Apr 13, 2011
(CIDRAP News) – Connecticut lawmakers are set to debate a law that would require most employers to offer paid sick leave, armed with the results of a new survey that suggests that San Francisco workers benefitted from a similar law.
(CIDRAP News) A review of several after-action pandemic assessments released today shows that earlier investments in emergency preparedness were helpful, but serious gaps such as low flu vaccination rates in minority groups and continued erosion of public health infrastructure could undermine response to the next national health emergency.
Oct 20, 2010
(CIDRAP News) A new study suggests that about half of essential workers, such as police and emergency medical personnel, might be unwilling to work during a serious pandemic. Meanwhile, another study indicates that it's common for employees in private industry to work while sick with flu-like symptoms.
Both studies were published on Sep 25 in an early online edition of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
This week brought another milestone to the human-influenza history book. The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday declared that the novel H1N1 influenza pandemic is over, that it has "largely run its course."
The nature of our response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic has moved from urgent to watch-and-see. This is the ideal time to take stock of what happened during the last 14 months and to make decisions about how we prepare for and deal with what comes next. We know that pandemics are a fact of life; another will emerge at some point unknown.
Jun 23, 2010
(CIDRAP News) More than half of workers without paid sick days went to work when they had an infectious illness such as the flu, compared with 37% of those with paid leave, according to a report today from a nonprofit group that also found strong support for legislating paid sick days.