Infectious disease

November 16, 2009 -- Montpelier, Vt. – Vermont Governor Jim Douglas announced today that the Vermont Department of Health was awarded a two-year $860,000 grant by the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention (CDC) that will enable the state to strengthen its healthcare-acquired infection (HAI) prevention activities.

“In 2007, Vermont was the first state in the nation to publicly report hospital-specific healthcare-acquired infection rates using the CDC’s reporting system, and this grant will help keep Vermont at the forefront of patient safety and quality improvement,” said Governor Douglas. “Continuing to improve our overall healthcare system is a key element of Vermont’s health care reform efforts.”    » read more »

November 10, 2009 -- To reduce healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in stand-alone or same-day surgical centers, the HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the availability of up to $9 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to state survey agencies in 43 states. HAIs are infections some patients acquire when they are in a health care setting such as a hospital or outpatient clinic.    » read more »

November 10, 2009 -- WASHINGTON, D.C. -- United States Senator Roland W. Burris today announced that $98,351.00 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are being allocated to the State of Illinois to combat and reduce health care associated infections (HAIs). HAIs are infections some patients acquire when they are in a health care setting such as a hospital or outpatient clinic.

Senator Burris and the Democratic-led Congress passed the 2009 American Reinvestment and Recovery Act that was signed into law by President Obama in February.    » read more »

PITTSBURGH, PA and CHALFONT ST. GILES, UK, 12 October, 2009 -- In an effort to bolster U.S. biosecurity, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), today announced a collaboration aimed at the construction of an advanced development and production facility for the manufacture of vaccines and therapeutics to counter a range of biological threats.    » read more »

LA JOLLA, CA, March 2, 2009—A team of scientists at the Scripps Research Institute has found a way to use specially programmed chemicals to elicit an immediate immune response in laboratory animals against two types of cancer. The experiments, thus far performed only in mice, appear to overcome a major drawback of vaccinations—the lag time of days, or even weeks, that it normally takes for immunity to build against a pathogen. This new method of vaccination could potentially be used to provide instantaneous protection against diseases caused by viruses and bacteria, cancers, and even virulent toxins.

The work is being published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of March 2, 2009.    » read more »

Abuja -- 13 August 2008 -- Animal health specialists warn a new strain of highly pathogenic bird flu in Nigeria - which has previously not been recorded in sub-Saharan Africa - increases the risk of avian influenza spreading to other countries in West Africa.

Nigeria's bird flu officials blame infected migratory birds from Europe or Central Asia for the spread of the new strain of H5N1 to the country.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization says the newly discovered virus strain is genetically different from the strain that circulated in Nigeria in 2006 and 2007.

The U.N. food agency says the new strain is similar to ones previously identified in Italy, Afghanistan and Iran, last year.    » read more »

May 14, 2008 — The HIV/AIDS epidemic will remain for the foreseeable future an unprecedented economic, social, and human challenge to Sub-Saharan Africa. This, according to a new strategy on HIV/AIDS in Africa launched by the World Bank Group on May 14. As well, African countries must continue to champion efforts to slow and reverse the rate of new HIV infections.    » read more »

02 April 2008 -- The House of Representatives has approved bipartisan legislation by a vote of 308 to 116 to provide $50 billion over the next five years for U.S. efforts to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS around the world, and fight tuberculosis and malaria. VOA's Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill, similar legislation is pending in the Senate.

PEPFAR

The measure extends the program proposed by President Bush in 2003 called PEPFAR (President's Emergency Program For AIDS Relief) for another five years, and goes significantly above the $30 billion initially proposed by the White House.    » read more »

20-03-2008 -- Geneva (ICRC) – Despite international efforts to curb tuberculosis, this infectious disease is on the rise.

Prisons have to be at the centre of national TB control programmes, as they are a breeding ground for tuberculosis, and particularly for drug-resistant forms of the disease, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB infection, as seen through electron microscope    » read more »

30 January 2008 -- One of the highlights of President Bush’s State of the Union initiatives for African countries was his appeal for congress to double his 2003 five-year commitment of 15 billion dollars for fighting HIV-AIDS.

However, advocates promoting congressional legislation in the weeks and months ahead say the president’s 30 billion-dollar request amounts to little or no new funding increases for AIDS treatment, since the raised levels he asked for Monday night have already been approved by congress in earlier budgets.    » read more »

23 January 2008 -- Indian officials are struggling to contain a serious outbreak of bird flu that has spread across nearly half of the eastern state of West Bengal.

India's Farm Minister, Sharad Pawar, said Wednesday the virus has been detected in nine of the state's 19 districts. Neighboring states are being asked to send medical staff to help deal with the outbreak.

West Bengal officials have set a new target of slaughtering 300,000 chickens a day and increased the number of veterinary teams to 600.    » read more »

January 23, 2008 -- BURLINGTON – The Vermont Department of Health reported the first laboratory-confirmed case of influenza in the state on Friday, Jan. 18.

“The first laboratory-confirmed case of influenza does not mean that the flu has not been present in our state before now,” said Cort Lohff, MD, state epidemiologist for the Vermont Department of Health. “Flu season is inevitable. Vermonters should take every precaution to avoid getting sick or spreading the flu to other people. And it is not too late to get your flu shot.”    » read more »

19 December 2007 -- Delegates from 111 countries met in New Delhi, India, the first week of December to assess the progress in combating avian flu and the preparations for a human influenza pandemic. Two of the public health officials leading that effort summarized the results of the conference at a news briefing in Washington. .

Since it was first diagnosed in Asia in 1996, the virus that causes avian influenza, or bird flu, has forced the destruction of millions of infected poultry flocks in nearly 60 countries. More than 200 people have died after contracting the so-called H5N1 virus.    » read more »

Lethal MRSA Infection Continues To Pop Up In Schools Across New York State

November 14, 2007 -- With the drug-resistant MRSA infection continuing to pop up across NYS and the country, today U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer introduced a new bill that will offer tax credits to companies researching and developing products to combat infectious diseases.    » read more »

30 October 2007 -- The strain of the HIV virus which predominates in the United States and Europe has been traced back to Haiti by a team of scientists. The team hopes that knowing the virus's origin could help find a cure for HIV, which can lead to AIDS.

A team of scientists, whose work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that a specific strain of the HIV virus passed from Haiti to the United States in about 1969 before spreading further.    » read more »