Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Emergency Alert Due to Yellow Fever Issued for 64 Cities in Brazil (
The Rio Times) The federal government of Brazil has issued emergency situations for 63 cities in Minas Gerais and one in Espirito Santo due to the outbreak of yellow fever. Since the beginning of the year authorities have confirmed 44 people died of the disease and over seventy other suspected deaths are being investigated.
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Global Health Security
Medicine & Public Health
NIH Begins Study of Vaccine to Protect Against Mosquito-borne Diseases (
NIH) The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has launched a Phase 1 clinical trial to test an investigational vaccine intended to provide broad protection against a range of mosquito-transmitted diseases, such as Zika, malaria, West Nile fever and dengue fever, and to hinder the ability of mosquitoes to transmit such infections.
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What the Hard Lessons of Rubella Teach Us About a Zika Vaccine (
Time) Imagine that you are pregnant, unexpectedly. You are terrified, but not because you don't want a baby. You are in fact, happily married, and you have been intending to start a family soon. Rather, you are terrified because an epidemic of a viral disease is raging around you. It is a disease that is often so mild that people aren't aware that they have it. But when it infects a woman early in her pregnancy, it devastates the fetus, shrinking its head and addling its brain. There is no effective treatment and there is no vaccine.
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Quantifying the Value of Perfect Information in Emergency Vaccination Campaigns (
PLOS: Computational Biology) Foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in non-endemic countries can lead to large economic costs and livestock losses but the use of vaccination has been contentious, partly due to uncertainty about emergency FMD vaccination. Value of information methods can be applied to disease outbreak problems such as FMD in order to investigate the performance improvement from resolving uncertainties.
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Serological Evidence for Exposure to Avian Influenza Viruses Within Poultry Workers in Southern China (
Zoonoses and Public Health) The risk of infection with avian influenza viruses for poultry workers is relatively unknown in China, and study results are often biased by the notification of only the severe human cases. Protein microarray was used to detect binding antibodies to 13 different haemagglutinin (HA1-part) antigens of avian influenza A(H5N1), A(H7N7), A(H7N9) and A(H9N2) viruses, in serum samples from poultry workers and healthy blood donors collected in the course of 3 years in Guangdong Province, China.
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Other 21st Century Threats
Police: Suspects in N. Korean Death Coated Hands with Poison (
AP) The two women suspected of fatally poisoning a scion of North Korea's ruling family were trained to coat their hands with toxic chemicals and then wipe them on his face, police in Malaysia said Wednesday, announcing they were seeking a North Korean diplomat in connection with the attack.
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