| Q-C prepares for influenza pandemic | | Posted Friday, October 20, 2006 10:57:34 PM by Blog57 Team | | A side-view photo of a man mid-sneeze flashed on the screen. The photo illustrated the words Dr. Louis Katz told the Scott County Board of Health on Thursday: When, not if, a pandemic flu hits, it will be transmitted through "the big chunks," the droplets of ick coming from the sick, said Katz, who is the medical director for the health departmentThe rules we’ve all heard before will be more important than ever to put into action to help prevent the spread of what will be a deadly disease: wash your hands, cover your mouth when you cough, stay home if sick, get a flu shot, clean the horizontal surfaces in your surroundings, he added.Personal responsibility for health and readiness, coupled with proper planning by community organizations will help stem the spread of the disease, Katz said.... | |
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| | | Researchers Find Validity in 1918 Treatment for Avian Influenza | | Posted Monday, September 11, 2006 12:58:54 PM by Blog57 Team | | Faculty of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU) have discovered that a treatment for the Spanish influenza pandemic may also be effective for current avian influenza patients. Navy Capt. Edward Kilbane, Army Col. Jeffrey Jackson and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Thomas Luke, are all alumni and faculty of the USU. They, along with retired Navy physician, Capt. Stephen Hoffman, published their research Tuesday, Aug. 29, in the online edition of the Annals of Internal Medicine. The four researchers analyzed medical literature reported during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 to 1920. They found that transfusions with blood products from Spanish Flu survivors may have reduced the risk of death in seriously ill Spanish Flu patients. The meta-analysis of these data show that treatment of patients in 1918 with convalescent whole blood, plasma or serum obtained from humans who had recovered from Spanish Influenza resulted in a reduced mortality of seriously ill patients by 50 percent.... | |
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| | | Indonesia now worst for bird flu | | Posted Friday, August 11, 2006 6:58:35 AM by Blog57 Team | | Two more people in Indonesia have died from avian influenza, the World Health Organization confirmed Thursday. The deaths bring the total number of fatalities from bird flu in Indonesia to 44, the highest total for any single nation. The latest victims were a 16-year-old boy from West Java Province and a 17-year-old girl from Jakarta Province. The male, Megi Saputra, who died on Monday from the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu, had contact with sick and dying chickens in his household, the WHO said in a statement. Testing showed the H5 strain was present in the chickens. The boy's family members and close contacts were placed under surveillance. Earlier Tuesday, grieving relatives buried Megi at a family plot shaded by jackfruit trees close to his home in Bekasi.... | |
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| | | Odds favor melting ice over terrorists as next attack | | Posted Monday, July 10, 2006 1:10:21 AM by Blog57 Team | | No one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won't involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn lower Manhattan into an aquarium. The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb. And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and essentially nothing to prevent global warming. Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster? Because the human brain evolved to respond to threats that have four features -- features that terrorism has and that global warming lacks. First, global warming lacks a mustache.... | |
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