Category Archives: healthcare

Antibiotic resistance and clonal diversity of invasive Staphylococcus aureus in the rural Ashanti Region, Ghana | BMC Infectious Diseases | MRSA – Not good – pandemic related.

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.

Source: Antibiotic resistance and clonal diversity of invasive Staphylococcus aureus in the rural Ashanti Region, Ghana | BMC Infectious Diseases | Full Text

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

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.”

Source: Stanford University study shows Ebola virus may infect people who show no symptoms – Homeland Preparedness News

WHO scales back Zika public health emergency | CIDRAP

(Becoming clearer and clearer – to me – releases such as this one, are overly influenced by political and economic considerations rather than health concerns)

 

Based on a recommendation from its emergency committee today, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Zika virus infections and related microcephaly cases no longer constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), and efforts to battle and research the disease will now be folded into the WHO’s regular work, where it will receive high-level attention and more sustained funding.

Source: WHO scales back Zika public health emergency | 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.

Source: Febrile illness diagnostics and the malaria-industrial complex: a socio-environmental perspective | BMC Infectious Diseases | Full Text

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

Giving Tuesday for CincySmiles Foundation

CincySmiles Foundation was established in 1909, and our mission is to ensure that all members of our community have access to oral health education, disease prevention and treatment services with a special emphasis on those who are at risk due to poverty.Our programs served over 15,000 men, women and children last year and we continue to expand our impact as we move forward into the future. CincySmiles has 4 programs that include the Dental Road Crew, McMicken Dental Center, Discounted Donated Services, and our Workforce Development Program. We are asking for support for our first Giving Tuesday Campaign.  Giving Tuesday is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and is a movement to create an international day of giving. To get involved with this movement, we have asked several of our employees, volunteers and supporters to participate as Ambassadors.  Our Ambassadors are helping us raise awareness about our organization and this event all month long.  The event will begin on November 2nd and will run until Giving Tuesday, November 29th. On November 29th, we will celebrate and announce the funds raised from the campaign!Please support our event and help us continue to bring smiles to the Greater Cincinnati area.

Source: Giving Tuesday for CincySmiles Foundation

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

CDC reports first US cases of drug-resistant Candida auris | CIDRAP

In today’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), investigators describe seven C auris cases that occurred from May 2013 to June 2016. The cases involve patients at hospitals in four states—New York, Maryland, Illinois, and New Jersey—who had been hospitalized with serious underlying medical conditions. The other six cases are still under investigation.The announcement comes 3 months after the agency warned US healthcare facilities about the emergence of the serious fungal infection, which was first identified in the ear of a Japanese patient in 2009 and since then has been identified in patients in several other countries. The CDC received the case reports after that clinical alert was issued.In the countries where it has previously been identified, C auris has most commonly caused healthcare-associated infections such as bloodstream infections, wound infections, and ear infections and has been associated with high mortality. CDC investigators report that 5 of the US patients had bloodstream infections, 1 had a urine infection, and 1 had an ear infection. The median time from hospital admission to detection of the infection was 18 days.Four of the patients died, but it is unclear if their deaths were caused by the C auris infection.”This is a serious global health threat for which we want to rigorously prepare for in the United States,” Tom Chiller, MD, MPHTM, deputy chief of the Mycotic Diseases Branch at the CDC, told CIDRAP News.

Source: CDC reports first US cases of drug-resistant Candida auris | CIDRAP