Zika Virus a Renewed Threat (
Fox News Health) Last year, a combination of media coverage and scary outbreaks made Zika the most talked about disease of the year. Then, the winter season brought holiday cheer and diminished mosquito populations, and the public simply forgot about the health threat. However, people need to stay cautious about Zika this summer, especially if travelling to regions known for the virus.
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Predicting the Next Pandemic (
Wall Street Journal: Subscription Required) Where will the next pandemic come from? Likely from bats. Fighting emerging infectious diseases costs billions of dollars, as the AIDS pandemic and the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa attest. So researchers from New York City-based nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance set out several years ago to try to pinpoint where and how future pandemics might erupt.
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Study: First Zika Microcephaly Wave in Brazil Was Outlier (
CIDRAP) About 70% of all Zika-related microcephaly cases in Brazil resulted from the first wave of infections in 2015, according to a study yesterday in
The Lancet by Brazilian researchers who describes the two major waves of Zika infections and the ensuing microcephaly incidence.
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Domestic Preparedness & Response
Government Affairs & National Security
Senate GOP Bill Would Gut Critical Public Health Funding This Fall (
Washington Post) The health-care bill that Senate Republicans released Thursday would eliminate critical funds for core public health programs that make up about 12 percent of the budget for the CDC. The money supports programs to prevent bioterrorism and disease outbreaks, as well as to provide immunizations and screenings for cancer and heart disease.
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President Will Consider Bill to Protect Nation's Food Supply, Agriculture Sector from Agroterrorism (
Homeland Preparedness News) Efforts to protect the nation's agriculture sector and food supply against terrorist attacks and high-risk events would be ratched up under a bill that the House approved on Monday. The Securing Our Agriculture and Food Act, H.R. 1238, would direct the US Department of Homeland Security to collaborate with other federal agencies to ensure that food, agriculture and veterinary security are included in larger DHS domestic preparedness policies.
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Senators Question Need for HHS Cyber Office (
The Hill) A bipartisan pair of lawmakers is questioning President Trump's health chief on the need for a new cybersecurity office focused on the healthcare sector. Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) both raised concerns at a hearing Wednesday that the new information-sharing effort at the Department of Health and Human Services could be duplicating functions of a separate organization within the Department of Homeland Security.
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Global Health Security
Medicine & Public Health
WHO Toolkit for the Care and Support of People Affected by Complications Associated with Zika Virus (
WHO) Zika virus is associated with severe neurological complications, particularly congenital Zika virus syndrome and Guillain Barre syndrome. The associated complications have a marked impact on the people affected and their communities, including both physical and mental health. The WHO Toolkit for the care and support of people affected by complications associated with Zika virus has been developed to serve as a model guide, with the goal of enhancing country preparedness for Zika virus outbreaks.
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Science & Technology
No One Has the Data to Prevent the Next Flint (
Wired) You have no real way of knowing if your town, your family, or your children face the kind of water contamination that exposed everyone in Flint, Michigan, to lead poisoning. Not because Flint is an outlier--it may, in fact, be the norm--but because no one has enough data to say for sure.
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Heating Up DoD's Bioengineering Future (
Defense Video Imagery Distribution System) Synthetic biology is a growing necessity to develop new countermeasures for chemical and biological threats, but a DoD report highlighted gaps in "human capital," revealing its lack of service members with sufficient knowledge of the subject. To integrate young service members into the emerging field, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Chemical and Biological Technologies Department collaborated with US military academies through their Service Academy Initiative.
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Hunting for Antibiotics in the World's Dirtiest Places (
The Atlantic) Drug resistance--the ability of bacteria to defend themselves against the compounds we use to kill them--has impaired the effectiveness of almost every antibiotic produced since the first ones were developed, in the 1940s. At least 700,000 people are estimated to die worldwide every year from infections that no longer respond to antibiotics. That toll could balloon to more than 10 million a year by 2050 if we can't slow the spread of resistance or find new drugs; routine surgeries and minor injuries will become life-threatening.
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21st Century Threats
How an Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab For Cyberwar (
Wired) The clocks read zero when the lights went out. It was a Saturday night last December, and Oleksii Yasinsky was sitting on the couch with his wife and teenage son in the living room of their Kiev apartment. The 40-year-old Ukrainian cybersecurity researcher and his family were an hour into Oliver Stone's film
Snowden when their building abruptly lost power.
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Heat Can Kill and We're Turning up the Thermostat (
ars Technica) 'Tis the season for heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere, as folks across Europe and parts of the US west have been reminded this week. In addition to providing weather to complain about--seemingly a necessary component of human communication--heatwaves can be straight up deadly. The 2010 Moscow heatwave (combined with thick air pollution from associated wildfires) caused thousands of deaths. The stress of extreme heat on the human body is real. While most of us don't see those conditions too often, they do occur today. And that means that our warming climate will ensure they occur more often. But how often will that be?
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