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A World Health Organization (WHO) emergency committee has extended a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) over the global polio situation and the temporary recommendations that came with it, the WHO said in a statement yesterday. The group met by teleconference on Jul 31, its first meeting since it first declared the PHEIC on May 5.
The agency also establishes new steps to control Salmonella and Campylobacter in poultry.
An emergency committee next week will consider if West Africa's Ebola outbreak is a health emergency as US officials prepare to airlift two sick American aid workers.
The neuraminidase inhibitor laninamivir, made by Biota Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., failed to perform better than a placebo at alleviating influenza symptoms in a phase 2 trial, the company said in a press release today, adding that it will no longer develop the drug.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has turned down a long-pending petition to declare antibiotic-resistant (ABR) Salmonella an adulterant in raw ground meat and poultry, saying there's not enough evidence to support the change.
The WHO will launch a $100 million plan tomorrow, and the CDC advises against nonessential travel.
Journal editors call for specific steps, while the ASM said it wants the NAS to weigh the risks and benefits.
Resistance to artemisinin, the main drug for treating malaria, has now spread throughout Southeast Asia, including critical border regions, and a genetic mutation in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite that causes the disease may be the culprit, according to a study today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Statement is a counterpoint to recent calls for restrictions on gain-of-function research.
The illness continues to exact a heavy toll on healthcare workers and disrupt aid.
The steady flow of imported chikungunya infections linked mainly to travel to the Caribbean continued in the United States last week, with 98 more cases reported, lifting the total to 398, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said yesterday.
Producers recently began shipping doses of a US supply that has more quadrivalent products in the mix this year.
Six more states reported Cyclospora cases in the past week, and health officials are still seeking a common food source.
With the continuing spread of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday issued an official advisory for US HCWs to consider EVD and possible isolation pending diagnosis in patients who have Ebola-like symptoms and a travel history to affected countries within the previous 21 days.
An analysis of seven children infected with H7N9 avian influenza during the outbreak's second wave in China found that the illnesses were mild, a phenomenon that could contribute to spread of the virus. Researchers from China's Guangdong province published their findings today in an early online edition of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.
Two new developments are fanning concerns about the international spread of the disease.
Cases in the Americas now total almost 475,000, with the Dominican Republic accounting for most of last week's rise.
Significantly fewer infectious organisms are transferred through a fist bump than through a handshake or even a "high five," so fist bumps would be a more hygienic way of greeting others, says a study from the United Kingdom released today in the American Journal of Infection Control, the journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
New York's Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is not required to hold public hearings on the safety of feeding antibiotics at subtherapeutic levels to food animals, a decision that advocates called a blow to public health, Food Safety News (FSN) reported today.
In 2013, just 57% of girls and 35% of boys had received 1 of 3 doses of HPV vaccine.
