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By Category: Public Health

North American countries join forces to prepare for pandemics

(HHS News) A new North American Plan for Animal and Pandemic Influenza supports a faster and more coordinated response to influenza pandemics in North America. President Barack Obama, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper released the plan jointly this week during the North American Leaders Summit as a way to enhance Read More »

April 4, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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BioWatch Gen-3 behind schedule

(Fierce Homeland Security) Attempts to create an automated aerosolized biological agent detection system are behind schedule, acknowledged Alexander Garza, the head of the Homeland Security Department’s office of health affairs, during a congressional hearing March 29. “There’s going to be slips in the schedule, and there’s nothing that I can do–that anybody can do–to prevent Read More »

April 4, 2012
| Filed under North America, Countermeasures, and Public Health
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London prepares for Olympian disease-monitoring task

(Nature News Blog) As the world’s athletes limber up for the forthcoming Olympic games in London, infectious-disease experts are preparing for their own trials. Their competition is with the diseases that millions of athletes, officials, media and spectators bring with them as they converge from across the globe on the UK capital. There is already Read More »

April 4, 2012
| Filed under Europe, North America, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Anthrax Kits in 114 Million US Homes Gets FDA Scrutiny

(BusinessWeek) Making anthrax-antidote kits available to the 114 million households in the US in case of a bioterrorism attack may lead to misuse of the medicines and stir up public fears, regulatory advisers said.

April 3, 2012
| Filed under North America, Bioterrorism, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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When Superbugs Attack

(Foreign Affairs) Antibiotic-resistant NDM-1 Is Undermining India’s Medical Sector. Some of modern medicine’s most heralded interventions — from routine surgeries to organ transplants and cancer treatments — may soon be too dangerous. The viability of these procedures hinges on physicians’ ability to use antibiotics to swiftly vanquish any bacterial infections that might arise in the Read More »