Recent News

By Region: Asia/Pacific

Looking to the Bio-Defense Sector as Nuclear Fears Mount

As Japan’s nuclear crisis deepens, Wall Street may begin to focus on a small group of almost-ignored young biotechs. Known as the bio-defense group, these firms develop products that help protect the population from radiation leaks resulting from nuclear accidents or attacks.

March 21, 2011
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, North America, Biotechnology, and International
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Biosecurity and animal-borne viruses

Just down the highway from Lorne on Victoria’s coast is CSIRO Livestock Industries’ Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong. And within the high-level facilities of the AAHL is the world’s largest collection of pathogenic bat viruses. Some of these – Hendra, Nipah and the SARS-like coronavirus – are very nasty indeed, and no doubt Read More »

March 17, 2011
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Agents & Toxins, and Agriculture
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Stemming the Spread of Disease at Airports

With roughly two million people flying each day and spending hours in confined areas where they will come into close contact with potentially infected people, air travel poses a serious challenge to public health officials seeking to contain major disease outbreaks; last month public health officials scrambled to contain a potential mass outbreak of measles Read More »

March 16, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, and Public Health
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Committee Sharply Critiques WHO’s Pandemic Response

Eight months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the swine flu pandemic officially over, an independent expert group has given the global health agency a decidedly mixed evaluation of how it handled the entire episode, from the outbreak’s…

March 14, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, and Public Health
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Virologists form Global Virus Response Network

Leading medical virologists from around the world today signed up to join a new Global Virus Response Network – a first-of-its-kind international scientific alliance that aims to be a leading global authority on viral disease. Two days of organizational meetings at the Italian Embassy in Washington, DC, culminated in a signing ceremony 3 March during Read More »