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Author: World Health Organization
Publisher: World Health Organization
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 62
ISBN-13: 9241547685
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).
Author: Colum Murphy
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2006-06-16
Total Pages: 169
ISBN-13: 0470822023
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThere has been very little integrated reporting that connects the dots between the current disease and past pandemics. This book examines past pandemics, the causes of avian flu, its potential health, economic and political impact, the steps that are being taken to mitigate risk as well as the implications for policymakers both regionally and globally. This book brings these elements together and presents the big picture of bird flu to readers in a way that would put it in the context of past pandemics and make explicit the need to treat H5N1 with the urgency it deserves.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2005-04-09
Total Pages: 431
ISBN-13: 0309095042
DOWNLOAD EBOOKPublic health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.
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Published: 2006
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Published: 2010-07-04
Total Pages: 440
ISBN-13: 0309146771
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn March and early April 2009, a new, swine-origin 2009-H1N1 influenza A virus emerged in Mexico and the United States. During the first few weeks of surveillance, the virus spread by human-to-human transmission worldwide to over 30 countries. On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6 in response to the ongoing global spread of the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. By October 30, 2009, the H1N1 influenza A had spread to 191 countries and resulted in 5,700 fatalities. A national emergency was declared in the United States and the swine flu joined SARS and the avian flu as pandemics of the 21st century. Vaccination is currently available, but in limited supply, and with a 60 percent effectiveness rate against the virus. The story of how this new influenza virus spread out of Mexico to other parts of North America and then on to Europe, the Far East, and now Australia and the Pacific Rim countries has its origins in the global interconnectedness of travel, trade, and tourism. Given the rapid spread of the virus, the international scientific, public health, security, and policy communities had to mobilize quickly to characterize this unique virus and address its potential effects. The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control have played critical roles in the surveillance, detection and responses to the H1N1 virus. The Domestic and International Impacts of the 2009-H1N1 Influenza A Pandemic: Global Challenges, Global Solutions aimed to examine the evolutionary origins of the H1N1 virus and evaluate its potential public health and socioeconomic consequences, while monitoring and mitigating the impact of a fast-moving pandemic. The rapporteurs for this workshop reported on the need for increased and geographically robust global influenza vaccine production capacities; enhanced and sustained interpandemic demand for seasonal influenza vaccines; clear "triggers" for pandemic alert levels; and accelerated research collaboration on new vaccine manufacturing techniques. This book will be an essential guide for healthcare professionals, policymakers, drug manufacturers and investigators.
Author: Gina Kolata
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2011-04-01
Total Pages: 378
ISBN-13: 1429979356
DOWNLOAD EBOOKVeteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.
Author: Ajit C Puri
Publisher: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd
Published: 2007-09-01
Total Pages: 100
ISBN-13: 9788120733510
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBird Flu is the latest scare that has dominated news headlines and caused havoc in the recent past. The deadly virus has leapt across national boundaries to infect birds like chicken, geese, water fowl and ducks and the world is struggling to eradicate or control this disease. This book explains what bird flu is, how it spreads and why H5N1 might become a human pandemic. It traces the way bird flu has swept through various countries like Vietnam, China, Hong Kong and Thailand, prompting large-scale culling of birds and causing unimaginable losses. The book also provides valuable information on the vaccines and anti-viral drugs available and how they work. Preventive measures and tests for the detection of the presence of the virus have been outlined, which will help spread awareness of this dreaded disease and educate readers on how to prevent or control it.
Author: Jeffrey R. Ryan
Publisher: CRC Press
Published: 2008-08-01
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13: 1420060880
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe swine flu emergency needn‘t become a crisis. This critically acclaimed work provides public health officials, doctors, responders, and emergency planners with accurate current information that will help them understand the nature of an outbreak, assess risk, answer public concerns, and develop informed strategies. Devoid of sensationalism and a
Author: Marilyn R. Bethe
Publisher: Nova Publishers
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 9781600210112
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAvian influenza, or 'bird flu', is a contagious disease of animals caused by viruses that normally infect only birds and, less commonly, pigs. Avian influenza viruses are highly species-specific, but have, on rare occasions, crossed the species barrier to infect humans. In domestic poultry, infection with avian influenza viruses causes two main forms of disease, distinguished by low and high extremes of virulence. The so-called "low pathogenic" form commonly causes only mild symptoms (ruffled feathers, a drop in egg production) and may easily go undetected. The highly pathogenic form is far more dramatic. It spreads very rapidly through poultry flocks, causes disease affecting multiple internal organs, and has a mortality that can approach 100%, often within 48 hours. A pandemic can start when three conditions have been met: a new influenza virus subtype emerges; it infects humans, causing serious illness; and it spreads easily and sustainably among humans. The H5N1 virus amply meets the first two conditions: it is a new virus for humans (H5N1 viruses have never circulated widely among people), and it has infected more than 100 humans, killing over half of them. No one will have immunity should an H5N1-like pandemic virus emerge. All prerequisites for the start of a pandemic have therefore been met save one: the establishment of efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus. The risk that the H5N1 virus will acquire this ability will persist as long as opportunities for human infections occur. These opportunities, in turn, will persist as long as the virus continues to circulate in birds, and this situation could endure for some years to come.
Author: Margaret P Battin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2008-10-31
Total Pages: 576
ISBN-13: 0190450592
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBioethics emerged at a time when infectious diseases were not a major concern. Thus bioethics never had to develop a normative framework sensitive to situations of disease transmission. The Patient as Victim and Vector explores how traditional and new issues in clinical medicine, research, public health, and health policy might look different in infectious disease were treated as central. The authors argue that both practice and policy must recognize that a patient with a communicable infectious disease is not only a victim of that disease, but also a potential vector- someone who may transmit an illness that will sicken or kill others. Bioethics has failed to see one part of this duality, they document, and public health the other: that the patient is both victim and vector at one and the same time. The Patient as Victim and Vector is jointly written by four authors at the University of Utah with expertise in bioethics, health law, and both clinical practice and public health policy concerning infectious disease. Part I shows how the patient-centered ethic that was developed by bioethics- especially the concept of autonomy- needs to change in the context of public health, and Part II develops a normative theory for doing so. Part III examines traditional and new issues involving infectious disease: the ethics of quarantine and isolation, research, disease screening, rapid testing, antibiotic use, and immunization, in contexts like multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, syphilis, hepatitis, HIV/AIDS, and HPV. Part IV, beginning with a controversial thought experiment, considers constraint in the control of infectious disease, include pandemics, and Part V 'thinks big' about the global scope of infectious disease and efforts to prevent, treat, or eradicate it. This volume should have a major impact in the fields of bioethics and public health ethics. It will also interest philosophers, lawyers, health law experts, physicians, and policy makers, as well as those concerned with global health.
