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 [...]
As I mentioned in a blog post a few weeks ago, more AZ parents are choosing not to vaccinate their kids- and using “personal exemptions” when they enroll their kids in school. If the trend continues, we could jeopardize our immunization rates enough so that we'd see long gone diseases like measles and mumps return in [...]
During the 2009- 2010 influenza pandemic, we saw how influenza can be unpredictable in terms of who it affects most, when it occurs, and what strains will circulate. This season is no exception. While the circulating strains are exactly what we predicted, the peak of the flu season is hitting earlier than usual (now) and it's [...]
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices released issued new recommendations to encourage pregnant women to get the whooping cough (pertussis) vaccine (Tdap) during their pregnancy. Since most kids get whooping cough from a close family member, vaccinating parents (and teens) is one of the best ways to prevent infants, especially those who are too young [...]
At the core- vaccines are really about community protection. Our public health system depends on a solid network of providers that are available to vaccinate kids for all of the nasty infectious diseases that have plagued humanity for millennium. It’s not just access to care and a solid network of providers that vaccinate that are [...]
We're off to an early start with the flu and RSV season this year with more cases reported in November than in previous seasons. Respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV) is a respiratory virus that mainly affects little kids and circulates during the winter. There’s no vaccine for RSV- but for those babies that are at highest [...]
The Southern Hemisphere has its flu season during our Summer- so every year around now we watch influenza activity “down under” to get an idea of what we might expect for our upcoming flu season. Here’s the scoop right now. Flu south of the equator has already peaked and continues to decline. There’s been a [...]
Whooping Cough is making headlines again – with more than 18,000 cases in the U.S. and 600 cases so far this year in AZ. You might wonder why we continue to have lots of whooping cough cases in the US and AZ when the other vaccine preventable diseases are real rare (e.g. measles, mumps etc.). [...]
A team of Aussie scientists from the U of New South Wales believe that a new kind of Whooping Cough bacteria (Bordetella pertussis) has slipped past the protective effects from the current “acellular” vaccine- contributing to an increase in cases being found Down Under. Their study was published this week in the latest The Journal of Infectious [...]
During the 2009- 2010 influenza pandemic, we saw how influenza can be unpredictable in terms of who it affects most, when it occurs, and what strains will circulate. This season is no exception. While the circulating strains are exactly what we had predicted, the peak of the flu season is hitting later than usual… and [...]
