(CIDRAP News) – Two Maryland pharmaceutical companies recently announced that they have submitted proposals to produce and deliver at least 25 million doses of a next-generation anthrax vaccine to the nation's Strategic National Stockpile.
(CIDRAP News) Experts and industry leaders speaking at congressional hearings this week on the nationwide Salmonella outbreak said federal agencies should take cues from state programs if they want to improve the traceability of fresh produce and the success of foodborne disease outbreak investigations.
(CIDRAP News) The president of the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) complained to Congress last week that the federal program that monitors the air for dangerous pathogens in major cities is a heavy burden on state and local laboratories.
(CIDRAP News) – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to adopt new automated equipment that will be able to detect dangerous airborne pathogens in major US cities in as little as 4 hours, with a goal of starting deployment in the fall of 2010, DHS officials told Congress last week.
(CIDRAP News) – In the history of infectious diseases, coincidence plays an extraordinary role. In 1706, Cotton Mather purchased a slave named Onesimus who happened to come from a tribe that practiced variolation, and so smallpox prevention was introduced to North America.
(CIDRAP News) The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a status report yesterday on progress states have made toward preparing for a flood of people needing medical care in the wake of an event such as a terrorist attack or an influenza pandemic.
(CIDRAP News) – A leak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) virus at any of six proposed sites for a large federal laboratory to study foreign animal diseases could cost billions of dollars, according to a recent report by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
(CIDRAP News) – The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today released a 6-month status report on its progress in implementing a food safety plan launched in November in response to high-profile contamination incidents involving domestic and imported foods over the past few years.
(CIDRAP News) The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced that it is allocating states and major metropolitan areas $1.1 billion to strengthen public health preparedness and help healthcare facilities respond to emergency events such as an influenza pandemic or terrorist attack.
(CIDRAP News) – Anticipating that a terrorist attack, influenza pandemic, or natural disaster will someday exhaust regional or national critical care systems, an expert task force recently issued a comprehensive series of reports that takes stock of current capabilities and recommends a surge framework that would care for as many patients as possible but would necessarily exclude some.