Public Health

(CIDRAP News) – The federal government announced plans today to buy 20,000 treatment courses of an experimental anthrax antitoxin from Human Genome Sciences Inc. (HGS) for $165 million.

Full payment for the product, called ABthrax, is contingent on its licensing by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a news release.

(CIDRAP News) – An emergency appropriations bill that cleared Congress yesterday provides another $2.3 billion for pandemic influenza preparedness, including $250 million for state and local efforts.

With this measure, Congress has now provided $6.1 billion of the $7.1 billion President Bush requested for pandemic preparations last November. Congress approved a $3.8 billion package in late December.

(CIDRAP News) – Federal officials announced this week that about $1.22 billion will be made available to states and territories this year to prepare for bioterrorism and other public health emergencies, down from about $1.33 billion last year.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday released updated guidelines that provide more details on when to test a patient for the H5N1 avian influenza virus, as well as substantially more specifics on laboratory testing.

Jun 20, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – Federal health officials last week announced the awarding of contracts totaling $132.5 million to help two vaccine producers get ready to start churning out vaccines in the event of a flu pandemic.

(CIDRAP News) – Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) agreed today to invoke a set of health regulations related to influenza a year early because of the threat that H5N1 avian flu will trigger a flu pandemic.

The voluntary regulations are part of the International Health Regulations (IHR), which were approved by the World Health Assembly a year ago but are not scheduled to take effect until June 2007.

(CIDRAP News) – When vaccine supplies are limited, should children, young adults, or seniors move to the front of the line for shots? Is it appropriate to remove one person from a ventilator to put somebody else on the machine?

(CIDRAP news) – Dr. Lee Jong-wook, 61, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) died this morning following emergency surgery for subdural hematoma (a blood clot on his brain) May 20. He never regained consciousness, according to a Reuters story today.

Lee, appointed director-general in 2003, had been spearheading the WHO's efforts against avian flu, HIV, and other significant infectious diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – The creators of the fictional ABC-TV movie "Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America" blended medical facts from the 1918 influenza pandemic with current predictions from flu experts to portray a contemporary flu pandemic, but they added a liberal dash of sensationalism.

(CIDRAP News) – Combining vaccination with 14 days of antibiotic therapy after exposure to airborne anthrax may be an alternative to the current recommendation of 60 days of antibiotics alone, according to an animal study reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.