Three Cases of Monkeypox Confirmed in Nigeria (
CIDRAP) The Nigerian Centre for Disease Control confirmed three cases of monkeypox today among dozens of suspected cases. The samples were sent to Dakar, Senegal, for laboratory analysis at the World Health Organization Regional Laboratory last week, and the positive results shed new light on what could be one of the largest monkeypox outbreaks in Africa.
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Suspected Cases from Seychelles Test Negative for Plague (
WHO) Samples from patients in Seychelles suspected to be ill with pneumonic plague tested negative at a WHO partner laboratory in Paris, France on Tuesday, 17 October 2017. The ten samples were shipped by the Seychelles Ministry of Health and WHO to the collaborating centre for Yersinia at the Institut Pasteur to confirm the status of several suspected and one probable case - a 34-year-old Seychelles national who had returned from Madagascar with plague-like symptoms.
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Death Toll from San Diego Hepatitis A Outbreak Rises to 19; More Than 500 Cases Confirmed (
Los Angeles Times) San Diego's hepatitis A outbreak added another death Tuesday, pushing the total to 19 as the number of confirmed cases passed 500. Updated numbers released by the county Health and Human Services Agency come as a massive effort around vaccination, sanitation and public education continues to try and stop the largest surge of the viral disease since the vaccine for hepatitis A was approved in the late 1990s.
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Nigeria: Update on Monkeypox (
H5N1) As at 13th of October 2017, there were 17 SUSPECTED cases reported from Yenagoa LGA in Bayelsa State. We have received laboratory confirmation for Monkeypox virus from three of these cases from the WHO Regional Laboratory in Dakar, Senegal. Samples from 12 others from Bayelsa were negative, and we are awaiting two results.
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Domestic Preparedness & Response
Examining Challenges and Possible Strategies to Strengthen US Health Security: Proceedings of a Workshop (
National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine - Health and Medicine Division) As the US continues to adapt to a more digital, mobile, and interconnected world, health care and public health professionals have sought to better prepare for and respond to long-standing and emerging threats to the nation's health security. Health security is the collective effort to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the health consequences of natural, man-made, and technological disasters.
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Government Affairs & National Security
Our Federal Science Agencies Are in Mortal Danger (
Scientific American) Our national political landscape is in disarray. As scientists, we watch with dismay as senior positions in our federal science agencies remain unfilled, science advisory panels get disbanded, and science-based policies are undermined. The Union of Concerned Scientists and many other organizations are sounding the alarm and drawing attention to these issues each day. And the science community is mobilized as never before to speak out when the administration or congress act in ways that sideline science, favor private over public interests, or threaten the role that facts, evidence, and science play in our democracy.
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Medicine & Public Health
Acute Zika Virus Infection as a Risk Factor for Guillain-Barre Syndrome in Puerto Rico (
JAMA) Guillain-Barre syndrome is an uncommon autoimmune disorder characterized by progressive weakness and diminished deep tendon reflexes following infection or, rarely, vaccination.1 Increased GBS incidence has been reported in countries affected by Zika virus,2 a flavivirus transmitted primarily by Aedes species mosquitoes.3 During the Zika virus epidemic in Puerto Rico, we conducted a case-control study to identify risk factors associated with GBS.
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Evidence-based Guidelines for Supportive Care of Patients with Ebola Virus Disease (
Lancet) The 2013-16 Ebola virus disease outbreak in west Africa was associated with unprecedented challenges in the provision of care to patients with the disease, including a need for acute care that exceeded the number of health workers available, the absence of pre-existing treatment and isolation facilities, a dearth of treatments specific to Ebola virus, and, possibly, limitations in the provision of supportive medical care.
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Estimating the Full Public Health Value of Vaccination (
Vaccine) There is an enhanced focus on considering the full public health value of vaccination when setting priorities, making regulatory decisions and establishing implementation policy for public health activities. Historically, a therapeutic paradigm has been applied to the evaluation of prophylactic vaccines and focuses on an individual benefit-risk assessment in prospective and individually-randomized phase III trials to assess safety and efficacy against etiologically-confirmed clinical outcomes. By contrast, a public health paradigm considers the population impact and encompasses measures of community benefits against a range of outcomes.
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Science & Technology
Machine Learning Identifies Signatures of Host Adaptation in the Bacterial Pathogen Salmonella enterica (
bioRxiv) Emerging pathogens are a major threat to public health, however understanding how pathogens adapt to new niches remains a challenge. New methods are urgently required to provide functional insights into pathogens from the massive genomic data sets now being generated from routine pathogen surveillance for epidemiological purposes. Here we integrate a method for scoring the functional impact of mutations with a random forest classifier, and apply this to the classification of
Salmonella enterica strains associated with extraintestinal disease.
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Experts Outline Pathway to a Universal Influenza Vaccine (
National Institutes of Health) Scientists and clinicians from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the California Institute of Technology discuss key considerations for developing a universal influenza vaccine in a meeting report appearing in the October 17 issue of
Immunity. The report summarizes discussions from a workshop NIAID held June 28-29, 2017, in Rockville, Maryland, entitled, "Pathway to a Universal Influenza Vaccine."
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See also:
The Pathway to a Universal Influenza Vaccine (
Immunity) Development of a universal influenza vaccine is a research priority for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health. To facilitate this goal, we convened a workshop in Rockville, Maryland to identify knowledge gaps in influenza research and develop strategies to fill them.
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GAVI's Advice for Engaging Silicon Valley on Global Health (
devex) A select group of technologists, investors, academics, and others recently received an invitation to a roundtable discussion and networking lunch with Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The invitation to the lunch in Menlo Park, California, read like a playbook for how to engage Silicon Valley in global health and international development. Berkley opened with scale, offered to make global connections, and sought partnership, rather than just funding.
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Entire Fleet of Cargo Drones Tested in the Amazon Rainforest (
iRevolutions) In June 2017, WeRobotics teamed up with the Peruvian Ministry of Health and Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) to field test a fleet of affordable cargo drones in the Amazon Rainforest. BD is a leading, multi-billion dollar medical technology company. The majority of the flights were carried out by our Peru Flying Labs and UAV del Peru.
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21st Century Threats
Houston Reservoirs Have Finally Discharged All of Hurricane Harvey's Floodwater (
NPR - the two-way) In late August, Hurricane Harvey brought record rainfall to Houston. In mid-October, the city's two large federal reservoirs have finally been emptied of the massive amount of water that had filled them up to their brims. The US Army Corps of Engineers says that as of late last week, both the Addicks and Barker reservoirs "are empty for the first time since the rains associated with Hurricane Harvey began in late August."
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A Third of California's Fire Evacuees Still Waiting to Go Home (
NPR - the two-way) Even as many of the thousands of people forced to evacuate from deadly California wildfires were being allowed to return to their homes, yet another fire has started in the Santa Cruz mountains. Authorities said 60 people were still missing on Tuesday from the fires that have killed at least 41 people, destroyed more than 6,000 homes and burned through some 200,000 acres of the state.
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