Because of increasing population densities and international travel,
new microbiology techniques available to terrorists and zealots,
incursions into rain forests and jungles, decreasing immunity systems,
decreasing emphasis on public health, and a variety of other new
vectors of pathogen transmission, the likelihood of a rampant plague or virus
has never been higher.
Whether it's an Al-Qaeda-produced
smallpox or
monkeypox
variant with a week-long incubation period, an
Ebola
or Marburg
variant being transmitted accidentally at airports, or a
suddenly-intense mutation of
avian influenza, the
impacts would be dramatic. See Laurie Garrett's magnificent
The Coming
Plague, winner of the the Pulitzer Prize, for more information, as
well as
The Impact of Globalization on Infectious Disease Emergence and
Control, National Academies Press, 2006. The government, and the
public health system, unfortunately would be
unlikely to
effectively respond with vaccine development, distribution,
and direct implementation.
We are hypothesizing a disease with a slow incubation, extreme
transmissibility, and a death rate of 10-30%. This is actually low for
many of the possible pathogens. This sort of pandemic would likely
drive much of the following:
- A dramatic decrease in the use of people-heavy places: airports,
malls, workplaces, grocery stores, buses, sports stadiums, you name it
-- we'd all be terrified that if we go out of our homes, we'll catch
it.
- Serious impacts on infrastructure stem from workers calling in
sick, or taking paid personal leave: power systems, transportation
systems, commercial sales, even most "knowledge work" offices will be
fairly barren, for a good long time.
- Hospital systems could break down: not enough beds, not enough
ability to quarantine, lots of people with damaged immune systems, and
worse. Developing and distributing vaccines or medicines may be
troubled, as bottlenecks and a lack of living nurses and doctors may
create "viral riots" in some areas.
- Refugees are likely, but entire communities will (like what happened
in the Black Plague, or the Great Influenza Epidemic) quarantine themselves,
and drive off the desperate, potentially-infected refugees.
- Economic collapse could quickly follow: international travel/
shipping, and even interstate travel/shipping of food and medicine,
will be seriously affected.
- National panics (imagine Fox or CNN's
breathless treatment of a new plague) could quickly
create hoarding, violence, estrangement, and other desperate,
counterproductive measures.
- Massive deaths create new horrors and health issues, as rotting bodies
are left where they fall.
- Internet use, where network systems are able to be maintained by
telecommuting or clean-room-ensconced systems administrators (see Cory Doctorow's
Nebula-winning
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth), becomes vital to survival.
However, vast areas of the Web go dark, as key figures succumb.
- Cities quickly become uninhabitable, at least for a few months,
though these population centers will likely get any vaccines or
medicines early.
- Order and rule of law collapses, worldwide.
There are plenty of sub-scenarios where contagion doesn't fully apply;
where antigens, antivirals, and/or inoculations hold sway.
We hope that happens.
But we think it more likely that infection, uncertainty, and
accidental transmission will lead to a general population who are
fearful, uncertain, and reactive. In that case, society will shut
down, at least for a few weeks, which (in this fragile just-in-time
economy) is enough to cause catastrophe.
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| Recent Plague/Virus News |
19 dead in Bolivia dengue outbreak, 31,000 affected
In Bolivia's worst national outbreak in a decade, 19 people have died from dengue fever since January and 31,000 people have been affected, official estimates showed Thursday.
Twelve people died from the disease in the tropical eastern region of Santa Cruz, three others died in central Bolivia, two others in the Andean west and one in the capital city of La Paz, according to an official toll cited by ATB television.
A Bolivian national died on arriving in neighboring Peru, and Health Minister Ramiro Tapia said that one additional death brought the overall death toll to 19.
A total of 30,870 dengue cases have been counted, 71 percent of them in Santa Cruz, -- the region most affected by the outbreak, where authorities have declared a health emergency, Beni, Pando and Cochabamba departments. More than 15,000 troops have been mobilized to assist health teams.
Transmitted by the Aedes aegypti, or yellow fever mosquito, dengue is the most widespread tropical disease after malaria. The highly infectious disease causes high fever, headaches and joint pain.
Its deadly hemorrhagic variant is much more dangerous than the classic type because it causes violent internal bleeding and swift fluid loss, which can lead to a quick, painful death if not treated in time.
Tapia said that 88 confirmed dengue cases were from the hemorrhagic variant.
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Drug-resistant gonorrhoea on the rise
In the latest setback, quinolone resistance seems to have spread to Canada. Kaede Ota and her colleagues at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto found that quinolone-resistant infections in Ontario soared from 4 per cent of infections in 2002 to 28 per cent in 2006 (Canadian Medical Association Journal, DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.080222). The team blames the surge on a mixture of unsafe sex and people not completing prescribed courses of antibiotics.
The fear is that strains resistant to all antibiotics will appear. The first cephalosporin-resistant strains appeared in 2008 in Japan.
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MDH: Rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria alarming
Health officials in Minnesota say they are seeing increasing evidence of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing bacteria in the state, prompting a reminder to health care providers and patients about the importance of using antibiotics carefully and appropriately.
A report, released this week, detailed the finding by health officials in Minnesota, North Dakota and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta of an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacterium, Neisseria meningitidis, that causes meningococcal disease....
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How TB Jumps From Humans to Wildlife -- Vet Seeks Clues
...one sunny day in June 2000, [Kathleen Alexander] encountered a different problem: two banded mongooses, so thin their ribs stuck out, wandering around the sand pit where the children liked to play. These groundhog-sized animals are common through sub-Saharan Africa, but they run away from humans. Alarmingly, these mongooses weren't afraid of her. "It was clear they were sick," she recalled.... Alexander trapped one of the animals and tested it. Her tests revealed it was sick with tuberculosis--the human version. For the first time, free-range wild animals were confirmed to have contracted a human disease. Banded mongooses aren't in danger of going extinct. They live across southern Africa in large numbers. But if a disease can jump from humans to one wild animal, it could do the same with others. A new human disease could be disastrous for an endangered species. That includes a lot of primates. Since they're so closely related to humans, it's not hard for them to get our diseases.
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Scientists uncover secrets of potential bioterror virus
GALVESTON, Texas —Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have discovered a key tactic that the Rift Valley fever virus uses to disarm the defenses of infected cells.
The mosquito-borne African virus causes fever in humans, inflicting liver damage, blindness and even death on a small percentage of the people it infects. Rift Valley fever also afflicts cattle, goats and sheep, resulting in a nearly 100 percent abortion rate in these animals. Its outbreaks periodically cause economic devastation in parts of Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and bioterrorism experts warn that its introduction to the United States would cripple the North American beef industry.
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Cholera Exhausts Zimbabwean Health Care System
In December, the World Health Organization's worst-case scenario for Zimbabwe's cholera outbreak was that 60,000 people might become infected before the end of March. But already, nearly 70,000 cases of cholera have been reported.
Despite the fact that cholera is relatively easy to treat and to prevent with basic hygiene and appropriate sanitation, more than 3,300 people have died of the disease since the outbreak began in August 2008, according to the WHO.
A simple treatment of oral rehydration can save most lives, but health experts who have visited Zimbabwe recently say those measures simply aren't available because the economy is in meltdown.
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UW bacteria study could provide clue to controlling pathogens
Of the thousands of bacteria swimming inside you, relatively few are bent on destruction. Most busy themselves in a communal effort to keep you fit and free from disease - unless something changes.
Scientists have long wondered what causes harmful bacteria to cross the species barrier from animals to humans and what causes a good bacterium inside us to turn bad.
Now, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a single gene can cause bacteria to change hosts. Light-emitting bacteria called Vibrio fischeri colonized pinecone fish, then jumped to the bobtail squid - all because of a regulatory gene, the scientists reported Sunday in the journal Nature.
The two species, found in the North Pacific off Japan, receive different benefits from the bacteria. Bobtail squid have used the bacteria to create a light that fools predators. For pinecone fish, a slightly different strain of V. fischeri provides a kind of flashlight into the dark recesses of its reef habitat.
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Philippines finds four new Ebola cases
Manila - Four more people in the Philippines have been discovered infected by the Ebola-Reston virus and the possibility of pig-to-human transmission cannot be dismissed.
It was not a major health risk, Health Secretary Francisco Duque told a news conference, adding that the government was however widening testing of people who might have been in contact with sick pigs at hog farms placed under quarantine since October 2008.
"The Ebola-Reston virus is both an animal and human health issue, but we still consider this as a low risk situation to human health," Duque said.
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Caterpillar plague strikes west Africa
A throng of crop-eating caterpillars is threatening food supplies across west Africa, and could prove hard to control with pesticides. The crawling menace has appeared in northern Liberia, where hundreds of millions of the black larvae are devouring plants, fouling wells with their faeces and even driving farmers from fields.
They are now crossing into neighbouring Guinea, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that in two to three weeks they will turn into moths that can fly hundreds of kilometres and could spread across west Africa, worsening food shortages in the region.
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Hoarding rainwater could 'dramatically' expand range of dengue-fever mosquito
[C]limate change and evolutionary change could act together to accelerate and expand the mosquito's range. But human behaviour -- in the form of storing water to cope with climate change -- is likely to have an even greater impact.... "The potential direct impact of climate on the distribution and abundance of Ae. aegypti is minor when compared to the potential effect of changed water-storage behaviour. In many Australian cities and towns, a major impact of climate change is reduced rainfall, resulting in a dramatic increase in domestic rainwater storage and other forms of water hoarding."
"Water tanks and other water storage vessels such as modified wheelie bins are potential breeding sites for this disease-bearing mosquito. Without due caution with water storage hygiene, this indirect effect of climate change via human adaptation could dramatically re-expand the mosquito's current range," he says.
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Allergies On The Rise Globally
Dubai (UAE DAILY NEWS) - A major conference in Dubai tackling allergies and highlighting their remedies will help professionals deal with this growing worldwide health problem. The Middle East-Asia Allergy Asthma Immunology Congress (MEAAIC) will be the first ever internationally-developed allergy/immunology meeting in the Middle East-Gulf region.
A staggering fifteen percent of the population in the UAE suffers from asthma, one of the most common allergies, according to Dr. Bassam Mahboub, local expert, vice president of the UAE Respiratory Society and local chair of (MEAAIC), who notes that the percentage of asthma in children in the UAE is twice as higher than in adults.
"Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airways disease. When asthma strikes, your airways become constricted and swollen, filling with mucus. Your chest feels tight - you may cough or wheeze - and you just cannot seem to catch your breath. In severe cases, asthma attacks can be deadly," Dr. Mahboub explains. In about 25 years, asthma will be one of the main killers worldwide.
He also notes that the figure is set to rise in the region as the environmental conditions deteriorate as a result of the high levels of air pollutions from cars, factories and construction activity. "As pollen from trees, grass and weeds cause allergic rhinitis and asthma; there is also a need to grow different kinds of trees and grass to tackle this emerging public health issue," he adds.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Resistance to key malaria drug emerges
The parasite responsible for the deadliest form of malaria is showing the first signs of resistance to artemisinin -- the drug hailed as the biggest hope for eradicating the disease.
The cases of resistance in Plasmodium falciparum were detected on the Thai-Cambodian border, in the same area that drug-resistant strains of the malaria parasite have developed in the past, most notably to chloroquine in the 1950s.
"We feel that we not only have to beat the drum but shake the cage: guys, this is significant," R. Timothy Ziemer, head of the President's Malaria Initiative, who visited the area to assess the resistance problem, told the International Herald Tribune.
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A New Strain of Drug-Resistant Staph Infection Found in U.S. Pigs
A strain of drug-resistant staph identified in pigs in the Netherlands five years ago, which accounts for nearly one third of all staph in humans there, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, according to a new study.
Seventy percent of 209 pigs and nine of 14 workers on seven linked farms in Iowa and Illinois were found to be carrying the ST398 strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)... If it turns out to cause disease in humans in the U.S., ST398 could further complicate the general struggle against MRSA, which is already being fought on two fronts: against a hospital-acquired strain that began attacking U.S. patients in the late 1960s, and a community strain that began sickening healthy people (who had not been hospitalized) in the 1990s. The staph strains are related, but have different genetic profiles and different resistance patterns. The hospital strain contaminates wounds and causes overwhelming bacterial infections, whereas the community strain causes a range of symptoms from mild infections to rapidly fatal pneumonias. Both can be deadly: In 2007 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that in 2005 94,360 Americans contracted invasive infections and 18,650 of them died; 85 percent of the deaths, it said, were caused by the health care strain.
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Investigating Pigs for Ebola
Veterinary experts are investigating how a form of the Ebola virus found in primates has been transmitted to pigs in the Philippines.
Twenty-two international health and veterinary experts travelled to the island of Luzon in the Philippines last week (13 January) to investigate an outbreak of the Ebola Reston virus in pigs that occurred in 2008.
It was the first time the virus had been seen outside primates, and its appearance in domestic livestock is unexpected and worrying, according to Pierre Rollin, an Ebola expert from the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.
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A new MRSA threat: children's ear, nose and neck infections
The community strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus behind an explosion in nasty skin infections across the country is now causing ear and sinus infections and neck abscesses in children nationwide, a new study has found.
Of 21,000 pediatric staphylococcus infections from 2001 to 2006, 22 percent were the aggressive community MRSA strain known to scientists as USA300.
Moreover, the six-year review of data from more than 300 hospitals revealed an "alarming nationwide increase" in these infections, from just under 12 percent of in 2001 to 28 percent in 2006, according to the study published Monday in Archives of Otolaryngology -- Head and Neck Surgery.... As long as staph stays where it's supposed to stay --on the outside -- it does little harm. But when it becomes invasive, slipping into a part of the body where it shouldn't be, any strain can cause severe infections of bones, joints, blood and lungs. And USA300 is particularly virulent, or capable of causing disease.
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China reports third bird flu case in three days
Chinese health authorities said on Monday a 16-year-old boy in central Hunan province is badly ill after contracting the H5N1 birdflu virus, the third case reported in as many days as the Lunar New Year holiday looms.
The Ministry of Health said on its website (www.moh.gov.cn) the teenage student entered hospital in Hunan on January 16 and the province disease control center confirmed he was infected with the H5N1 virus. He came from Guizhou province, next to Hunan.... China has warned of the risk of further human cases of bird flu in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holiday after reporting two new cases over the weekend.... The Spring Festival, or Lunar New Year holiday, starts next Monday, accompanied by a mass movement of people back to their home provinces for lavish celebratory meals.
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Vietnam finds bird flu in chicken smuggled from China
Vietnam has detected bird flu in chicken smuggled from China as the illegal trade picks up ahead of the lunar New Year later this month, state media reported yesterday.
Eight out of 16 poultry samples tested by animal health officials in the northern border province of Lang Son were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, said the Lao Dong (Labour) newspaper. The provincial people's committee has sent an urgent message to local authorities, asking them to crack down on poultry smuggling to prevent the spread of infected poultry, the state-controlled newspaper said.
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Zimbabwe cholera cases pass 40,000: WHO
Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 2,000, has claimed 81 more lives and the total number of cases now stands at 40,448, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday.
The death toll has now reached 2,106 since August while 1,642 new cases were added on in a single day, it said.
On Tuesday, WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told AFP: "The epidemic is still not under control," adding that the rainy season was aggravating the contagion since the disease is transmitted by contaminated water.
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Salmonella prompts peanut butter recall in Ohio
COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio distributor says it has recalled two brands of its peanut butter after an open container tested positive for salmonella bacteria.
There was no immediate indication whether the brands were linked to a national salmonella outbreak.
King Nut Companies said in a statement issued Saturday that it has asked customers to stop distributing all peanut butter under its King Nut and Parnell's Pride brands with a lot code that begins with the numeral "8." The brands are distributed only through food service providers and are not sold directly to consumers.
Preliminary laboratory testing found salmonella bacteria in a 5-pound container of King Nut brand creamy peanut butter, the Minnesota Department of Health said Friday.
The Minnesota tests had not linked it to the type of salmonella in the outbreak that has sickened almost 400 people in 42 states, but the department said additional results are expected early next week.
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Avian Flu Becoming More Resistant To Antiviral Drugs
A new University of Colorado at Boulder study shows the resistance of the avian flu virus to a major class of antiviral drugs is increasing through positive evolutionary selection, with researchers documenting the trend in more than 30 percent of the samples tested. The avian flu, an Influenza A subtype dubbed H5N1, is evolving a resistance to a group of antiviral drugs known as adamantanes, one of two classes of antiviral drugs used to prevent and treat flu symptoms, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Andrew Hill, lead study author. The rise of resistance to adamantanes -- which include the nonprescription drugs amantadine and rimantadane -- appears to be linked to Chinese farmers adding the drugs to chicken feed as a flu preventative, according to a 2008 paper by researchers from China Agricultural University, said Hill.
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VIDEO: Animal-to-Human Disease Watch
In remote corners, a research team is monitoring contact between humans and wild animals -- particularly wild animal meat -- in hopes of stopping pandemics before they start.
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Scientists fear new wave of human BSE deaths may kill up to 350
Scientists were warning today of a possible new wave of deaths from the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) amid fears the disease might have taken hold in a wider range of the population than had first appeared.
Chris Higgins, head of the group that advises the government on variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), suggested up to 350 people might die if it emerged that the long-incubating illness appeared to have infected a patient with a different gene type from previous British victims.
The first wave of infections almost certainly came from eating infected beef products after BSE struck cattle in the 1980s, although three of the 164 people who have died from the human disease since 1995 are thought to have contracted the disease from contaminated blood transfusions donated by people who were unwittingly carrying the disease.
The first wave of deaths peaked at 28 in 2000, and only one person has died from the disease this year. But Higgins, chairman of the spongiform encephalopathy advisory committee (SEAC), said that if another patient with the disease was found to have the different gene type, more could die.
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Philippines Moves to Fight Pig Ebola
Global health authorities are preparing an emergency mission to the Philippines after U.S. scientists discovered a strain of the Ebola virus in dead pigs there that had previously only been found in monkeys.
Unlike more-deadly strains of Ebola virus, health officials say this particular strain, known as the Reston strain, has never caused human illness or death, and it's not immediately clear there is a public-health issue.
But health officials say it is too early to rule out a possible threat to humans, and expressed concern over the fact that this incident, first revealed in an Oct. 30 teleconference between the Philippine government and U.S. health authorities, wasn't made public until a news conference for local media in Manila last week. Pigs have served as genetic mixing vessels for viruses that pass from animals to humans, which makes the Philippine discovery significant. "When a virus jumps species, in this case from monkeys to pigs, we become concerned, particularly as pigs are much closer to humans than monkeys in their ability to harbour viruses," says Peter Cordingley, Western Pacific spokesman for the World Health Organization in Manila.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Mugabe Claims Cholera 'Erased,' World Leaders Express Outrage
Robert Mugabe, whose critics charge he is illegally clinging to power after losing this year’s presidential vote, angered foreign governments and medical workers by claiming that his country had "erased" the cholera epidemic that has killed 800 since August. Mugabe claimed that Britain and the US were conspiring to invade his country using cholera as a pretext but that his government had "arrested" the spread of cholera and removed the pretext.... The World Health Organization reported this week that over 16,000 people are confirmed infected, and over 800 killed so far in the worst cholera epidemic the country has seen in decades. Hospitals in the north of South African say they can no longer handle the number of cases streaming across the border, though they are doing their best to treat those infected.
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Failing Zimbabwe: Reporter round-up
A cholera epidemic is sweeping across Zimbabwe, causing further suffering to millions of people already struggling to survive in a country close to systemic collapse as food shortages and hyperinflation continue to take their toll.... It is a recipe for disaster, and a health scandal, according to a local priest.
"Even now, there are many sick people inside, they are frail, they can't walk and relatives don't have money to send them to hospital, so they are left to suffer," said Majorie, a middle-aged woman carrying a child on her back.
In the streets, piles of uncollected refuse are commonplace with flies feasting on the rubbish.
In this chaos, vendors selling tomatoes, mangoes and vegetables rove around.
Customers are still available. Some buy the produce and walk leisurely, eating mangoes, alongside streams of raw sewage to their hostels.
There is nothing they can do about it.
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Panel: Bio attack likely in next 5 years
The report, which is scheduled to be publicly released on Wednesday, suggests that the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama should improve the capability of the United States to counter such an attack and to prepare if necessary for germ warfare.
The report was written by the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism. Among other things, it concluded: "Our margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."
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Cholera-hit Zimbabwe cuts water supplies to capital
Zimbabwe has cut water supplies to the capital Harare, state media said Monday, as the health minister urged the public to stop shaking hands in a desperate bid to curb a deadly cholera epidemic.
The city has suffered periodic water cuts for years as the crumbling economy has caused widespread power shortages that often leave pumps idle.
But the city-wide cut appeared aimed at stopping the flow of untreated water around Harare, which is at the epicentre of the cholera epidemic that has claimed 425 lives since late August -- most in just the last month.
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3,000 dead from cholera in Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's President, is trying to hide the real extent of the cholera epidemic sweeping across his nation by silencing health workers and restricting access to the huge number of death certificates that give the same cause of death.
A senior official in the health ministry told The Independent yesterday that more than 3,000 people have died from the water-borne disease in the past two weeks, 10 times the widely-reported death toll of just over 300....The way to prevent death is, for the Zimbabwean people, agonisingly simple: antibiotics and rehydration. But this is a country with a broken sewerage system and soap is hard to come by. Harare's Central Hospital officially closed last week, doctors and nurses are scarce and even those clinics offering a semblance of service do not have access to safe, clean drinking water and ask patients to bring their own.
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Transporting Broiler Chickens Could Spread Antibiotic-resistant Organisms
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have found evidence of a novel pathway for potential human exposure to antibiotic-resistant bacteria from intensively raised poultry-- driving behind the trucks transporting broiler chickens from farm to slaughterhouse. A study by the Hopkins researchers found increased levels of pathogenic bacteria, both susceptible and drug-resistant, on surfaces and in the air inside cars traveling behind trucks that carry broiler chickens.
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Scientists discover 21st century plague
Bacteria that can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans. Research published in the December issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats, the biggest and most common rats in Europe, may now be carrying the bacteria.
Since the early 1990s, more than 20 species of Bartonella bacteria have been discovered. They are considered to be emerging zoonotic pathogens, because they can cause serious illness in humans worldwide from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system.
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Mugabe tries to hide cholera death toll
Doctors struggling to save the victims of a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe despite a lack of basic drugs and intravenous drips vented their fury last week outside the Parirenyatwa hospital in Harare, the capital.... The response of President Robert Mugabe's failing government has been to cover up the scale of the problem and to send in riot police.... Last week the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs identified eight outbreaks and nine places where the number of cases was increasing. Its report concluded: "It is very likely with the current water and sanitation problems in the country, low capacity of the government to deal with the outbreak, glaring gaps in response, coupled with the rainy season that has started, cholera outbreaks could get catastrophic and claim many more lives."
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Malaria and dengue the sting in climate change
Southeast Asia and South Pacific island nations face a growing threat from malaria and dengue fever as climate change spreads mosquitoes that carry the diseases and climate-change refugees start to migrate.
A new report titled "The Sting of Climate Change," said recent data suggested that since the 1970s climate change had contributed to 150,000 more deaths every year from disease, with over half of the deaths in Asia.... According to the World Health Organization, rising temperatures and higher rainfall caused by climate change will see the number of mosquitoes increasing in cooler areas where there is little resistance or knowledge of the diseases they carry.
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New superbug version of E.coli found on British dairy farm
A new superbug version of E.coli which could trigger life-threatening infections has been found on a dairy farm.
The mutant strain of E.coli 026 is believed to have emerged as a result of the heavy use of antibiotics on farm animals.
It is the first time it has been discovered in this country and only the third time it has been found anywhere in the world.
The bug is similar to the infamous E.coli 0157 which has been implicated in fatal food poisoning outbreaks.
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Airport Malaria: Cause For Concern In U.S.
In a global world, significant factors affect the spread of infectious diseases, including international trade, air travel and globalized food production. "Airport malaria" is a term coined by researchers to explain the more recent spread of malaria to areas such as the United States and Europe, which some scientists credit to warmer climate changes... It begins with a mosquito that is transported during an international flight from a malaria-endemic region.
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"Mad Cow" outbreak claims 10 lives
Ten persons have been confirmed dead following an epidemic of Cerebro-Spinal Meningitis (CSM) at Yaw Bronya, a farming community near Ofoase in Asante Akim-South District. Nine of the deceased, all of whom died in a spate of two weeks, have been buried, while three others are on admission at the Juaso District Hospital.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Commercial Poultry Lack Genetic Diversity, Are Vulnerable To Avian Flu And Other Threats
As concerns such as avian flu, animal welfare and consumer preferences impact the poultry industry, the reduced genetic diversity of commercial bird breeds increases their vulnerability and the industry's ability to adapt, according to a genetics expert... Researchers found that commercial birds are missing more than half of the genetic diversity native to the species, possibly leaving them vulnerable to new diseases and raising questions about their long-term sustainability.
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Nasty intestinal bug spikes in U.S. hospitals
A virulent, drug-resistant gut infection that causes potentially deadly diarrhea, especially among the old and sick, is up to 20 times more common than previously thought, a large survey of U.S. hospitals and health care centers finds.
Thirteen in every 1,000 patients were infected or colonized with Clostridium difficile, known as C. diff, according to surveys by nearly 650 U.S. acute care and other centers, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, or APIC, reported Tuesday. That's between 6.5 and 20 times higher than previous estimates of the nasty bacterial infection tied to overuse of antibiotics and improperly cleaned hospital rooms...
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XDR-TB: Deadlier And More Mysterious Than Ever
New research has found that XDR-TB is increasingly common and more deadly than previously known. Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is a growing public health threat that is only just beginning to be understood by medical and public health officials.... Over the three to seven years that the study's patient population was monitored, approximately 50 percent of those identified with XDR-TB died, which was a mortality rate similar to untreated TB patients in South India, and one that becomes even worse with HIV co-infection.
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Congo refugee camp hit by cholera outbreak
Doctors struggled Sunday to contain an outbreak of cholera in a sprawling refugee camp near Congo's eastern provincial capital of Goma, as new fighting ignited fears that infected patients could scatter and launch an epidemic.
At the Kibati camp and in Goma, thousands packed church services Sunday to pray for peace after rebels and pro-government militiamen executed civilians in two waves of terror that the top U.N. envoy to Congo has called war crimes.
The killings highlighted the inability of U.N. peacekeepers to protect civilians or halt a 10-week-old rebel offensive that has convulsed eastern Congo and forced more than 250,000 people from their homes.
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Superbug MRSA cases hit record level in Ontario
Ontario has recorded its highest number of superbug MRSA cases - a troubling sign that the pernicious invader has made significant inroads in hospitals.
Specifically, the number of cases of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has increased by more than 50 per cent over a three-year period, with 16,498 patients infected or colonized with MRSA in 2007, according to figures provided by Ontario's Quality Management Program-Laboratory Services.
By comparison, a total of 10,301 patients were infected or colonized with the superbug in 2004, according to Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital, who analyzed the data for the laboratory services program.
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Raccoons spread flu, study shows
...New research shows the pesky critters -- called the animal world's Typhoid Mary by one of the study's authors -- can catch and spread both human and avian strains of influenza.
Lead author Jeffrey Hall isn't suggesting the raccoon you have to shoo away from your garbage can is likely to infect you with the flu.
But his findings point to the possibility that raccoons play a role in the emergence of new strains of influenza, helping bird viruses adapt to be able to infect mammals. That process, which involves the swapping of genes among viruses, is called reassortment and is one of the ways a strain capable of causing a flu pandemic could arise.
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Birds of a Feather: Commercial Producers Play Chicken with Avian Flu
In the late 1980s thousands of chickens died from a cancer caused by a virus known as avian leukosis virus J because they were all descended from a few roosters susceptible to the disease.
This is just one example of how a lack of genetic diversity can imperil livestock and agriculture. Similar instances abound from the Irish potato famine of the 19th century to cattle raised for meat—one bull named Ivanhoe passed on his genetic susceptibility to an immune system disorder to roughly 15 percent of all the Holstein bulls in the U.S. today. Now a new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, shows that the world's 40 billion commercial chickens—those raised for their meat and eggs—have half the genetic diversity possible in the chicken genome, rendering them susceptible to other crippling disease outbreaks.
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Smaller mosquitoes are more likely to be infected with viruses causing human diseases
The researchers painstakingly took into account the size of each mosquito by measuring the length of their wings. Smaller-sized mosquitoes had higher infection and potential to transmit dengue virus than larger individuals. However, Alto warns there are other components, such as adult longevity, host preference, and feeding frequency, that determine a mosquito's vectoring ability which still need to be taken into account in future studies.
The Asian tiger and yellow fever mosquitoes are the two main transmitters of dengue virus, the mosquito-borne virus of greatest importance to human health. Both of these mosquitoes are found throughout the world including the U.S. The ferocious tiger mosquito invaded Illinois in the 1990s. Now researchers have shown that only slight differences in the body sizes of these mosquitoes drastically alter their potential to transmit viruses causing human disease.
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Drug-resistant bacteria found in pork
A ground-breaking investigation by the KOMO Problem Solvers has found toxic, life-threatening Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) bacteria in some pork you might buy at grocery stores.
This drug-resistant bacteria is already responsible for more deaths in this country than AIDS. What makes MRSA so potentially dangerous is the bacteria can make you sick just by touching it.
In spite of the risk, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has resisted testing store-bought pork for the aggressive bacteria.
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Mysterious African disease is a new virus - expert
A mysterious hemorrhagic disease that has killed three people in South Africa and forced others into isolation appears to be a never-before-seen strain of a virus known as an arenavirus, an expert said on Monday.
Genetic testing indicates the virus is a new type of arenavirus -- a large family of viruses that include the germs that cause Lassa fever and the mouse-borne lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, said Dr. Ian Lipkin of Columbia University in New York.
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Pandemic coming -- and it will slam insurers: Lloyd's of London
A repeat of the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 is expected to cause a global recession on a scope ranging from 1 percent to 10 percent of global gross domestic product, according to a report released by Lloyd's of London’s emerging risk team.
The Lloyd's report, "Pandemic -- Potential Insurance Impacts," concludes that a pandemic is inevitable, with historic recurrence rates of 30 to 50 years. The report focuses on the impact of a global pandemic on the business community and, in particular, the insurance markets.
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Dengue cases cross 1000 mark in Delhi
With 13 more patients testing positive for dengue, the cases of the vector-borne disease in the national capital shot up to 1008 on Thursday.
Compounding the problem for the citizens and civic authorities, the city has also reported six cases of chikungunya fever so far, officials said.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Birdflu pushed back, pandemic threat remains: UN
International efforts have pushed back the spread of bird flu this year but the risk of a global influenza pandemic killing millions is as great as ever, the United Nations and World Bank reported on Tuesday.
Most countries now have plans to combat a pandemic, but many of the plans are defective, said the report, issued before a bird flu conference due to be attended by ministers from some 60 countries in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from Friday to Sunday.
The report, fourth in a series since a bird flu scare swept the globe three years ago, followed a new World Bank estimate that a severe flu pandemic could cost $3 trillion and result in a nearly 5 percent drop in world gross domestic product.
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Experts predict next epidemic will start in animals
...A report by the non-profit Trust for America's Health, to be released next week, asserts that infectious diseases from the developing world are anything but "a back-burner concern."
The report, "Germs Go Global: Why Emerging Infectious Diseases Are a Threat to America," cites National Intelligence Estimates that conclude outbreaks of new and resurgent infectious diseases, many of which "originate overseas," kill more than 170,000 people in the USA each year....Chikungunya may well become the next epidemic to reach the USA. Carrying an African name that roughly means "bent over," chikungunya is a mosquito-borne illness that causes severe flu-like symptoms and muscle aches that may last a lifetime.
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Risk of Disease Rises With Water Temperatures
When a 1991 cholera outbreak that killed thousands in Peru was traced to plankton blooms fueled by warmer-than-usual coastal waters, linking disease outbreaks to epidemics was a new idea. Now, scientists say, it is a near-certainty that global warming will drive significant increases in waterborne diseases around the world.
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Popular Pacific holiday spots hit by dengue 'pandemic'
MOre than 500 people have been diagnosed in Samoa, at least 1000 in both New Caledonia and Fiji and close to 900 in Kiribati.
But researchers believe the real number is at least double these figures, because so many people do not seek, or cannot reach, medical help.... There is no vaccine for dengue fever, and no specific treatment.
Once contracted doctors advise patients to take fluids and rest.
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Mystery virus came from mice
Test results have shown that the disease which has killed at least three people in Johannesburg hospitals is one of the rodent-borne Arena viruses -- a family of viruses that includes Lassa fever.
The Arena virus is carried by wild rodents (multimammate mice) and is shed in urine or droppings. The tests were conducted at US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Johannesburg and the results were made public yesterday.
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Haemorrhagic Viral Outbreak: 11 quarantined in Zambia
Eleven people are in isolation and are being closely monitored for flu-like symptoms as Gauteng health authorities work to stop the possible spread of a virus that has led to the deaths of at least three people.
One woman has been quarantined at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital since being admitted last night. She is the supervisor of the cleaner who possibly died of the mystery virus.... Pelser said the three deaths were caused by a viral haemorrhagic fever as all the victims presented with the same symptoms: high fever, body aches, diarrhoea, vomiting and skin rash or bleeding. But tests for known strains such as Ebola, Congo and Marburg had all come back negative.
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'Deadly dozen' reports diseases worsened by climate change
The "Deadly Dozen" list -- including such diseases as avian influenza, Ebola, cholera, and tuberculosis -- is illustrative only of the broad range of infectious diseases that threaten humans and animals. It builds upon the recommendations included in a recently published paper titled "Wildlife Health as an Indicator of Climate Change," which appears in a newly released book, Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events: Understanding the Contributions to Infectious Disease Emergence, published by the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine. The study examines the nuts and bolts of deleterious impacts of climate change on the health of wild animals and the cascading effects on human populations.
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Rethinking Who Should Be Considered 'Essential' During a Pandemic Flu Outbreak
Not only are doctors, nurses, and firefighters essential during a severe pandemic influenza outbreak. So, too, are truck drivers, communications personnel, and utility workers. That's the conclusion of a Johns Hopkins University article to be published in the journal of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism.... Dr. Kass says, "when preparing for a severe pandemic flu it is crucial for leaders to recognize that if the public has limited or no access to food, water, sewage systems, fuel and communications, the secondary consequences may cause greater sickness death and social breakdown than the virus itself."
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Africa: Climate Change May Lead to New Diseases
African countries must work together to mitigate the health impacts of global warming to avoid a "continental disaster," climate and health experts who met recently in Nairobi have said.
According to the experts, climate change will lead to the emergence of new infections and the spread of old ones, further straining cash-strapped public health systems.
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Deaths soar from hospital superbugs
Almost 37,000 NHS patients have died after catching either the MRSA or C-difficile hospital superbugs during Labour's time in office, official figures show.
The two virulent infections claimed 36,674 lives between 1997 and 2007. Of those, 26,208 were from Clostridium difficile and 10,466 from MRSA. Numbers dying in England and Wales from C-difficile soared from 975 in 1999 to 8,324 last year, a jump of about 850 per cent, while fatalities linked to MRSA grew from 386 in 1997 to 1,593 in 2007.
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Is re-emerging superbug the next MRSA?
"Disease caused by Clostridium difficile can range from nuisance diarrhea to life-threatening colitis that could lead to the surgical removal of the colon, and even death,"... When C-diff is not actively dividing, it forms very tough spores that can exist on surfaces for months and years, making it very difficult to kill, Johnson said.
"Antibiotics are very effective against the growing form of the bacteria but it doesn't do anything to the spores," Johnson said. "If there are spores they can sit around like stealth bombs. Once the antibiotic is gone, these spores can germinate again and spread their toxins."
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Open dumping of garbage: Islamabad residents fear another epidemic outbreak
"The CDA has converted the sector into a filth depot causing air and water pollution -- a serious health hazard. Pollution is creating irritation, tension, headache and depression among the residents of the area besides increase in waterborne diseases," said Dr Rashid, an employee of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences and a resident of sector G-10/1.
He strongly criticised the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) and CDA for dumping the waste in open. He said it would further pollute underground water.
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Wyoming probes possible livestock disease in herd
State and federal livestock officials have launched an investigation into the possibility of a second Wyoming cow testing positive for brucellosis, jeopardizing the state's disease-free status even as the rancher at the center of the first outbreak decides to slaughter his herd.... It is not dangerous to eat the meat of animals infected with brucellosis, as long as it is cooked.
"The meat is perfectly safe to eat so there's no issue there," he said.
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As climate changes, will patterns of disease shift as well?
This summer, an outbreak of typhus has left 16 Travis County residents with the flea-borne illness; 14 others are suspected of having the disease. In recent years, whooping cough and West Nile virus have also plagued Central Texas.
Are the outbreaks stand-alone events, each with its own explanation? Or, with hot summers bearing down on the state, are these signals of broader changes in disease patterns driven by a warming climate?
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Dengue Reborn: Widespread Resurgence of a Resilient Vector
"Dengue -- a viral disease that can refer to both dengue fever and the more severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) -- swept away records again this past spring as it raged across Brazil, infecting more than 160,000 people and killing more than 100. The reports were similar to those out of Southeast Asia in the summer of 2007, South America the previous spring, and India the fall before that. Although it may not be the most devastating of the mosquito-borne diseases -- malaria strikes 10 times more people and yellow fever kills more of its victims -- dengue has become a major public health concern for two reasons: the speed with which it is spreading and the escalating seriousness of its complications."
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West Nile virus Engulfs First Human Life in California
The extremely infectious West Nile virus has continued to surge in parts of California, claiming its first human victim this year in Orange County in Southern California, the state Department of Public Health announced on Monday.
A 72-year-old Buena Park woman has become the first person in California this year to die of the WNV infection.... The health officials are worried about a possible repeat of cases such as what happened in 2004, when Southern California experienced 710 human West Nile virus cases with 21 fatalities.
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Africa: Unable to Put Beef And Fish On the Table, Continent Courts Animal-Spread Diseases
Last year's outbreaks of the deadly Marburg and Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever viruses in southwestern Uganda and in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo's province of Kasai Occidental and the sporadic outbreaks of Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) across the continent once again bring to light the threat zoonotic diseases pose to sub-Saharan Africa in particular and the world generally.... Along with population increase comes the need for more arable and grazing land and the exploration of new forest, swamp and cave habitats. This raises the likelihood of exposure to 'new' infectious agents in those environments, and could result in the emergence of new disease pathogens. As population grows there is also an increase in the demand for food. In sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, people are more and more turning to wild animals for food. This high demand for bush meat in the countries of the Congo Basin is helping to fuel the increase in outbreaks of such illnesses as Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever.
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Greatest threat to Britain is a flu pandemic that could kill 750,000, warns Government report
"The greatest threat facing Britain is a flu pandemic that could kill 750,000 people, a Government report will warn today. A national 'risk register' has identified an outbreak as the emergency that would have the greatest impact - though a terror attack is considered more likely."
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Meet the new neighbours
"...Mosquitoes, and the West Nile virus that some of them carry, are thriving in California’s plunging property market... Fully 63,000 homes were foreclosed in California between April and June... Empty houses mean untended pools. Untended pools quickly breed mosquitoes."
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Balancing traditional scientific freedom and openness
The challenge will be to engage a broad range of scientists in the fight against terrorism, without causing an unhealthy imbalance in the scientific enterprise. For instance, the billions of dollars spent by the US government on biodefence over the past few years may have distracted researchers from the fight against infectious diseases. The risk of a flu pandemic -- or the emergence of a lethal new disease -- is far greater than of a large-scale bioterrorist attack. While there is some scientific crossover between the expertise needed to fight natural and man-made epidemics, it is important to allocate research resources on a balanced view of the risks we face globally.
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Fears over new mosquito-borne virus
Health experts fear a mosquito-borne virus could cause a spike in cases of a debilitating disease.... In the past two years, West Australia health authorities have been notified of 15 cases of chikungunya, the Swahili term for the stooped posture which the virus causes in sufferers with joint pain. The disease also causes vomiting, extreme fatigue and, in rare cases, death. The Health Department declared chikungunya a notifiable infectious disease two months ago.
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UK government says pandemic 'inevitable'
A British government committee said globalization and lifestyle changes make it inevitable that Britain will be hit with a pandemic of some sort.... "Estimates are that the next pandemic will kill between 2 million and 50 million people worldwide and between 50,000 and 75,000 in (Britain)," the government report said. "Socio-economic disruption will be massive."
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FDA Panel Seeks to Water Down Warnings on Tamiflu Side Effects
"...Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, is an anti-viral medication that can be used to treat or prevent influenza. When used as a treatment, it reduces the duration of flu symptoms by approximately one day... According to the FDA, five children under the age of 17 died after "falling from windows or balconies or running into traffic." There have been a total of 25 deaths linked to Tamiflu, three of them in the United States."
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Fish Virus Feeds Fears It Will Spread to Mississippi River
"CHICAGO -- A deadly fish virus has been found for the first time in southern Lake Michigan and an inland Ohio reservoir, spurring fears of major fish kills and the virus's possible migration to the Mississippi River...The Illinois Department of Natural Resources invoked emergency fishing regulations June 30 to stop the spread of viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), often described as "fish Ebola," which was found in round gobies and rock bass tested at a marina near the Wisconsin border in early June."
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When acquiring mosquito-borne disease is a good thing
"With 50 million cases in the tropics each year, dengue fever is humanity's most common insect-borne viral infection. Killing the mosquitoes that carry it is the only way to fight it, but now a large-scale survey in Thailand has revealed that this can make the deadliest form of dengue more prevalent.
Known as "breakbone fever", dengue is painful but normally not fatal the first time around ... the real threat is the second infection....causing a potentially fatal disease called dengue haemorrhagic fever. DHF kills 12,000 people a year, mainly children.
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Prions can survive sewage treatment, UW-Madison study says
"Mad cow disease-causing prions can survive conventional sewage treatment, according to a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists. Prions -- rogue misfolded proteins that cause mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease, and its human equivalent, variant Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease -- are not degraded by standard wastewater decontamination and can end up in fertilizers, potentially contaminating crops."
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CDC lab containing deadly virus suffers power outage
A laboratory building that contains a deadly strain of avian flu and other germs is among four that lost power for more than an hour Friday when a backup generator system failed again at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.... CDC officials did not attempt to override and restart the agency's backup generators because they didn't know what the anomaly was that shut them down, Skinner said.
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Superbugs threaten to put Britain back to pre-antibiotic age
"Superbugs are threatening to return Britain to a 'pre-antibiotic' era in which common infections killed in huge numbers, a major new study warns. There is an urgent need for new, effective medicines to replace drugs that have become useless, says the report by the Royal Society, the UK's science academy. The battle against drug-resistant bacteria has concentrated too much on tackling dirty hospitals and curbing the over-use of existing antibiotics."
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10 people die from new CJD-like disease
A new form of fatal dementia has been discovered in 16 Americans, 10 of whom have already died of the condition. It resembles Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- with patients gradually losing their ability to think, speak and move -- but has features that make it distinct from known forms of CJD.
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Scripps research scientists reveal key structure from ebola virus
the research reveals the shape of the Ebola virus spike protein, which is necessary for viral entry into human cells, bound to an immune system antibody acting to neutralize the virus.... "Much about Ebola virus is still a mystery," says Erica Ollmann Saphire, the Scripps Research scientist who led the five-year effort. "However, this structure now reveals how this critical piece of the virus is assembled and, importantly, identifies vulnerable sites that we can exploit."
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Simian foamy virus found to be widespread among chimpanzees
Recent studies have shown that humans who hunt wild primates, including chimpanzees, can acquire SFV infections. Since the long-term consequences of these cross-species infections are not known, it is important to determine to what extent wild primates are infected with simian foamy viruses. In this study, researchers tested this question for wild chimpanzees by using novel non-invasive methods. Analyzing over 700 fecal samples from 25 chimpanzee communities across sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers obtained viral sequences from a large proportion of these communities, showing a range of infection rates from 44 percent to 100 percent.
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Salmonella probe grows -- maybe not tomatoes
Federal investigators retraced their steps Monday as suspicions mount that fresh unprocessed tomatoes aren't necessarily causing the salmonella outbreak that has sickened hundreds across the USA.
Three weeks after the Food and Drug Administration warned consumers to avoid certain types of tomatoes linked to the salmonella outbreak, people are still falling ill, says Robert Tauxe with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.... If another food is found to be the culprit after tomatoes were recalled nationwide and the produce industry sustained losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, food safety experts say the public's trust in the government's ability to track foodborne illnesses will be shattered.
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Extreme Weather Events Can Unleash A 'Perfect Storm' Of Infectious Diseases, Research Study Says
An international research team ... has found the first clear example of how climate extremes, such as the increased frequency of droughts and floods expected with global warming, can create conditions in which diseases that are tolerated individually may converge and cause mass die-offs of livestock or wildlife.... The study ... suggests that extreme climatic conditions are capable of altering normal host-pathogen relationships and causing a "perfect storm" of multiple infectious outbreaks that could trigger epidemics with catastrophic mortality.
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US health official: Complacency is 'public health enemy No. 1'
"Emerging infectious diseases are a major global public health threat, and there's nothing in the world of evidence that would suggest that the threat is getting smaller," Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a health conference in Malaysia.
"A pandemic would be a catastrophic human health event if it had any of the characteristics of the previous pandemics in terms of transmissibility and case fatality rate," she said.
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Food Safety: 'Near the Breaking Point'
For the FDA's embattled food safety inspectors, the salmonella scare was more evidence that a chronic lack of money and manpower has left the agency reacting to such events rather than preventing them in the first place -- a longtime goal. Stephen Sundlof, who runs the FDA's Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition, has recently wondered if his people can handle more than one big crisis at a time -- say, a nationwide outbreak of E. coli and salmonella. "[We're] near the breaking point," he says. The situation is so dire that the Bush Administration has made an extraordinary request to add $275 million to its proposed 2009 budget for the FDA.
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Superbug in hospital outbreak 'has same death rate as smallpox'
"EXPERTS fear the strain of Clostridium difficile that has killed eight people at the Vale of Leven Hospital, and been involved in the deaths of eight more, is as deadly as smallpox.
The strength of the 027 strain is under investigation, but the rate of fatalities in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde hospital, in West Dunbartonshire, has horrified bacteriologists."
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Highly infectious polio strain re-appears in UP
The oral polio vaccination drive has been advanced by the Uttar Pradesh government after a girl in the state's Badaun district was infected with a highly infectious polio strain, a senior official said on Thursday.
"After a gap of nearly eight months, the P1 polio virus has resurfaced in UP. After the detection of the highly virulent P1 virus, we have decided to advance the vaccination drive," regional team leader of the World Health Organisation's National Polio Surveillance Project, S.K. Parthyarch said.
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Hong Kong slaughters all market poultry: bird flu
Health officials ordered the slaughter of all live poultry in Hong Kong's street markets on Wednesday after detecting one of the largest outbreaks of the bird flu virus in years. The action comes after tests showed four markets had poultry infected with the H5N1 virus.
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Potentially fatal bacteria found in pigs, farmworkers
"Federal food safety and public health agencies are being urged to begin checking meat sold across the country for the presence of MRSA, a potentially fatal bacteria. Scientists have found the infection in U.S. pigs and farmworkers... MRSA -- methicillin-
resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- can be extremely dangerous, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Monina Klevens examined the cases of the disease reported in hospitals, schools and prisons in one year and extrapolated that "94,360 invasive MRSA infections occurred in the United States in 2005; these infections were associated with death in 18,650 cases."
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WHO concerned by Indonesia's bird flu plan
ndonesia's health minister said Thursday her country would no longer report H5N1 avian flu deaths as they happen but will share a revised death toll every six months -- a threatened policy change experts said would put the country in violation of a key international health treaty.... "We will not announce every single new bird flu death because sometimes it is misunderstood," Supari told Reuters.
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Bird Flu Strain at Tyson Foods Leads to Killing of 15,000 Hens
While the virus discovered at Tyson Foods is harmless to humans, shares of U.S. chicken companies dropped as investors worried foreign buyers may ban U.S. chicken. The U.S. exports about 16 percent of its chicken and a loss of key overseas markets could create a glut of chicken here.
Following the discovery, the U.S. Agriculture Department has already suspended shipments of chicken from Arkansas to Russia, the most important overseas market for U.S. chicken.
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New Quarantine Regulations for Exotic Newcastle Disease
WASHINGTON, US - The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today issued a final rule that changes the exotic Newcastle disease (END) domestic quarantine regulations.... Exotic Newcastle disease is a highly contagious and fatal viral disease that affects all species of birds. END is not avian influenza and poses no risk to human health. However, it is another highly contagious disease of poultry and birds. It affects the respiratory, nervous and digestive systems of birds, and many birds die before demonstrating any clinical signs of the disease.
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Viral deaths under wraps
New Delhi: The government has refused to investigate thousands of suspected deaths from chikungunya while repeatedly asserting in Parliament that no one has died from this viral infection, public health experts say.
The disease had broken out in many places in 2006, and at least one city recorded an extraordinarily high mortality. Ahmedabad registered 2,944 deaths over its average during a four-month period when the outbreak had peaked, municipal records show.... During the 2006 outbreak, more than 1.4 million people were suspected to have been infected by chikungunya, a viral disease spread by mosquitoes.
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Some avian flu H7 viruses growing more human-like
The investigators determined that several recent North American H7 viruses have an increased ability to bind to a type of receptor molecule that is abundant on human tracheal cells and is less common in birds. Their results were published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The finding -- which comes as the deadly Eurasian H5N1 virus continues to be seen as the likeliest candidate to spark a pandemic -- "underscores the necessity for continued surveillance and study of these [North American H7] viruses as they continue to resemble viruses with pandemic potential," says the report.... "The most important message we can take from this is that there will be another pandemic strain that will emerge -- tomorrow, next week, next year, whenever, but it's going to occur."
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Nanotechnology used to build artificial virus
The Lee research group at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea found an alternate strategy, one that used pre-organized supramolecular nanostructures to construct, for the first time, a filament-shaped artificial virus.... The virus' simultaneous ability to deliver genetic materials and hydrophobic therapeutic reagents are particularly useful, and the researchers' approach is flexible and allows for a variety of structural changes to the virus. Until we study the toxicology of these artificial viruses, however, we cannot judge their full potential for treating diseases.
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Scientists warn of bird flu epidemic
"Researchers who analysed samples of recent avian flu viruses found that a strain of the virus called H7N2 had adapted slightly better to living in mammals. Tests on ferrets proved the strain could be passed between animals but scientists said the evidence suggested that bird flu could be transmitted between humans."
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Mosquito invasion brings disease risk to UK
"An Asian mosquito species is poised to arrive in Britain, bringing with it the risk of a potentially lethal disease that the insect can pass from one person to another. The Asian tiger mosquito has already established itself in northern Italy where it has transmitted chikungunya fever to scores of people."
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Flu bugs growing resistance to drugs: studies
"Seasonal flu viruses are developing the ability to evade influenza drugs globally, but how and why this is happening is not clear, experts told a conference on Monday. Europe is the worst-affected by strains of influenza that resist the effects of antiviral drugs, but the resistance is growing globally, they told a meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America."
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45 percent people suffering from chronic diseases
"Around 45 percent people in Pakistan are suffering from various chronic diseases, and the recent wave of gastroenteritis was because of environmental hazards, according to studies conducted by the Pakistan Medical Association. The study also states that communicable and non-communicable diseases are rapidly increasing in the country because of the environmental hazards."
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Bubonic plague found in prairie dog
Federal and state officials are advising residents to take precautions after sylvatic plague was found in a dead prairie dog west of Interior.... This plague first appeared in the state in fall 2004 in Custer County. An outbreak occurred on Oglala Sioux reservation in 2005, then reappeared last year in Shannon County. The latest occurrence was in winter in Dewey County.
The plague is a bacterial infection of rodents that could kill a large number of prairie dogs or other rodents. Livestock aren't affected.
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Cull after bird flu hits S Korea
"South Korean officials say they have killed the entire poultry population of Seoul to curb the spread of bird flu. Quarantine officers destroyed 15,000 chickens, ducks and turkeys in farms and restaurants across the capital. The cull began just hours after the authorities recorded Seoul's second outbreak of the virus in a week."
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Antibiotics rule pharma retail market
New Delhi: The first quarter (January-March) of this year has witnessed a change in the domestic pharma retail market with antibiotics and anti-bacterial drugs dominating the show in top 10 brands.... Interestingly, the growth of the industry is mainly driven by the chronic segment (like cardio-vasculars, diabetics, central nervous system), which have grown by 17-18 percent last year. Against this backdrop, offtake of acute segments (anti-infectives, gastro-intestinals, nutritionals) has been slow and grown by 10-15 percent only, industry experts said.
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Ventilator superbug resistant to antibiotics
"HOSPITALS face a dangerous new superbug threat in the form of a drug-resistant microbe that clings to catheters and ventilation tubes. Doctors studying the genetic code of the bug, commonly known as Steno, are worried about its ability to shrug off antibiotics. Around 1,000 cases of blood poisoning caused by Stenotrophomonas maltophilia are reported in the UK each year. Of these, almost a third are fatal."
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Risk Of Bird Flu Pandemic Probably Growing-Experts
"Some 150 experts are attending a meeting hosted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to update its guidance to countries on how to boost their defences against a deadly global epidemic.
The H5N1 avian flu virus has infected flocks in much of Asia, Africa and parts of Europe. Experts fear it could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking an influenza pandemic that could kill millions."
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Who should MDs let die in a pandemic? Report offers answers
"Doctors know some patients needing lifesaving care won't get it in a flu pandemic or other disaster. The gut-wrenching dilemma will be deciding who to let die. Now, an influential group of physicians has drafted a grimly specific list of recommendations for which patients wouldn't be treated. They include the very elderly, seriously hurt trauma victims, severely burned patients and those with severe dementia."
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Deadly viral outbreak in China may not peak for two months
A fast-spreading viral disease in eastern China, which has claimed the lives of at least 21 children, might not peak for another two months as it thrives in warm weather, the UN warned on Saturday. Reports from China said Enterovirus-71 or EV-71 has infected nearly 3,000 children, most of them under two. Called hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD), it starts with fever and leads to ulcers in mouth, hands and buttocks.... There is no vaccine or known cure and the disease takes its own course. In most cases, children recover after about a week without treatment but in serious cases, brain swelling and paralysis leading to death might occur.
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Urban Slum Conditions Are A Source Of Leptospirosis
Leptospirosis has emerged to become an urban slum health problem. Epidemics of severe leptospirosis, characterized by jaundice, acute renal failure and haemorrhage, are now reported in cities throughout the developing world due to rapid expansion of slum settlements, which in turn has produced the ecological conditions for rodent-borne transmission of the spirochete pathogen. A survey was performed in the city of Salvador, Brazil, to determine whether the risk of Leptospira infection clustered in households within slum communities in which a member had developed severe leptospirosis. We found that members of households with an index case of leptospirosis had more than five times the risk of having serologic evidence for a prior infection than members of neighbourhood households in the same communities. Increased risk of infection was found among all age groups who resided in these households. The finding that Leptospira infection clusters in specific slum households indicates that the factors associated with this environment are important determinants for transmission.
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New virus causes South American fever
Scientists have identified a new virus that causes bleeding and shock and killed at least one man in a remote area of Bolivia. Doctors at first thought the patient had dengue fever or yellow fever -- caused by two unrelated viruses that can also cause hemorrhagic fevers. "He went on in a few short days from a kind of fairly flu-like illness with headache, fever and muscle aches and deteriorated rapidly into ... the shock and bleeding," Nichol said. But it is never so severe as fictional accounts and films about viruses, Nichol stressed. The new virus is likely carried by a rodent, as most are, and does not pose a widespread threat.
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Flu Viruses Take One-way Ticket Out Of Asia, Then Travel The World
Seasonal influenza strains constantly evolve in overlapping epidemics in Asia and sweep the rest of the world each year, an international research team has found.... The Science study shows ... that each year since 2002, influenza A (H3N2) viruses have migrated out of what the authors call the "East and Southeast Asian circulation network," and from there spread around the world.
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We're the clear losers in the latest round of germ warfare
Future generations will laugh at the sheer arrogance and hubris that the medical profession exhibited with respect to infection in the 20th century.... Our apparent victory over the bugs was illusory, short-lived and ultimately pyrrhic... The inappropriate treatment of common benign viral illnesses (e.g. colds) with antibiotics is a major cause of the emergence of MRSA and other resistant bacteria. Doctors who allow themselves to be browbeaten into the inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics are hastening the day when they will have to tell their infected patients "there is nothing I can do for you".
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S. Korea Culls 3 Million Birds as Bird Flu Spreads Fast
"South Korea said on Thursday it had culled 3 million farmed birds and confirmed three more outbreaks of bird flu, as the country grapples with its worst avian influenza outbreak in four years. In just two weeks South Korea has confirmed 15 cases of the deadly H5N1 strain, raising alarm as the highly virulent virus is spreading at its fastest rate since the country reported its first case in 2003.
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Bird Flu virus entrenched in India: United Nations
In a grave and serious warning to India since the first outbreak of birdflu in Maharashtra in 2006, the United Nations today said that the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus might have got entrenched in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India and Bangladesh. This is almost confirmed by the massive spread of the disease across the states in India. After West Bengal, now it is the turn of Tripura. Bird flu has attacked this northeastern state, the fifth state of India that has become the prey of H5N1 avian influenza virus within a short span of three years.
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Can Climate Change Make Us Sicker?
"What do we talk about when we talk about global warming? It'll get hotter, that's a safe bet; polar ice caps will be melting, and wildlife that can't adapt to warmer temperatures could be on the way out. But what does it really mean for the health of us, the human race? It's a question that remains surprisingly difficult to answer — research into climate change's impacts on human health have lagged behind other areas of climate science. But what we do know has scientists and doctors increasingly worried — a rising risk of death from heat waves, the spread of tropical diseases like malaria into previously untouched areas, worsened water-borne diseases."
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Mutation of the common cold linked to four deaths
Four seniors died at a Nanaimo, B.C. care home earlier this year and 57 others developed serious respiratory infections as a mutation of the common cold swept through the facility.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority confirms an outbreak of human metapneumo virus, a recently discovered viral mutation, began Jan. 3 at Dufferin Place long-term care home.
It affected 61 of the 150 residents at the home over a six week period.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Bird Flu Crosses Species Barrier to Spread Among Dogs
A bird flu virus that killed dogs in South Korea can spread from one dog to another, showing that the disease is capable of crossing species and causing widespread sickness in mammals, a study found.... Transmission of avian influenza A virus to a new mammalian species is of great concern because it potentially allows the virus to adapt to a new mammalian host, cross new species barriers, and acquire pandemic potential,'' the Korean researchers said.
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Superbug MRSA spreading fast, report warns
"A staggering 29,000 Canadian hospital patients acquired the superbug MRSA in a one-year period, including an estimated 2,300 whose deaths were partly attributed to the pernicious bacteria, federal figures released today show. The increase in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus translates into 12,000 new infections plus 17,000 patients who became colonized, said Andrew Simor, co-chairman of the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program. (Being colonized with MRSA means the patients are carriers who are not infected and show no symptoms.)"
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Warming seen having immunological consequences
"The first two bee sting-related deaths were reported in Fairbanks, Alaska in the summer of 2006, which researchers suspect was a consequence of global warming; and they predict that this is just the beginning. Honeybees and yellow jackets were rare in the area until the past few years...There has been a 50-percent increase in sting-related emergencies and, now, the first reports of anaphylactic reactions to bee stings."
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Viruses Found Transmitting Genes Among Bacteria
"We've found previously that the viruses can move between biomes [ecological communities] pretty easily," Rohwer told LiveScience. "So in theory they should be able to move things from one part of the world to another."...
That means genes that would confer environmental protection or some other adaptive tool could trek long distances via viruses from bacteria in one part of the world to another region.... "We're finding those genes in the viruses, which suggests that the viruses, when they're doing infection, they're actually manipulating the behavior of the bacteria when they're in them," Rohwer said....
In fish farms, the researchers found the viruses delivered "eating" genes to bacteria.
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Dengue epidemic hits Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro: An outburst of dengue has killed at least 47 people -- and perhaps twice that -- in Rio de Janeiro state this year, officials said Thursday, announcing a hot spot in a hemispheric outbreak that sickened nearly 1 million people in 2007.
State officials said 51 cases are being reported every hour as the outbreak strains public hospitals' capacity... Brazil had more than half of the 900,782 cases of dengue in the Americas last year, according to the Pan American Health Organization. Of the hemisphere's 317 deaths, 158 came in Brazil, including 31 in Rio state.
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UN: Indonesia failing in bird flu fight
"JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Efforts to contain bird flu are failing in Indonesia, increasing the possibility that the virus may mutate into a deadlier form, the leading U.N. veterinary health body warned. The H5N1 bird flu virus is entrenched in 31 of the country's 33 provinces and will cause more human deaths, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement released late Tuesday. "I am deeply concerned that the high level of virus circulation in birds in the country could create conditions for the virus to mutate and to finally cause a human influenza pandemic," FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said. "
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State media reports outbreak of bird flu in China
Bird flu has broken out in the south of China, killing more than 100 poultry, state media reported on Sunday, citing the agriculture ministry.
The outbreak occurred in a market in Guangzhou, in Guangdong province on Thursday, and was a "highly pathogenic" subtype of the H5N1 influenza virus, which can be deadly to humans, the report said.
A further 500 birds were culled and the disease was under control after emergency measures were taken.
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Impact of Bird Flu: Bad days for fast food shops in Dhaka
Sales in the city's fast food shops have marked a sharp fall as customers continued to ignore chicken items out of bird flu fear, hitting hard the booming fast-food business. "We're passing through a very critical time as our sales have dropped by 50 percent. Even our regular customers hardly visit our shops and those who come are scared of taking chicken items," said Sohel Rana, supervisor of 'Chicken King', a popular fast food shop in Dhanmondi area.... He also blamed the media for spreading the bird flu panic among the people. "Watching chicken culling on television and reading those in newspapers, people get panicked."... Nearly 100,000 poultry farms have been shut down due to the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus, throwing around 2.5 million people out of jobs.
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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H5N1 outbreaks in 9 Vietnamese provinces
"Bird flu outbreaks have been reported in Phu Tho and Ha Nam province, announced the Veterinary Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on March 2.
This has brought the number of the epidemic-hit cities and provinces to nine, including Thai Nguyen, Quang Ninh, Hai Duong, Nam Dinh, Tuyen Quang and Ninh Binh in the north and Vinh Long in the south."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Drug-Resistant TB Rates Soar in Former Soviet Regions
"Drug-resistant tuberculosis cases in parts of the former Soviet Union have reached the highest rates ever recorded globally, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. The rates could soar even higher, spreading the potentially fatal disease elsewhere, a top W.H.O. official said, releasing findings from the largest global survey of the problem."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Growing Threat Seen In Human-Wildlife Conflict, Drug Resistance
"An international research team has provided the first scientific evidence that deadly emerging diseases have risen steeply across the world, and has mapped the outbreaks’ main sources. They say new diseases originating from wild animals in poor nations are the greatest threat to humans. Expansion of humans into shrinking pockets of biodiversity and resulting contacts with wildlife are the reason, they say. Meanwhile, richer nations are nursing other outbreaks, including multidrug-resistant pathogen strains, through overuse of antibiotics, centralized food processing and other technologies."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Emerging Infectious Diseases On The Rise: Tropical Countries Predicted As Next Hot Spot
"It's not just your imagination. Providing the first-ever definitive proof, a team of scientists has shown that emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise. By analyzing 335 incidents of previous disease emergence beginning in 1940, the study has determined that zoonoses -- diseases that originate in animals -- are the current and most important threat in causing new diseases to emerge. And most of these, including SARS and the Ebola virus, originated in wildlife. Antibiotic drug resistance has been cited as another culprit, leading to diseases such as extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB)."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Map pinpoints disease
"A detailed map highlighting the world's hotspots for emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) has been released. It uses data spanning 65 years and shows the majority of these new diseases come from wildlife. Scientists say conservation efforts that reduce conflicts between humans and animals could play a key role in limiting future outbreaks."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Bird flu claims second life in Vietnam
"Hanoi - Bird flu has killed a second man in Vietnam this week, infected a child and poultry in two provinces and a health official warned more people would fall sick of the virus, the government and state media said on Saturday. The 27-year-old man died on Thursday night at a Hanoi hospital after he was taken there from the northern province of Ninh Binh on Tuesday with serious pneumonia, the official Vietnam News Agency reported."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Skin disease linked with deforestation
"U.S. scientists have determined deforestation and social marginalization increase the risk of acquiring an infectious, tropical skin disease. The University of Michigan researchers examined the incidence of the disease American cutaneous leishmaniasis, or ACL, in Costa Rica. ACL -- characterized by skin lesions caused by an infectious organism carried by sand flies -- most commonly affects workers in forested lowlands, but tourists are increasingly at risk as remote tropical areas become more accessible."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Malaria warning as UK becomes warmer
"Following a major consultation with climate change scientists, the Government is issuing official advice to hospitals, care homes and institutions for dealing with rising temperatures, increased flooding, gales and other major weather events. It warns that there is a high likelihood of a major heatwave, leading to as many as 10,000 deaths, hitting the UK by 2012....Hospitals are also warned to prepare for outbreaks of malaria and tick-born viruses, as well as increased levels of skin cancer and deaths from asthma and other breathing conditions."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Video Reveals Violations of Laws, Abuse of Cows at Slaughterhouse
"Video footage being released today shows workers at a California slaughterhouse delivering repeated electric shocks to cows too sick or weak to stand on their own; drivers using forklifts to roll the "downer" cows on the ground in efforts to get them to stand up for inspection; and even a veterinary version of waterboarding in which high-intensity water sprays are shot up animals' noses -- all violations of state and federal laws designed to prevent animal cruelty and to keep unhealthy animals, such as those with mad cow disease, out of the food supply."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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India worst bird flu outbreak spreads
"KOLKATA, India (AFP) - India's worst outbreak of bird flu spread as health authorities battled on Friday to stop it reaching the densely populated city of Kolkata amid heavy rain that hampered culling efforts. Authorities reported the disease had affected two more districts, bringing the number hit by avian flu to 12 out of West Bengal state's total of 19. "We're afraid bird flu may spread to many areas -- it has already spread to two more districts," said state animal resources minister Anisur Rahaman in Kolkata, which has 13.2 million people, many of whom live in congested slums."
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Bacteria race ahead of drugs
"...Dr. Jeff Brooks has been director of the UCSF lab for 29 years, and has watched with a mixture of fascination and dread how bacteria once tamed by antibiotics evolve rapidly into forms that practically no drug can treat.
"These organisms are very small," he said, "but they are still smarter than we are."
Among the most alarming of these is MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bug that used to be confined to vulnerable hospital patients, but now is infecting otherwise healthy people in schools, gymnasiums and the home. Last week, doctors at San Francisco General Hospital reported that a variant of that strain, resistant to six important antibiotics normally used to treat staph, may be transmitted by sexual contact and is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. "We are on the verge of losing control of the situation, particularly in the hospitals," said Dr. Chip Chambers, chief of infectious disease at San Francisco General Hospital.
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U.N. says prepare for big flu pandemic economic hit
"Most countries have now focused on pandemic as a potential cause of catastrophe and have done some planning. But the quality of the plans is patchy and too few of them pay attention to economic and social consequences," he told BBC radio. "The economic consequences could be up to $2 trillion (1 trillion pounds) -- up to 5 percent of global GDP removed," he said, reiterating previous World Bank and UN estimates.
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Stomach bug sweeping the country
"Doctors estimate more than 100,000 people a week are catching norovirus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting... At least 56 hospital wards across England and Wales have been closed to new patients, the BBC has learned.
The Worcestershire Acute Hospitals Trust says it is cancelling all non-urgent operations until 9 January because of what it calls the "unrelenting pressure" caused by the virus."
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Tuberculosis exposure feared on India-to-U.S. flight
"U.S. health officials are trying to track down 44 people who sat near a woman infected with a hard-to-treat form of tuberculosis aboard an airliner from India to determine whether they have been infected, authorities said on Friday. The infected woman is 30 years old and is being treated for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, or MDR TB, at a hospital in the San Francisco area, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She had been diagnosed in India with MDR TB but traveled last month anyway, the CDC said."
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Inside Ebola
"Inside Ebola's zone of death Uganda is gripped by fear of an epidemic explosion' as the killer virus develops a slower and potentially more lethal version."
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Bird flu resurfaces in Asia, human deaths and poultry outbreaks reported
"Bird flu has resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China and fresh poultry outbreaks plaguing other countries during the winter months when the virus typically flares. Indonesia, the nation hardest hit by the H5N1 virus, announced its 93rd death on Friday after a 47-year-old man died a day earlier in a Jakarta hospital, said Health Ministry spokesman Joko Suyono. He fell ill on Dec. 2 and was admitted with flu-like symptoms, becoming Indonesia's 115th person infected with the disease."
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Tip: Bumming out? Don't forget that there's
also the
Recovery Scenario!
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Virus Starts Like a Cold But Can Turn Into a Killer
"Infectious-disease expert David N. Gilbert was making rounds at the Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon in April when he realized that an unusual number of patients, including young, vigorous adults, were being hit by a frightening pneumonia.
"What was so striking was to see patients who were otherwise healthy be just devastated," Gilbert said. Within a day or two of developing a cough and high fever, some were so sick they would arrive at the emergency room gasping for air. "They couldn't breathe," Gilbert said. "They were going to die if we didn't get more oxygen into them." Gilbert alerted state health officials, a decision that led investigators to realize that a new, apparently more virulent form of a virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold was circulating around the United States. At least 1,035 Americans in four states have been infected so far this year by the virus, known as an adenovirus. Dozens have been hospitalized, many requiring intensive care, and at least 10 have died.
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A new virus called Chikungunya spreads to several new countries via mosquito
"This mutation increases the potential for Chikungunya virus to permanently extend its range into Europe and the Americas," Stephen Higgs and colleagues at the University of Texas Medical Branch wrote in their report, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens.
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Uganda: Cabinet Meets Over Ebola Epidemic
"At Mulago Hospital, where Dr. Jonah Kule, a medic from Bundibugyo, died of suspected Ebola on Tuesday night, some sections were paralysed yesterday as health workers feared to handle patients without appropriate protective gear. In the casualty ward, Saturday Vision saw empty glove boxes and plastic containers meant to carry disinfectants. By about 11:00am, a crowd of patients was outside the casualty ward waiting in vain to be called in, while others went home frustrated. In emergency ward 3B, some workers wore masks, white gumboots and gloves, while others did not. Meanwhile, in the out-patient department in Old Mulago, work was going on normally except for the low turn up of patients compared to other days. The hospital director could not be reached for comment as he was in marathon meetings."
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Uganda: 'Hiv/Aids is Nothing Compared to Plague'
"This hut had to be at a good distance of not less than 200 metres. Relatives would bring food and pour it on a banana leaf about 100 metres from the 'condemned' patient, who would then pick it or eat it from there. This was meant to cut out any direct contact with healthy people.
Often, these patients would die at night and would be buried just next to the hut by only family members. Neighbours would shun such homes for a long time.
Just like happens when a disease breaks out and is yet to be identified, rumours of witchcraft abounded as regards plague.
But it was the colonial government which brought an end to the pandemic when it exploited cultural beliefs to wipe out plague. The cure, the government said, lay in the tail of an undesirable rodent that is a menace in our homes - the rat. And it was real."
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