Public Health

(CIDRAP News) – At last month's avian flu conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, participants endorsed a new strategy for fighting avian influenza and other infectious diseases, one that focuses on points where animal, human, and ecosystems meet, according to a recent statement by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

(CIDRAP News) – A new report from the University of Minnesota warns that an influenza pandemic could disrupt the coal industry, thereby endangering the nation's significantly coal-dependent electric power system and everything that depends on it.

(CIDRAP News) – Earlier this year the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadened its flu vaccine recommendation to include all school-age children, prompting some health officials to eye school-based immunization programs as an efficient way to improve vaccination rates in young people.

(CIDRAP News) – This past  summer's nationwide Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak exposed several gaps in the nation's food safety system, including poor organization and confusing risk communications, the Produce Safety Project (PSP), an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts, said in a report yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – Officials from several agencies recently converged on Miami's international airport to take part in a full-scale exercise of the federal government's risk-based strategy to slow the spread of a future pandemic influenza virus across US borders.

(CIDRAP News) – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has listed public health emergency preparedness and food safety as two of 13 "urgent issues" that will need attention from President-elect Barack Obama and the new Congress next year.

(CIDRAP News) – The University of Minnesota on Oct 28 blew past the single-day Guinness world record for administering seasonal flu vaccine, delivering 11,538 shots at four campus locations.

– WASHINGTON (CIDRAP News) – The benefits conferred by influenza vaccination—to recipients and to their close contacts—were hotly disputed at an international medical meeting this week.

See related article posted today: "Experts stress vigilance over emerging, unpredictable diseases"

(CIDRAP News) – Saying Americans are threatened by a rising tide of emerging and resurging infectious diseases, the nonprofit group Trust for America's Health (TFAH) today issued a report calling on the US government to launch a comprehensive campaign to battle the microbes at home and abroad.

– WASHINGTON, DC (CIDRAP News) – Health authorities must remain alert to new and renascent disease threats, experts warned this week at an international medical meeting.