Our Office of Infectious Disease Services has released their 2015 Infectious Disease Outbreak Summary Report, documenting outbreak detection, response, and reporting throughout Arizona. An outbreak is an unexpected increase in the number of people with the same disease at the same time or in the same place. The public health response to outbreaks is a team effort, utilizing knowledge, [...]
Rabies is a virus spread by the bite of or contact with saliva of an infected animal. The disease causes damage to the nervous system and causes death once symptoms appear. In Arizona, bats, skunks, and foxes are the main sources of rabies. Rabies is not uncommon in Arizona wildlife, and the virus occurs naturally [...]
April 24 through 30 is National Laboratory Professionals Week, a time for us to take a moment to thank our hard-working laboratory staff. This week we will celebrate the vital contributions laboratory professionals make to protect public health and safety. Our Public Health Lab is a leader in Arizona and the United States. In March [...]
Like a hotshot team, a rapid response by public health is essential to stopping the spread of measles in unvaccinated persons… and disease detectives in Maricopa County are currently working to squash a measles outbreak right now. Last week a person with measles visited a restaurant, church and airport in Arizona, exposing over a thousand [...]
If you’re like me, your introduction to Ebola virus came in the 1990s with the bestseller nonfiction thriller The Hot Zone and loosely-based film Outbreak. The descriptions of a deadly hemorrhagic fever that quickly spread through the population were terrifying, as were the life-threatening dangers posed to the intervening infectious disease personnel. The Guinea Ministry [...]
The CDC just began accepting applications for their annual summer Disease Detective Camp. The Camp is open to motivated students who’ll be high-school juniors or seniors during the 2014-2015 school year. Over the course of five days, campers take on the role of disease detectives. Campers can expect a variety of experiences including re-created outbreaks, [...]
One tropical disease that you might have heard in the news lately is cyclosporiasis. This summer, cyclosporiasis was the cause of a multistate outbreak that hit Texas, Iowa and Nebraska the hardest. Cyclosporiasis is a diarrheal illness caused by the single-celled protozoan, Cyclospora cayetanensis. Like most protozoa, people can become infected with Cyclospora by consuming food or water contaminated [...]
This Spring marks 10 years since Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) arrived on the global public health scene. It started as a mystery illness in SE Asia- without name, origin, or cure in February of 2003. The CDC immediately began working with the World Health Organization to investigate the outbreak. Public health scientists across the globe [...]
Whooping cough (pertussis) is a growing problem in the US and Arizona. There were 41,880 cases and 14 infant deaths from pertussis in the US last year… which is the largest number of cases since the vaccine became available in the 50s. In Arizona there were 988 cases in 2012 and there’s a pretty substantial outbreak going on right [...]
Check out CDC’s new iPad App, Solve the Outbreak, which lets you pretend you’re a disease outbreak investigator in the world-class Epidemic Intelligence Service by solving outbreaks based on real-life. When new outbreaks happen, disease detectives are sent in to figure out how they started, before they can spread. You get to investigate the outbreak and [...]
