Recent News

By Category: Countermeasures

Inhalation anthrax treatment, raxibacumab, gets FDA approval

(TheGlobalDispatch) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved GlaxoSmithKline’s raxibacumab injection to treat inhalation anthrax, a lethal form of the infectious disease caused by breathing in the spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis, according to an FDA press release Friday. The approval comes just a month after the Anti-Infective Drugs Advisory Committee for FDA Read More »

June 24, 2013
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, and Research
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The Global Polio Eradication Initiative Stop Transmission of Polio (STOP) Program — 1999–2013

(CDC) In 1988, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) was established through a partnership between the World Health Organization (WHO), Rotary International, CDC, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). By 2012, the annual incidence of polio had decreased by >99%, compared with 1988, and the number of countries in which wild poliovirus (WPV) circulation Read More »

June 21, 2013
| Filed under Africa, Middle East, North America, Countermeasures, International, and Public Health
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Influenza Vaccine Reduced Disease Outcomes By Up To 18.5 Percent, Study Estimates

(MedicalNewsToday) Approximately 13 million illnesses and over 110,00 hospitalizations may have been averted by the flu vaccine over the last 6 years in the U.S, according to calculations published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Deliana Kostova and colleagues from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers calculated the healthcare Read More »

June 21, 2013
| Filed under Countermeasures
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Flu shot likely prevented 13 million illnesses, 110,000 hospitalizations from 2005-2011

June 20, 2013
| Filed under Countermeasures and Public Health
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A shot in the arm for old antibiotics

(EurekAlert) Slipping bacteria some silver could give old antibiotics new life, scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University reported June 19 in Science Translational Medicine. Treating bacteria with a silver-containing compound boosted the efficacy of a broad range of widely used antibiotics and helped them stop otherwise lethal infections in Read More »