The US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Empire Kosher Poultry, Inc. late last week issued a public health alert over Salmonella illnesses in several states that might be tied to raw chicken products.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced yesterday that it has issued a final rule spelling out USDA indemnity pay to farms hit by highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) ministry of health confirmed that the new Ebola outbreak in the eastern reaches of the country is caused by the Zaire Ebola virus species, according to Science magazine.
Public Health England (PHE) yesterday released its provisional seasonal flu vaccine effectiveness (VE) estimates for the 2017-18 flu season, which revealed low overall effectiveness and no protection against H3N2, but variable findings in different age-groups.
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, today announced the formation of a new task force to address drug shortages and long-term strategies for preventing them.
A new report from the World Health Organization's (WHO's) Eastern Mediterranean regional office shows four more MERS- CoV cases reported by Saudi Arabia in June, one of them fatal.
The WHO said none of the four cases of appears to be in a cluster. In late May, Saudi officials identified clusters of cases in Najran and Jeddah linked to household outbreaks.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC's) health ministry said today that all contacts of the last confirmed case have completed their 21-day monitoring periods with none showing any signs of illness, marking the beginning of the countdown to the end of the nation's ninth Ebola outbreak.
Lessons learned from 140 outbreaks involving nearly 5,000 people and steps to minimize the risk of getting sick from swimming.
The Democratic Republic of Congo's health ministry yesterday and today ruled out some suspected cases based on lab tests and confirmed 2 more in the remote Iboko outbreak location, dropping the outbreak total to 50 cases, including 37 confirmed and 13 probable, with no suspected cases. No new deaths were reported, keeping that total at 25.
In a major development today on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly under way in Geneva, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank Group announced the launch of a new mechanism to firm up global health security, an independent monitoring board to regularly assess country preparedness to handle outbreaks, pandemics, and other health emergencies.
