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Apr 20, 2011
(CIDRAP News) Under a new US Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, small meat and poultry plants under the food safety authority of state inspectors will be able to ship their products across state lines.
In the voluntary program, plants with 25 or fewer employees will be inspected by state personnel who have been trained in enforcing federal meat and poultry standards, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said.
(CIDRAP News) – Doctors are parents' most trusted source of vaccine-safety information, and physicians say they're spending more time during well-child visits educating parents about vaccines and addressing concerns, according to two new surveys.
Apr 19, 2011
(CIDRAP News) A World Health Organization (WHO) working group on influenza virus sharing capped off a week of negotiations with a final agreement that establishes a framework for sharing vaccine strains alongside a system for improving the flow of pandemic vaccine and medications to developing countries.
(CIDRAP News) Children have been getting influenza vaccinations in greater numbers and earlier in the season in recent years, but parents have not responded to efforts to extend the flu vaccination season into January and February, according to an analysis of millions of health insurance claims.
Apr 18, 2011
(CIDRAP News) Scientists report that they found the common pathogen Staphylococus aureus on close to half of 136 raw meat and poultry samples from five US cities and that more than half of the isolates were resistant to several antibiotics, but they say the public health significance of the findings is not clear.
(CIDRAP News) Flu activity across the United States continued to show signs of slowing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
For the eighth week in a row, the percentage of doctor's visits for flu-like illness dropped, falling to 1.4% from 1.6% the previous week, the CDC reported in its weekly update. All 10 of the CDC's regions stayed below their baseline flu-visit levels.
Apr 14, 2010
(CIDRAP News) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a set of standards for public health preparedness capabilities to help state and local public health agencies set priorities and strategies in an age of budget-cutting.
(CIDRAP News) Because of deep-rooted barriers, there is little chance that H5N1 avian influenza can be expelled within the next 10 years from the six countries where it remains entrenched, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says in a new report.
Apr 13, 2011
(CIDRAP News) The rollout of a new Web-based system for screening imported food and drugs last year stumbled because of software interface problems, but it is now operating at four entry ports, with a goal of becoming operational at all of them by the end of the year, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, told legislators today.
(CIDRAP News) Leaders from a World Health Organization (WHO) working group on virus sharing and vaccine issues related to pandemic preparedness today said they hope to reach an agreement by Friday (Apr 15) so that it could go to the World Health Assembly (WHA) for a vote in May.
Apr 12, 2011