Category Archives: healthcare

Suicide Bomb Near Polio Center in Pakistan Kills at Least 16 – The New York Times

At least 16 people were killed on Wednesday in a suicide bombing outside a polio vaccination center in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, officials and witnesses said.Thirteen of the victims were police officers, said Syed Imtiaz Shah, a senior official with the Quetta police. He said the officers were there to guard polio workers, who are often targeted by Islamist militants in Pakistan.The attack came on the third day of a vaccination campaign in the province of Baluchistan, of which Quetta is the capital. The bomber, who was also killed, walked up to police officers and detonated what Mr. Shah said amounted to more than 20 pounds of explosives.A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Muhammad Khurrasani, claimed responsibility for the attack on the militants’ behalf. Two civilians and a paramilitary police officer were also killed, and 10 police officers and nine civilians were wounded.

Source: Suicide Bomb Near Polio Center in Pakistan Kills at Least 16 – The New York Times

Flint Wants Safe Water, and Someone to Answer for Its Crisis – The New York Times

“Put yourself in our shoes,” she said. “It’s hurting kids, the elderly. It’s hurting all of us.”And there was plenty of blame to go around, she added. “It’s almost like a stepladder — you start from the top and you go all the way down to the bottom,” she said.Switching the source of drinking water was meant to relieve some of the financial pressures on this struggling city. Flint has high rates of gun violence and crumbling infrastructure. And as manufacturing jobs have moved overseas, the population has steadily dropped to fewer than 100,000 — more than 40 percent of whom live below the poverty line.But it was not long before some in Flint were pointing out the nasty color and odor of what was coming out of their taps, and digging into their wallets to buy bottled water for drinking and cooking, and baby wipes for bathing.State and city leaders had largely dismissed residents’ complaints for months, assuring them that the water was safe and being tested regularly. With the emergence of the blood level data, officials began advising residents not to drink unfiltered tap water — a recommendation that remains in effect.

Source: Flint Wants Safe Water, and Someone to Answer for Its Crisis – The New York Times

Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Laurent Poirel and colleagues in Switzerland have identified an E. coli strain, recovered from an 83-year-old Swiss man who was hospitalized last month, that possesses both colistin resistance and also VIM resistance to the carbapenems, the family of antibiotics that was considered the last and toughest before colistin. The colistin-resistance gene shared a plasmid with genes conferring resistance to chloramphenicol, flofenicol and co-trimoxazole. The authors warn, “Such accumulation of multidrug resistance traits may correspond to an ultimate step toward pandrug resistance.”Our data suggest that the advent of untreatable infections has already arrived.Marisa Haenni and collaborators in France and Switzerland queried the Resapath network in France, which conducts surveillance for antibiotic resistance in animals, found that 21 percent of bacterial samples collected from veal calves on French farms between 2005 and 2014 carried the signal of mobile colistin resistance, the gene mcr-1. There were 106 positive samples (out of 517) and they came from 94 different farm properties. On seven of those isolates, the mcr gene lived alongside ones for ESBL resistance—that’s to penicillins and to the first three generations of cephalosporin drugs—and also genes for resistance to sulfa drugs and tetracycline.

Source: Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Study shows high resistance to first-line malaria treatment | CIDRAP

More resistance woes possibleIn an accompanying commentary, however, two US Army experts caution that resistance to mefloquine is likely to return quickly now that artesunate-mefloquine has replaced dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine in Cambodian areas where artemisinin resistance is common.The writers are David Saunders, MD, MPH, of the US Army Medical Materiel Development Activity at Fort Detrick, Md., and Chanthap Lon, MD, of the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Phnom Penh.With other effective drug combinations lacking, they suggest, one way to fight resistant malaria in Cambodia would be to hospitalize all malaria patients to ensure full adherence to treatment. They note that that approach is used successfully in the country’s tuberculosis control program.

Source: Study shows high resistance to first-line malaria treatment | CIDRAP

Tearful Obama, Announcing Gun Control Steps, Condemns Shootings – The New York Times

As tears streamed down his face, President Obama on Tuesday condemned the repeated spasms of gun violence across America as he announced new executive actions intended to reduce the number of mass shootings, suicides and killings that have become routine in the nation’s communities.Speaking in the East Room of the White House surrounded by gun control activists and the families of gun victims, Mr. Obama broke down as he spoke about the young children shot to death in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.“First graders,” he said, his eyes drifting to a distant place and becoming red with tears. The president wiped his eye and paused to regain his composure. “Every time I think about those kids, it gets me mad,” he said.

Source: Tearful Obama, Announcing Gun Control Steps, Condemns Shootings – The New York Times

Islamic Development Bank supports polio elimination with $90 million grant | Vaccine News

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) recently granted $90 million in funds to help Pakistan implement the latest step of its polio elimination program through 2018. This decision was made by the IDB’s board of executive directors during a meeting at their headquarters in Jeddah. At the meeting, they evaluated the program’s status and chose to donate the finances. The IDB previously promised $227 million so that Pakistan could implement various disease elimination programs until 2015. In the past year, approximately 80 percent of the world’s wild poliovirus cases were located in Pakistan. A report from the World Health Organization showed serious vaccination gaps inside South Waziristan, Peshawar, Khyber Agency, northern Sindh, Karachi, and regions in Balochistan.

Source: Islamic Development Bank supports polio elimination with $90 million grant | Vaccine News

DuPont’s deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind the “world’s most slippery material” – Salon.com Ohio screwed again by upstream polluters!

On October 7, after less than a day of deliberations, the jury found DuPont liable for Bartlett’s cancer, agreeing with the defendant that the company had for years negligently contaminated her drinking water supply in Tuppers Plain, Ohio with a toxic chemical formerly used to make its signature brand of nonstick coating: Teflon.

Source: DuPont’s deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind the “world’s most slippery material” – Salon.com

Avian Flu Diary: PAHO ZIka Week 51: And Then There Were 12 Countries in the Americas

Like with Dengue and Chikununguya which arrived before it, Zika is finding the climate and abundance of Aedes mosquitoes highly conducive to spreading, along with a large, virologically naive population. As a result, Brazil alone is estimating more than a half million infections over the past eight months (see Brazil Estimates 500K+ Zika Infections). Up until a few months ago Zika was considered a relatively minor threat, particularly when compared to the far more painful and debilitating Chikungunya and the four (occasionally) deadly strains of Dengue.  Zika infections were generally regarded as relatively mild, and self limiting. That perception began to change, ever so slightly, after an outbreak in French Polynesia in 2013-2014, which saw a concurrent spike in Guillain–Barré syndrome (GBS) (see  Zika, Dengue & Unusual Rates Of Guillain Barre Syndrome In French Polynesia).

Source: Avian Flu Diary: PAHO ZIka Week 51: And Then There Were 12

Avian Flu Diary: WHO Zika Updates: Honduras & Cape Verde {Oops! Giving same advice they did at onset of West African Ebola Outbreak!}

WHO does not recommend any travel or trade restriction to Honduras based on the current information available.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: WHO Zika Updates: Honduras & Cape Verde

 

Zika becomes part of your local area when someone who has caught it in another area, comes to your area and is then bitten by a local mosquito and it then passes the newly acquired infection on to the next person it bites and on and on it goes. In short, it is people traveling to and from infected areas who bring it to you.

The potential for birth defects is the chief problem!

Avian Flu Diary: Viral Creep: Zika Spreading In Central & South America

While definitive proof is still lacking, the operating assumption is these profound birth defects are likely due to maternal infection with the Zika Virus during the first or second trimester (see ECDC: Complications Potentially Linked To The Zika Virus Outbreaks In Brazil & French Polynesia).Over the past month more than 2000 excess microcephalic births have been registered in Brazil, and those numbers are expected to rise significantly over the months ahead.  Meanwhile, countries just now seeing the arrival of the virus are girding themselves to deal with similar public health challenges. Much of Central & South America, along with the Caribbean are at risk. Included also are parts of North America where the two primary Aedes mosquito vectors can be found.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: Viral Creep: Zika Spreading In Central & South America