(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.
(CIDRAP News) Robin Robinson, PhD, who led the development of the first H5N1 influenza vaccine approved for human use, has been named the first director of the US government's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Robinson's appointment this week.
(CIDRAP News) State shares of federal spending to combat public health problems ranging from bioterrorism to obesity vary widely, with midwestern states generally getting the slimmest slices, the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH) reported today.
