Results In total, 9,834 blood samples were cultured, out of which 0.6% (n = 56) were positive for S. aureus. Multidrug resistance (MDR) was detected in 35.7% (n = 20) of the S. aureus strains, of which one was a MRSA. The highest rate of antibiotic resistance was seen for commonly available antibiotics, including penicillin (n = 55; 98.2%), tetracycline (n = 32; 57.1%) and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (n = 26; 46.4%). Of all S. aureus strains, 75.0% (n = 42) carried the PVL-encoding genes. We found 25 different spa types with t355 (n = 11; 19.6%), t314 (n = 8; 14.3%), t084 (n = 8; 14.3%) and t311 (n = 5; 8.9%) being predominant.ConclusionThe study exhibited an alarmingly large level of antibiotic resistance to locally available antibiotics. The frequency of genetically diverse and PVL-positive methicillin-sensitive S. aureus (MSSA) was high and could represent a reservoir for the emergence of virulent PVL-positive MRSA clones.
Category Archives: environment
Standing Rock protesters will not follow official directive to leave camps | US news | The Guardian
At a press conference, Standing Rock Sioux tribal leader Dave Archambault and other protest organizers confidently explained that they would stay at the Oceti Sakowin camp and continue with nonviolent protests, a day after Archambault received a letter from the US army corps of engineers that said all federal lands north of the Cannonball river would be closed to public access 5 December over “safety concerns”.The corps cited the coming winter and increasingly contentious clashes between protesters – who believe the pipeline could harm drinking water and Native A
Source: Standing Rock protesters will not follow official directive to leave camps | US news | The Guardian
In Madagascar Test, Drone Delivers Medicine by Air – The New York Times
Speeding Madagascar Health Care by Air
By Heidi HutnerLast summer, Stony Brook University’s Global Health Institute teamed up with Vayu, Inc., a Michigan start-up developing drones aiding medical care, to test aerial shipments of blood and fecal samples and drugs between remote villages in Madagascar and Centre ValBio, the university’s biological research center adjacent to a national park.Parasitic diseases, tuberculosis and a range of other life-threatening illnesses are common among the Malagasy population. But many people live in remote and inaccessible areas. In Ifanadiana, the district where the drone flights took place, travel to medical facilities can take a day or more by foot, across treacherous terrain.“Often, the sick don’t want to walk long distances, they don’t want to leave their children behind and, in many cases, they associate hospitals with bad outcomes and death,” said Dr. Peter M. Small, who heads the university’s health institute and was formerly deputy director of the Tuberculosis Delivery Program for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Source: In Madagascar Test, Drone Delivers Medicine by Air – The New York Times
Cause of Severe Injury at Pipeline Protest Becomes New Point of Dispute – The New York Times

Sophia Wilansky, 21, who grew up in the Bronx, rested in a Minneapolis hospital bed, her father by her side, recovering from surgery to try to save her left hand and arm after an explosion at a pipeline protest in North Dakota this week.“From an inch below the elbow, to an inch above her wrist, the muscle is blown off,” her father, Wayne Wilansky, said from the hospital, Hennepin County Medical Center. “The radius bone, a significant amount of it, is blown away. The arteries inside her arm are blown away. The median nerve is mostly blown away.”As many as 20 operations lie ahead, Mr. Wilansky said, and it was unclear whether she would keep the arm.
Source: Cause of Severe Injury at Pipeline Protest Becomes New Point of Dispute – The New York Times
A Long-Gone Parasite Returns to Florida, Leaving a Trail of Dead Deer – The New York Times – Nothing is ever “eradicated;” it evolves or is triggered by change in environment – duh!
What biologists discovered turned out to be even more frightening: the reappearance of a parasite known as the New World screwworm fly that had not been seen in the United States since the 1970s and had been considered eradicated.State and federal officials are hopeful that the infestation, which so far is restricted to Florida’s southernmost Monroe County, is being controlled. Symptoms were first reported in wild deer in July, and laboratory tests in late September confirmed the presence of the screwworm, which is the larva of the screwworm fly.The infestation has the potential to cause catastrophic damage to livestock and is being seen by some experts as a reminder of the challenges of controlling the spread of diseases and infestations in a world of limitless global travel and trade.
Source: A Long-Gone Parasite Returns to Florida, Leaving a Trail of Dead Deer – The New York Times
Stanford University study shows Ebola virus may infect people who show no symptoms – Homeland Preparedness News
{This may mean that ebola has indeed evolved – more survivors, mean that it can impact more people since more survive to carry it to those who are more vulnerable.}
The Stanford researchers identified 14 individuals in the village previously unknown to have had the disease one year after the Ebola epidemic spread through various parts of West Africa.This development, the researchers say, confirms previous suspicions that the Ebola virus does not uniformly cause severe disease and that people may be infected without showing any signs of the illness. The findings also suggest that the virus’ spread may have been far wider than originally thought. The researchers calculated that the virus may be minimally symptomatic in up to 25 percent of all people in affected areas.“The study corroborates previous evidence that Ebola is like most other viruses in that it causes a spectrum of manifestations, including minimally symptomatic infection,” Dr. Gene Richardson,a former fellow in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford who is now a PhD candidate at the university.“It provides important evidence on that front,” he added. “It also means a significant portion of transmission events may have gone undetected during the outbreak. This shows there was a lot more human-to-human transmission than we thought.”
WHO says human H5N8 risk low as more H5N6 reported | CIDRAP – More political-economic assessment over health assessment, it appears.
The World Health Organization (WHO), in an assessment yesterday, said that while human risk of contracting H5N8 avian flu cannot be excluded, there is so far little evidence that the current H5N8 strain will mutate and infect humans.H5N8 has circulated the globe since 2014, when it first appeared in China, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In late 2014, the strain came to North America, and last year H5N8 viruses were also detected in Taiwan, China, Hungary, and Sweden. The strain can infect both wild birds and poultry, and people have minimal to no immunity from the virus.The current clade has been found in 11 countries: Austria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland. It was initially detected in Tyva, Russia, in May of 2016, and has followed migratory bird patterns, first appearing in India and then moving west to central Europe, the WHO said.The agency said it expects more countries will report cases in the coming weeks, following bird migration patterns.
Source: WHO says human H5N8 risk low as more H5N6 reported | CIDRAP
Febrile illness diagnostics and the malaria-industrial complex: a socio-environmental perspective | Single disease focus – misleading and harmful.
A study from Tanzania highlights the diverse etiology of AFI. Of 870 hospital admissions, 528 (60.7%) patients were clinically diagnosed with malaria, but only 14 (1.6%) actually had malaria parasites upon subsequent blood analysis. Ten different kinds of infections, including bloodstream infections, bacterial and fungal infections, and arboviruses, were all presumptively diagnosed as malaria based on clinical symptoms [19]. But this study was conducted in Moshi, a city of roughly 144,000, which may not be representative of the local disease ecology of large, tropical SSA urban agglomerations like Luanda, Dar es Salaam, Abidjan, Nairobi, or Accra, much less emerging megacities like Lagos or Kinshasa-Brazzaville. We are just beginning to realize how little we know about communicable disease epidemiology in SSA.
How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease by Jim Robbins: Yale Environment 360
deforestation is having another worrisome effect: an increase in the spread of life-threatening diseases such as malaria and dengue fever. For a host of ecological reasons, the loss of forest can act as an incubator for insect-borne and other infectious diseases that afflict humans. The most recent example came to light this month in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases, with researchers documenting a steep rise in human malaria cases in a region of Malaysian Borneo undergoing rapid deforestation.
Source: How Forest Loss Is Leading To a Rise in Human Disease by Jim Robbins: Yale Environment 360
A Message from GeoNet’s Director: Responding to the Monster – Latest News – GeoNet – New Zealand – God save you.
Kiwis: we’re a unique type of toughI just want to say a few words about people. This is a painful time. People have died and we mourn with their family and friends. I can only imagine how people are struggling right now in Kaikoura, Ward, and Waiau and the other affected regions. Also, people in Christchurch are experiencing reminders of an earthquake nightmare they might have thought was over, only to realise that sadly, earthquakes are part of the standard operating procedure here in New Zealand. In the Wellington region, we are now experiencing intense flooding, complicating our ability to recover from this earthquake. This combination of hits from nature is exhausting and upsetting. Damage from the M 7.5 Kaikoura EarthquakeBut here is the upshot. One thing I know about us Kiwis, we are prepared, tough, and able to cope with almost anything. It is perfectly acceptable to be scared by this earthquake but we will get through this by doing what I think Kiwis do best: helping each other. We saw this with the Canterbury earthquakes and we are seeing this again. We are also good at taking care of our visitors and our new Kiwis as well.I can’t relieve anyone’s anxiety about future earthquakes; more will come. What I can say is that preparedness, that old Civil Defence and Emergency Management mantra, is the best solution to being ready for these events. Please visit our friends at the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management to find out how you can prepare. To learn more about your tsunami evacuation zones and advice, visit your local and regional council. To learn how to keep your china, house and other precious items safe, visit our friends and funders, EQC.
Source: A Message from GeoNet’s Director: Responding to the Monster – Latest News – GeoNet







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