Recent News

By Region: Europe

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 »

March 7, 2011
| Filed under Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, South America, South Asia, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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Russia Argues For Keeping Smallpox Strains

Russia’s top public health official argued it is too soon to eliminate the world’s last known strains of smallpox held in his country and the United States, Interfax reported yesterday (see GSN, Jan. 24). Smallpox was declared eliminated from nature in 1980. Russia and the United States have asserted they should be allowed to retain Read More »

February 25, 2011
| Filed under Europe, Agents & Toxins, and Countermeasures
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Italy: New Program Looks at Biosecurity

MILAN (AP) — The threat is all too real, experts say: foreign insects introduced in an area with no natural defenses with the aim of destabilizing the economy, food supply or both. A new €6 million ($8.2 million) project funded by the European Commission will study both how to prevent and respond to biological threats Read More »