United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Apr 25 appointed Peter Jan Graaff to lead the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), taking the place of Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed of Mauritania, who had held the position since late December. Ould Cheikh Ahmed succeeded UNMEER's first chief, Anthony Banbury.
Through a review of DNA data from listeriosis cases, federal health officials have identified two more patients who were affected by a Listeria monocytogenes outbreak linked to Blue Bell Creameries products, increasing the case count to 10.
Note: The measles item was corrected on Jan 15, because the female traveler who had measles was mistakenly called the index patient. We apologize for the error.
Two new cases of MERS-CoV were recorded today by the country's Ministry of Health (MOH), the first since Jan 8, bringing the total for this year to 10 for the country and the total since June 2012 to 835.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today approved a meningococcal vaccine for infants in sub-Saharan Africa that has already proved successful in older children and young adults along the continent's "meningitis belt," the agency said in a news release.
Sanofi Pasteur announced yesterday it will seek approval of its dengue virus vaccine in a number of dengue-plagued countries, following completion of a large phase 3 trial that showed overall vaccine efficacy of about 61%.
The Obama administration announced today that it is suspending funding of "gain-of-function" (GOF) studies on influenza and other viruses to allow time to assess the risks and benefits of such controversial research and develop a federal policy on it.
Another 34 patients have tested positive for enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), raising the US total to 628 cases, and Florida has recorded its first confirmed case, according to today's update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Cases have now been confirmed in 44 states, the CDC reported. The only states with no confirmed cases are Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, Alaska, and Hawaii.
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed a new MERS-CoV infection today—the 10th since Sep 8—as well as the death of a recently reported case-patient.
The new case is in a 60-year-old Saudi from Riyadh who had unspecified preexisting disease. He is hospitalized in an intensive care unit (ICU) and is not a healthcare worker nor did he have any recent exposure to animals, the MOH said.
As PAHO stresses mosquito control and other steps, the US chikungunya total tops 900 cases.
The rate of two important healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in critically ill children decreased substantially from 2007 to 2012, an important factor in patient outcomes as well as in monetary savings, according to findings of a study yesterday in Pediatrics.
