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By Category: Public Health

Biosafety experts comment on reported CDC lab problems

(CIDRAP) News reports about possible airflow problems at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) lab in Atlanta are fueling perceptions that the agency isn’t following its own rules, but the reported conditions at the lab don’t appear to have posed a public health threat, according to some expert Read More »

July 6, 2012
| Filed under North America, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Homeland Security Department develops foot-and-mouth disease vaccine

(Los Angeles Times) It’s not often that the Department of Homeland Security makes it into a science blog, but this is an unusual week. The department announced this week that it has developed the first vaccine for foot-and-mouth disease that can be manufactured and licensed in the United States and that could be used in Read More »

July 5, 2012
| Filed under Countermeasures and Public Health
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Revised Estimate Increases Global H1N1 Mortality Figures by Factor of 15

(Center for Biosecurity of UPMC) The previously reported number of deaths due to laboratory-confirmed H1N1 (18,500) during the 16 months of the 2009-2010 pandemic (April 2009-August 2010)1 is widely acknowledged to be a gross underestimate because most flu patients were not tested. Evidence of this lack of data is that less than 12% of laboratory-confirmed Read More »

July 5, 2012
| Filed under Africa, South Asia, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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African biosafety ‘still neglected’

(SciDev.Net) [JOHANNESBURG] The implementation of biosafety practices is being hampered by inadequate laboratory equipment and training across Africa, a conference has heard. African countries need to develop this area so they can reap the benefits derived from biotechnology while avoiding the potential risks associated with it, according to Paul Okemo, chief executive officer of the Read More »

July 5, 2012
| Filed under Africa, Biosafety, and Public Health
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Measuring the uncertainties of pandemic influenza

(EurekAlert!) A major collaboration between US research centers has highlighted three factors that could ultimately determine whether an outbreak of influenza becomes a serious epidemic that threatens national health. The research suggests that the numbers in current response plans could be out by a factor of two or more depending on the characteristics of the Read More »