Public Health

(CIDRAP News) – Most states remain unprepared for a bioterrorist attack despite 3 years of federal focus on the issue, according to a report issued by a national nonprofit organization.

(CIDRAP News) – Overcoming the threat of avian influenza is the single most pressing agricultural and public health issue facing Southeast Asia, Singapore's minister of state for national development, Cedric Foo, said yesterday in opening a regional meeting on the disease, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Defense (DoD) has asked for emergency authority to ignore a recent court ruling and resume vaccinating military personnel against anthrax because of what is described as an increased risk of attacks on US forces.

(CIDRAP News) – Most firms that produce ready-to-eat (RTE) meat and poultry products have taken specific steps to prevent Listeria contamination since new federal safety rules took effect last year, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this week.

(CIDRAP News) – In announcing his resignation today after 4 years as US Health and Human services (HHS) secretary, Tommy G. Thompson cited pandemic influenza and food biosecurity as two of his biggest worries.

Thompson, who presided over massive increases in federal spending for public health preparedness and biodefense research, said in response to a question, "There are two things that really worry me yet. The big one is pandemic flu."

(CIDRAP News) – As public health ministers and officials from 13 Asian countries conferred in Bangkok last week on how to prevent the spread of H5N1 avian influenza, experts offered troubling predictions.

(CIDRAP News) – Before the current influenza vaccine shortage arose, Colorado was vaccinating people in mass clinics. After the shortage hit, the preventive medicine chief for the state's Kaiser Permanente clinics found himself driving around with leftover vaccine in his car, calling for information on which hospitals needed the doses.

(CIDRAP News) – Kris Ehresmann, RN, MPH, clearly recalls when she learned the United States had just lost nearly half of its flu vaccine.

At 9:50 a.m. on Oct 5, Ehresmann knew that her job as manager of the immunization, tuberculosis, and international health section for the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) had instantly become much harder. That moment marked the beginning of a series of difficult decisions under fast-changing circumstances.

(CIDRAP News) – Massachusetts residents in at least three communities are hoping to obtain flu shots through the luck of the draw as local health departments seek the fairest way to distribute limited vaccine supplies among those who need them the most.

(CIDRAP News) – The current shortage of influenza vaccine has generated new support for proposed federal legislation introduced last January that would make the production of flu vaccine more financially attractive, according to sponsors of the bill.