(CIDRAP News) A person exposed to a heavy dose of airborne anthrax spores would need to take antibiotics for at least 4 months to avoid illness, twice as long as the regimen used after the anthrax attacks of 2001, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
(CIDRAP News) Six months after President Bush proposed the idea, the US House this week overwhelmingly passed "Project Bioshield," a plan to promote the development of drugs and vaccines needed to defend the nation against attacks with biological and other unconventional weapons.
(CIDRAP News) The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering a new computer model to help hospitals and health systems estimate how many staff members they would need to dispense antibiotics or vaccinate people in response to bioterrorism or a major disease outbreak.
(CIDRAP News) The US Postal Service (USPS) is poised to test anthrax detection systems at 14 mail-processing centers around the country once first responders in the local communities feel ready to deal with an anthrax alarm, according to a Postal Service spokesman.
(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) – A study focusing on the two plasmids, or extrachromosomal DNA rings, usually found in Bacillus anthracis cells helps explain why different varieties of anthrax differ significantly in virulence.
(CIDRAP News) Analysts who mathematically simulated the results of a major airborne anthrax attack say that very aggressive use of prophylactic antibiotics would be the key to preventing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths after such an attack.
(CIDRAP News) – A Senate committee yesterday unanimously approved the Bush administration's "BioShield" plan to promote vaccines and treatments for biodefense but blocked the administration's proposal for compensating healthcare workers harmed by the smallpox vaccine.
(CIDRAP News) People whose hands may be contaminated by anthrax should wash them with either antimicrobial or conventional soap and water, but should not try to cleanse them with an alcohol-based hand rub, a new study suggests.
(CIDRAP News) The results of a spraying program to control gypsy moths in British Columbia suggest that terrorists could use conventional crop-dusting equipment to spread anthrax spores over a city and potentially infect people, according to a report in a new biodefense journal.
