From EMS to NHS: Emergency Management and Health Security (
ASPR Blog) Conversations about national health security often take place within the context of the public health field. Yet medical care is just as critical to national health security. Public health is fundamentally the collective health of every individual in the community, and in a disaster or public health emergency, the nation's emergency medical services - that "pre-hospital" care - stands on the front lines of our nation's defense.
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How Prepared is Your Community for an Emergency? (
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Culture of Health Blog) An annual assessment finds that while America's preparedness for managing health emergencies is improving, progress is slow and regional inequities persist. The example of Miami-Dade County suggests that actively engaging communities is key to improving health security.
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Government Affairs & National Security
Global Health Security
Vaccine Could Soon Be Enlisted in the Fight Against Ebola in the DRC (
Science) The Democratic Republic of the Congo has moved a step closer to using an unlicensed vaccine to battle an Ebola outbreak that began last month in a remote northeastern part of the country. Yesterday, the country's government submitted a formal vaccine trial protocol, developed with Epicentre, the Paris-based research arm of Doctors Without Borders, to an ethical review board.
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Shaping WHO's Future: 5 Experts Advise the New DG (
Global Health NOW) Just hours before Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was appointed the next WHO Director-General, a group of global health experts debated the most pressing leadership priorities for an organization that's been hobbled a creaky bureaucracy, a severely limited budget and a perception that it's no longer relevant.
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Medicine & Public Health
Asymptomatic Ebola Virus Infections--Myth or Reality? (
Lancet: Infectious Diseases) Ebola virus captures the imagination of the public and experts alike. This fascination is in part due to the overall rare occurrence of typically very few outbreaks of Ebola virus disease and extremely high case-fatality rates (mean 41·4%). More importantly, the identity of the natural Ebola virus reservoir remains unknown. This lack of knowledge means that novel Ebola virus introductions into human populations cannot be predicted, let alone be prevented, which adds to the enigma of the virus in the public eye.
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Genomic Epidemiology Reveals Multiple Introductions of Zika Virus into the United States (
Nature) To gain insights into the timing, source, and likely route(s) of ZIKV introduction, we tracked the virus from its first detection in Florida by sequencing ZIKV genomes from infected patients and
Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. We show that at least 4 introductions, but potentially as many as 40, contributed to the outbreak in Florida and that local transmission is likely to have started in the spring of 2016--several months before its initial detection.
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Zika Virus Evolution and Spread in the Americas (
Nature) Although the recent Zika virus epidemic in the Americas and its link to birth defects have attracted a great deal of attention1, 2, much remains unknown about ZIKV disease epidemiology and ZIKV evolution, in part owing to a lack of genomic data.
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Operational Research During the Ebola Emergency (
Emerging Infectious Diseases) Operational research aims to identify interventions, strategies, or tools that can enhance the quality, effectiveness, or coverage of programs where the research is taking place. Medecins Sans Frontieres admitted approximately equal to 5,200 patients with confirmed Ebola virus disease during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and from the beginning nested operational research within its emergency response.
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Science & Technology
Medical Microbots Need Better Imaging and Control (
Nature) More than 50 years ago, physicist Richard Feynman spoke of "swallowing the surgeon" in his classic lecture, 'There's plenty of room at the bottom'. Today, scientists are designing microscopic devices--microbots and micromotors--to eventually move through the body to perform medical tasks. Synthetic rods, tubes, helices, spheres or cages as small as a cell could be sent into the blood, liver, stomach or reproductive tract to diagnose conditions, carry drugs or perform surgery.
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Drop in Cases of Zika Threatens Large-scale Trials (
Nature) Studies of thousands of pregnant women that were set up to probe the link between Zika and birth defects may not provide definitive answers because of a sharp drop in the number of new cases, researchers have warned. The unexpected development is making the disease harder to study, and threatens to hamper trials of experimental vaccines that might protect pregnant women in future outbreaks.
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