An 86-year-old man in Hong Kong has contracted H9N2 avian flu, the first human case involving that strain in the region in 4 years, the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said today.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a travel health notice because of recent cases of chikungunya on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, the agency said today in a news release.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed the two most recent cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in Saudi Arabia, in 51- and 26-year-old women.
The agency offered a few new details in the cases, which were first reported by Saudi officials on Dec 5.
Supplies of tuberculin skin test antigen solutions are expected to return to normal in January, following shortages that health providers have been experiencing since 2012, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in the latest issue of Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report (MMWR).
Narrow-spectrum antibiotics were associated with a 10-hour shorter hospital stay compared with broad-spectrum therapy for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children—an 18% drop—according to a multicenter retrospective cohort study yesterday in Pediatrics.
The biggest push to vaccinate children in seven Middle Eastern countries against polio starts this week, with a goal of reaching 23 million kids in Syria and neighboring nations, the World Health Organization (WHO) said today. The campaign aims to reach all children under age 5 over the next few months, whether they live at home or in displaced populations.
Saudi Arabia's health ministry today announced two more Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infections, one of which appears to be in a health worker with an asymptomatic infection who had contact with a confirmed case, according to a machine-translation of a statement posted on the ministry's Web site.
An expert on variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human form of the animal malady known as mad cow disease, claims that the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) has neglected to employ recently developed methods of sterilizing surgical instruments used on patients with the disease, thus putting subsequent surgical patients at risk, said a story last week in The Independent.
The influenza vaccine did not reduce the risk of hospitalization for flu after vaccine failure, according to an analysis of 8 years of data published yesterday in Vaccine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) today confirmed three cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection in Saudi Arabia that the country's Ministry of Health (MOH) first reported last week. Two of the cases proved fatal.
As has been the pattern with Saudi MERS-CoV cases, the WHO report contained little information on the cases.
