The Risk of Sustained Sexual Transmission of Zika Is Underestimated (
bioRxiv) Pathogens can follow more than one transmission route during outbreaks -- from needle sharing plus sexual transmission of HIV to small droplet aerosol plus fomite transmission of influenza. Thus, controlling an infectious disease outbreak often requires characterizing the risk associated with multiple mechanisms of transmission.
Go to article
Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
H5N8 Avian Flu Outbreak Expands to Egypt (
CIDRAP) Egypt today reported its first highly pathogenic H5N8 avian influenza detection, making it the third country in the Middle East to report the new H5 clade, which has also spread to several European countries after it was first identified in Russian migratory birds in June.
Go to article
Alaska: Invasive Group A Streptococcal Infections in Fairbanks and Anchorage (
Outbreak News Today) The Alaska Section of Epidemiology is working in collaboration with the CDC's Arctic Investigations Program and the Municipality of Anchorage on characterizing and responding to an increased number of invasive Group A Streptococcus (GAS, also known as Streptococcus pyogenes) infections identified through ongoing surveillance and that are caused by a novel genotype, emm-type 26 (emm-26).
Go to article
Domestic Preparedness & Response
Government Affairs & National Security
Weapons Treaties Look Ready to Unravel, and That's a Big Problem (
Washington Post) The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, a treaty outlawing the development and production of germ weapons, lacked effective verification and compliance mechanisms from the moment it entered into force in 1975. A series of review conferences has tried to improve it, without much success.
Go to article
See Also:
Close of the Eighth Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference in Geneva (
US Mission Geneva) The Conference was unable to reach agreement on a new, more ambitious work-plan for the next 5 years, a plan that was supported by the US and the vast majority of other States Parties to the Convention. The US sought agreement on a work-plan that would allow for more intensive expert work and for taking decisions more often than once every 5 years -- goals we believe are widely shared.
Go to article
Global Health Security
Measuring and Motivating Global Health Security: Lessons from Taiwan (
No More Epidemics) In 2012, I had the privilege of working with Taiwan's Department of Health, assessing its public health emergency preparedness programs. It quickly became obvious that preparedness for epidemics was a top priority for good reason: In 2003,Taiwan was hit hard by the global SARS epidemic, suffering nearly 700 infections and 200 deaths--and losing nearly half a percentage point of its Gross Domestic Product.
Go to article
Oral Cholera Vaccine Coverage During an Outbreak and Humanitarian Crisis, Iraq, 2015 (Emerging
Infectious Diseases) The risk of communicable disease epidemics in Iraq is heightened due to the large numbers of displaced populations residing in camps, informal settlements, or temporary placement sites (collective centers). These sites are usually overcrowded and have inadequate shelter arrangements and limited access to sanitation facilities, safe drinking water, safe food, and basic healthcare services.
Go to article
Takeda to Build $106M Vaccine Plant for Dengue Vax Push (
Fierce Pharma) The drugmaker announced late Tuesday that construction will begin "immediately" on the $106 million project and is slated to be complete in 2019. Takeda declined to give details on the project but did say in an email that the site in Singen has 850 employees.
Go to article
20 Years of Communicating Facts and Figures (
Eurosurveillance) Since 1995, when a first pilot issue was published,
Eurosurveillance has provided the European public health community with a platform to exchange relevant findings on communicable disease surveillance, prevention and control. A glimpse at the
Eurosurveillance archives demonstrates how the journal has matured over the years in terms of format and content.
Go to article
Medicine & Public Health
Sequelae and Other Conditions in Ebola Virus Disease Survivors, Sierra Leone, 2015 (Emerging
Infectious Diseases) We rapidly assessed the health of Ebola virus disease survivors in Kenema, Sierra Leone, by reviewing medical charts of all patients attending the Survivor Clinic of Kenema Government Hospital. Data were abstracted on signs and symptoms at every attendance. As of November 2015, a total of 621 attendances by 115 survivors with laboratory-confirmed EVD were made to the Survivor Clinic.
Go to article
A Method for Storing Vaccines at Room Temperature (
EurekAlert!) According to Doctors Without Borders, the need to keep vaccines within a temperature range of 2-8°C is one of the main factors behind low immunization-coverage rates. Researchers at EPFL's Supramolecular Nanomaterials and Interfaces Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists in Milan, Turin, Leiden, and Oregon, have come up with 3 simple and inexpensive vaccine additives to get around this obstacle.
Go to article
Why Texas is Becoming a Major Antivaccine Battlefield (
Science) Peter Hotez used to worry mostly about vaccines for children in far-away places. The number of schoolchildren not vaccinated against childhood diseases in Texas is growing rapidly, which means that the state may see its first measles outbreaks in the winter or spring of 2018, Hotez predicted in a recent article in
PLOS Medicine.
Go to article
Science & Technology
Other 21st Century Threats
Cities and States Lead on Climate Change (
New York Times) Doomsday scenarios about the climate have abounded in the aftermath of the November election. But responsibility for effectively reining in carbon emissions also rests with business, and with the nation's cities and states. Those are the battlegrounds. Worldwide, cities produce as much as 70% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Go to article
US Push to Halt Genocide in South Sudan Unravels at United Nations (
Foreign Policy). Faced with a dire UN warning of a possible genocide in South Sudan, the US was set this week to finally embrace an arms embargo against the world's newest country to ratchet down the military might of its warring parties and, potentially, help spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire of worsening civil war.
Go to article
