 | | | | Infectious Diseases Headlines | | | (Associated Press) -- Scientists are reporting a major advance in diagnosing tuberculosis: A new test can reveal in less than two hours, with very high accuracy, whether someone has the disease and if it's resistant to the main drug for treating it.
DENVER (The New York Times News Service) -- Health officials are recommending that almost everyone get a flu shot this year.
JAKARTA (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Indonesian health officials were working Tuesday to prevent outbreaks of disease as thousands of villagers remained in evacuation centres after the eruption of a volcano on Sumatra island, officials said.
(USA TODAY) -- The family of late Colorado Rockies President Keli McGregor issued a statement Monday, saying he died of a rare virus that infected the heart muscle.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Food and Drug Administration officials say they have found positive samples of salmonella that link two Iowa farms to a massive egg recall.
LONDON (AP) -- The European Medicines Agency is investigating whether there is a link between narcolepsy and a swine flu vaccine.
VIENNA (AP) -- Austria's health ministry is reporting two cases of a new gene that allows bacteria to become a superbug.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- Doctors and activists say AIDS patients aren't getting treated because of a nationwide civil service strike in South Africa, the country with the most people infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
(Associated Press) -- Two large Iowa farms have recalled 550 million eggs because of possible contamination with salmonella. Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration are trying to find the cause of the outbreak, but so far haven't pinpointed the source.
(USA TODAY) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has added 40 illnesses to the estimated 1,300 that have occurred already in the salmonella enteritidis outbreak that forced the recall of half a billion eggs.
Islamabad (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- The United Nations said on Monday that millions of people were facing hunger and disease after the worst floods in Pakistan's history.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (A) -- Malaysia has closed parks and warned the public about swimming and dumping trash in rivers after up to 10 people died from a disease spread by rats.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Hundreds of people have been sickened in a salmonella outbreak linked to eggs in four states and possibly more, health officials said Wednesday as a company dramatically expanded a recall to 380 million eggs.
VIENTIANE, Laos (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- A cholera outbreak killed four people in southern Laos before health workers could halt the disease, state media reports said Wednesday.
ISLAMABAD (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Three people have died at relief camps for Pakistan's flood victims as diseases started to spread, media and health officials said on Tuesday.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- Global sales of vaccines grew by a healthy 16 percent last year, when sales shot up to $22.1 billion, healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information reported Friday.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A rare U.S. outbreak of typhoid fever has been linked to a frozen tropical fruit product used to make smoothies, health officials reported Thursday.
(The New York Times News Service) -- This time last year, doctors and public health leaders were anticipating one of the worst flu seasons in decades, as hundreds of thousands of children returned to school with no protection from a new influenza virus that was rapidly spreading around the world.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal health regulators are warning doctors and patients that an anti-seizure drug from GlaxoSmithKline PLC can cause rare inflammation of the brain and spinal cord.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Cooking chicken on the grill this summer? Be careful. Poultry is still the leading culprit in food poisoning outbreaks, health officials said Thursday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Aggressive, drug-resistant staph infections caught in hospitals or from medical treatment are becoming scarcer, another sign of progress in a prevention effort that has become a national public health priority.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization declared the swine flu pandemic officially over Tuesday, months after many national authorities started canceling vaccine orders and shutting down telephone hot lines as the disease ebbed from the headlines.
BANGKOK (Canadian Press) -- Health authorities in Thailand are urging young women not to wear fashionable black leggings to avoid attracting unwanted attention from dengue-carrying mosquitoes.
ATLANTA (AP) -- A government panel is recommending doctors steer clear of giving one brand of flu vaccine to young children this year because of convulsions and fever in kids who got the shot in Australia and New Zealand.
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) -- Officials in the Dominican Republic are warning people living near low-lying areas flooded by recent rainstorms to be on alert for two diseases that have already killed 53 people and sickened thousands.
(Associated Press) -- Provocative new research shows that treating people with the AIDS virus can provide a powerful bonus: It cuts the risk that they will infect others.
(Associated Press) -- For the first time, a vaginal gel has proved capable of blocking the AIDS virus: It cut in half a woman's chances of getting HIV from an infected partner in a study in South Africa. Scientists called it a breakthrough in the long quest for a tool to help women whose partners won't use condoms.
VIENNA (AP) -- World leaders lack the political will to ensure that everyone infected with HIV and AIDS gets treatment, the head of a meeting dedicated to the disease said Sunday.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- U.S. scientists are reporting they've made progress in the search for what's called the Holy Grail of influenza research -- a universal flu vaccine.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Danish company has delivered the first 1 million doses of a next-generation smallpox vaccine to the U.S. national stockpile, a vaccine reserved for people with weakened immune systems.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Alas, here's more proof that most people have habits that aren't very sanitary -- and sometimes can be plain disgusting.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Last year's West Nile virus season was the mildest in eight years, and just one case of serious illness has been reported so far this year.
ATLANTA (AP) -- About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired -- meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.
HONG KONG (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Hong Kong researchers have developed a treatment for people infected by swine flu using the antibodies from blood plasma from patients who recovered from the disease, a media report said Thursday.
LONDON (AP) -- Health officials say a new meningitis vaccine will help prevent epidemics in Africa for the first time, revolutionizing how doctors fight outbreaks of the deadly disease.
MEXICO CITY (Canadian Press) -- The government of Mexico lifted the alert for swine flu Tuesday, officially ending the health emergency in the country where the illness first appeared 14 months ago.
SHANGHAI (AP) -- American and Shanghai health authorities opened an epidemiology center in the Chinese city Tuesday to train experts in sleuthing out ways to prevent chronic and epidemic diseases.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- A two-year effort to contain and eliminate a drug-resistant strain of falciparum malaria near the Cambodian-Thai border has shown signs of success, the government said Friday.
WASHINGTON (The New York Times News Service) -- Texas medical officials told Congress on Wednesday that U.S.-Mexican cooperation is essential to coping with tuberculosis outbreaks along the border.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization said Tuesday that two members of an expert panel reviewing the global body's response to the swine flu outbreak have resigned over concerns about perceived conflict of interest.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to tighten rules protecting the safety of water in public systems.
BLANTYRE, Malawi (AP) -- More than 100 members of a Christian religious sect have barricaded themselves in an abandoned building in southern Malawi over their refusal to give their children the measles vaccine, a regional health official said Wednesday.
LONDON (AP) -- The family of a 28-year-old British woman who unknowingly received a lung transplant from a smoker says she would have been "horrified" and have lodged a complaint.
LONDON (AP) -- For thousands of Catholics, the 13th-century Italian Saint Rose of Viterbo had miraculous powers that allowed her to raise someone from the dead and survive the flames of a burning pyre.
GENEVA (AP) -- The head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday that her decisions about swine flu were not influenced by advisers' links to pharmaceutical companies, which were pointed out in a critical journal article this month.
PARIS (AP) -- A report released by the Council of Europe on Friday accuses the World Health Organization and European governments of vastly exaggerating the public health risks of swine flu and making secretive decisions that benefited pharmaceutical companies.
GENEVA (AP) -- The World Health Organization says cholera is spreading fast in Somalia as people flee fighting between the government and rebels.
GENEVA (AP) -- The head of the World Health Organization says swine flu is still a pandemic even though the period of most intense activity appears to have passed.
WELLINGTON, N.Z. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur) -- Airlines and health authorities need to consider how they can prevent sick people from boarding flights, according to New Zealand researchers who said Wednesday there was a "small but measurable risk" of contracting swine flu in the air.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Food and Drug Administration says it has approved the first diagnostic test for 2009 swine flu under its traditional approval system.
(The New York Times News Service) -- Roughly 65 million doses of swine flu vaccine sit unused or expired in clinics, doctor's offices, and warehouses across the United States as the virus that once stoked fears of a devastating global epidemic has retreated. Most of the leftover shots and nasal spray, about 40 percent of what the federal government ordered, will be destroyed.
GENEVA (AP) -- Measles is making a rapid comeback in African, Asian and even some European countries despite being easily avoided through vaccination, the World Health Organizations said Friday as countries pledged to sharply cut infections and deaths worldwide by 2015.
GENEVA (AP) -- For years, the world has been on the brink of wiping out polio, the deadly disease that can paralyze and kill children.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Health officials say many public swimming pools aren't as clean as they should be.
GENEVA (AP) -- An expert panel investigating the World Health Organization's response to last year's swine flu outbreak said Wednesday it wants to see confidential exchanges between the U.N. body and drug companies.
GENEVA (AP) -- A global vaccine group says the World Health Organization will pass an important resolution later this week to step up efforts against pneumonia.
GENEVA (AP) -- Global efforts to control tuberculosis have failed and radical new approaches are needed, experts said Wednesday.
CHICAGO (AP) -- The number of children hospitalized with dangerous drug-resistant staph infections surged 10-fold in recent years, a study found.
GULERIA, India (AP) -- Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates traveled by boat Wednesday to a remote village in eastern India to check on the progress of a government campaign to eradicate polio that the billionaire is helping to fund.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) ---A 15-year-old boy has died of diphtheria in Haiti, but there is no evidence the bacterial disease is spreading in the earthquake-ravaged country, U.N. health officials said Sunday.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal investigators are looking at a farm in Yuma, Ariz., as a possible source of a widespread E. coli outbreak in romaine lettuce, according to the distributor.
BORUNGO KHOLA, Bangladesh (AP) -- A pinch of salt. A fistful of sugar. A half liter of water.
GENEVA (Canadian Press) -- The World Health Organization says 32 cases of polio have been confirmed in Tajikistan as health workers are setting up a nationwide vaccination campaign.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Fears of swine flu helped boost vaccination for ordinary seasonal flu last year, with a record 40 percent of adults and children getting the vaccine, federal health officials said Thursday.
MUMBAI, India (AP) -- It took two years of secret suffering and gut-wrenching diarrhea to make Lumkile Sizila face the fact that he had HIV.
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- When this city of 8.7 million awoke one year ago to confusing news of a new virus, it sent the world on a wild six-month roller-coaster ride of fear and frantic action.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- An African bank, communications giant and popular chicken restaurant chain are taking on malaria, saying their business expertise might be the missing weapon in the fight against a disease that kills 1 million annually.
(USA TODAY) -- A year ago today, Lyn Finelli, chief of flu surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gathered her team and advised them to prepare for the worst.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Quick treatment with flu medicine saved the lives of many pregnant women who were stricken by swine flu last year, according to the most complete analysis of deaths among expectant mothers.
LONDON (AP) -- Health groups have spent more than a billion dollars and bought millions of bednets to fight malaria, and 20 African countries have increased their bednet coverage at least fivefold, new research says.
GENEVA (AP) -- The head of an expert group brought in to review the World Health Organization's response to the swine flu outbreak said Wednesday that some members of the panel would inevitably be biased because of their close links to the global body or national governments.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Americans suffered a bit less food poisoning last year.
GENEVA (Canadian Press) -- The head of the World Health Organization says she wants a "frank and critical" review of its handling of the swine flu pandemic.
TORONTO (Canadian Press) -- A set of controversial studies that suggested getting a previous seasonal flu shot doubled a person's risk of catching pandemic H1N1 last spring has finally been published - though the mystery of whether the finding is real remains.
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