Recent News

By Category: Public Health

Taking the Pulse of CDC’s PulseNet

(Food Safety News) This week at the annual meeting of the Association of Public Health Laboratories in Seattle, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – which operates PulseNet – explained the crucial role this pathogen database plays in outbreak detection and the challenges that must be met in order for it to Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Bio terror vaccine stockpile procurement questioned

(Government Security News) A House intelligence committee member and former Bush White House bio-terror official are questioning whether smallpox and anthrax vaccine stockpile efforts are being slowed by the Obama administration because of the costs. A May 10 letter from House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) to Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for preparedness Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Bird-flu research: The biosecurity oversight

(Nature.com) The packages that started arriving by FedEx on 12 October last year came with strict instructions: protect the information within and destroy it after review. Inside were two manuscripts showing how the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus could be made to transmit between mammals. The recipients of these packages — eight members of the Read More »

May 24, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, International, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Researchers take virus-tracking software worldwide

(R & D Magazine) A biomedical informatics researcher who tracks dangerous viruses as they spread around the globe has restructured his innovative tracking software to promote even wider use of the program around the world.

May 24, 2012
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Europe, North America, Countermeasures, International, Public Health, and Research
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Army study: DNA vaccine and duck eggs protect against hantavirus disease

(US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases) Army scientists and industry collaborators have successfully protected laboratory animals from lethal hantavirus disease using a novel approach that combines DNA vaccines and duck eggs. The work appears in a recent edition of the online scientific journal PLoS ONE, published by the Public Library of Science.