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By Category: Public Health

Should Scientific Journals Describe How Researchers Made a Killer Flu?

(TIME) H5N1 avian flu rarely infects humans, but it is deadly when it does. Since the virus first emerged in humans in Hong Kong in 1997, nearly 600 people have been infected worldwide and almost 60% have died. The virus isn’t very transmissible, but scientists have long worried that it might mutate, perhaps through reassortment Read More »

December 22, 2011
| Filed under Europe, North America, Biosafety, International, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Fears grow over lab-bred flu

(Nature.com) Some researchers argue that work on a new strain of avian flu should be conducted only in labs with the highest biosafety precautions. It is a nightmare scenario: a human pandemic caused by the accidental release of a man-made form of the lethal avian …

December 21, 2011
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Europe, North America, Biosafety, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Historic ‘Grand Challenge’ launched: Create low-cost devices for rapid disease diagnosis

(McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health) Grand Challenges Canada and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have teamed up on an unprecedented global effort to discover and develop affordable, easy-to-use tools to help developing country health workers rapidly diagnose diseases in rural communities. The expected result: more timely and appropriate treatment of illnesses in poor countries, Read More »

December 19, 2011
| Filed under Africa, North America, South America, South Asia, International, Public Health, and Research
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The Risk of Engineering a Highly Transmissible H5N1 Virus

(Editorial by Thomas V. Inglesby, Anita Cicero, and D. A. Henderson) Over the past 8 years, H5N1 avian influenza has sickened 571 people, killing 59% of them. To give some perspective, the fatality rate of the virus that caused the 1918 Great Pandemic was 2%, and that pandemic killed on the order of 50 million Read More »

December 19, 2011
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Biological Weapons, Biosafety, Biotechnology, Public Health, and Research
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Emory and US CDC partner to continue building global public health network with $6 million grant

(Emory University) Emory University’s Global Health Institute has received a three-year, $6 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop a model for strengthening national public health institutes (NPHIs) globally. The grant will build upon a previous foundation grant to the International Association of National Public Health Institutes (IANPHI), which since Read More »