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(CIDRAP News) Postmortem tests have confirmed that a cow from an Alberta farm had bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, Canadian officials announced today. The news marked the first known BSE case in North America since another Alberta case was found in 1993.
(CIDRAP News) – The United States remains underinvested in public health even though terrorism and new diseases like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) have raised the public health system's profile, the nation's top disease-prevention leader told public health graduates at the University of Minnesota yesterday.
(CIDRAP News) In a study of 75 SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) patients from the Amoy Gardens outbreak in Hong Kong, most patients improved after a few days of hospitalization but then worsened in their second week of illness, possibly because of an overly intense immune response to the virus.
(CIDRAP News) – The devastating outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the Netherlands is showing signs of losing steam, and a smaller outbreak in neighboring Belgium has been halted, according to European officials.
(CIDRAP News) – Recommended infection control precautions apparently failed to protect nine Toronto hospital staff members from contracting SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) while caring for a critically ill SARS patient, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported today.
(CIDRAP News) – In new guidelines for obtaining federal bioterrorism preparedness funds, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is urging states to press on with their smallpox vaccination efforts and other smallpox response planning.
(CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials say businesses and universities should go ahead with meetings and events, such as graduation ceremonies, that include travelers from areas affected by SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
(CIDRAP News) The World Health Organization (WHO) today expressed closely guarded optimism that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) can be contained.
"Experiences in a growing number of countries indicate that the disease can be contained, thus supporting WHO's overall objective: to prevent SARS from becoming widely established as another new disease in humans," the organization said in its online update.
(CIDRAP News) At least 92 people got sick after eating ground beef that had been intentionally contaminated with a nicotine-containing pesticide at a Michigan supermarket last January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
(CIDRAP News) A large-scale exercise to test the ability of government to respond to terrorism begins today with simulated signs of a biological attack in Chicago and a mock "dirty bomb" explosion in Seattle.
(CIDRAP News) Just five "super spreaders" infected most of the people who contracted SARS in Singapore, but most of those infected did not spread the disease to anyone else, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
(CIDRAP News) A pair of studies on Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat (RTE) foods and associated illness rates suggest that only a small fraction of all Listeria-contaminated foods contain enough of the pathogen to cause illness.
(CIDRAP News) The World Health Organization (WHO) today estimated the overall fatality rate for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) patients at 14% to 15%, significantly higher than previous estimates. The agency estimated the rate for people older than 64 years to be more than 50%.
(CIDRAP News) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said yesterday it will release $100 million in recently appropriated emergency funds to help states with their smallpox vaccination program and other public health preparedness efforts.
(CIDRAP News) The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today proposed rules that would require most food-related businesses to keep detailed records on all food products so that the government could trace a product's path through production and distribution in case of a contamination episode, the FDA announced today.
(CIDRAP News) Laboratory studies have shown that the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus can survive up to 2 days on plastic surfaces and at least that long in human feces, the World Health Organization (WHO) has announced.
(CIDRAP News) – A total of 103 women in recent months inadvertently received smallpox shots while pregnant or just before becoming pregnant, despite screening to prevent that scenario, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported yesterday.
The agency said the screening appears to be effective, but it plans to investigate the situation anyway.
(CIDRAP News) The worldwide cumulative case count for SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) topped 6,000 today with the addition of 207 new cases, including 176 in China, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Twenty-six more SARS deaths were reported, bringing the global total to 417.
(CIDRAP News) Although few states have finished the first stage of their smallpox vaccination programs, half of the states that responded to a recent survey said they are prepared to vaccinate their entire population in 10 days if necessary.
(CIDRAP News) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should help states adjust their smallpox vaccination plans and goals to reflect the reality that relatively few health workers have volunteered for the shots so far, the General Accounting Office (GAO) of Congress says in a report released yesterday.
