made some last-minute changes to a framework for sharing flu viruses.