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The U.N. health agency says it is investigating a mystery disease that killed three people in the South African city of Johannesburg. The World Health Organization says the disease appears to be a form of hemorrhagic fever. It says tests have proved negative for Ebola, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Marburg fever and other main types of hemorrhagic fever. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl says the first death on Sept. 13 was a tour guide who had fallen ill in Zambia before being evacuated to South Africa. Two further deaths on Sept. 30 and Oct. 4. involved a paramedic and a...

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - A mysterious illness is killing tens of thousands of honeybee colonies across the country, threatening honey production, the livelihood of beekeepers and possibly crops that need bees for pollination. Reports of unusual colony deaths have come from at least 22 states. Some affected commercial beekeepers — who often keep thousands of colonies — have reported losing more than 50 percent of their bees. A colony can have roughly 20,000 bees in the winter, and up to 60,000 in the summer. The country‘s bee population had already been shocked in recent years by a tiny, parasitic bug...

Ontario health officials are searching for 27 people who may have been exposed to tuberculosis while travelling on a Greyhound bus from Toronto to Windsor on Aug. 31. There's a "moderate risk" they contracted the disease, public health officials said Thursday. A passenger on the bus was sick with the tuberculosis and may have spread it by coughing while in close proximity to the other bus passengers. The passenger, identified only as a woman with a Canadian passport, was detained by American custom officials at the border between Windsor and Detroit. Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams...

Hazmat crews are investigating separate incidents at two area hospitals. Sources say several people came into contact with a chemical and drove themselves to DePaul and St. Anthony’s hospitals. Both emergency rooms were placed on lockdown and ER patients were quarantined. There is no word yet on the origin of the chemical or the incident that sent the victims to the hospital. FOX 2 has crews at St. Anthony’s and at DePaul and will have more information as it develops.

Just breaking on Fox. Not much info yet. People walking into are hospitals in St. Louis sick, skin turning blue and with breathing problems. Hospitals on Lock down. ??? They just mentioned it on Fox News....sounds very scary folks!

Rural Kanpur is fighting its most frightening scourge — a mystery disease that has left a long line of bodies in its trail and doesn’t seem anywhere finished. What started from one village two weeks ago has now spread to 350 and has so far claimed 160 lives. Thousands more are bed-ridden. On an average, 15 to 20 people have been dying every day; Saturday saw the highest toll in a day: 24. The district’s health department is somewhat confused about the nature of the disease that has struck. At the beginning, the diagnosis was viral fever. Then doctors concluded...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Twelve people have now died out of 26 confirmed cases of food poisoning linked to deli meats produced at a plant owned by Maple Leaf Foods Inc, Canadian health officials said Monday. There are another 29 suspected cases of listeriosis, officials told reporters, and Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said the government expected more cases in coming days. Maple Leaf Foods, one of Canada's biggest meat processors, had said it hoped to reopen the Toronto plant associated with the outbreak on Tuesday, but health officials said they will test and hold all meat produced there until they...

More people had measles infections in the first seven months of this year than during any comparable period since 1996, and public health officials blamed growing numbers of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children. Many of these parents say they believe vaccines cause autism, even though multiple studies have found no reputable evidence to support such a claim. In Britain, Switzerland, Israel and Italy, measles outbreaks have soared, sickening thousands and causing at least two deaths.

<p>Search the web, you'll see, Drudge too, what the FDA doesn't want you to know.</p>

Source of Largest Salmonella Outbreak in U.S. History May Never Be Found, Says FDA The salmonella outbreak in tomatoes isn't over and it's already the largest salmonella outbreak the CDC has ever tracked, in terms of lab-confirmed reported illness. Since the outbreak began in April, the CDC has gotten reports of 810 people in 36 states and Washington, D.C., sickened by Salmonella saintpaul, the outbreak's rare strain of salmonella. The most recent onset of illness was June 15, and that may not be the last case, since the CDC gets reports of illness about 16 days after an illness starts,...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Food and Drug Administration detectives had a hot lead, narrowing down on a grower who just might have supplied salmonella-tainted tomatoes. Then the patient changed her story: She'd eaten a round tomato, not a Roma one after all. "We basically had to throw it all out and start over," says Dr. David Acheson, the agency's food safety chief.

Parts of Florida and Mexico were supplying "the vast majority" of tomatoes sold when the salmonella outbreak began in April and thus remain leading suspects, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday. But the FDA hasn't narrowed its hunt to just those two places, said Dr. David Acheson, the agency's food safety chief. "The logical assumption would be that Florida or Mexico are the most likely source" because of the outbreak's timing, he told The Associated Press. "But we have not simply shifted the focus to those two places. ... It's wide open for anybody not on that exclusion list."...

A possible tornado has struck the Litle (spelling from site?) Sioux Scout Camp in Iowa. Very large response is being reported by media. Large number of injuries.

What initially looked to be a frightening infectious disease outbreak that led to the death of one woman aboard a Via Rail train turned out to be a remarkable series of unconnected coincidences, Ontario's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. David Williams, explained during a Friday afternoon press conference. The elderly woman died during the train ride from Vancouver to Toronto, but health officials say she likely didn't have an infectious disease. Six other passengers also fell ill, with the most serious being rushed to hospital with a respiratory illness of some sort. Officials, however, believe that passenger was suffering...

A Via Rail train, carrying more than 260 passengers to Toronto, has been quarantined in Foleyet, Ont. after one person died and several people fell ill. "Currently there are a few people who are seriously ill on the train and one person is being airlifted right now," OPP Sgt. Laura Nichols told CTV.ca from the North Bay Communications Centre. The train was quarantined at the train depot in Foleyet, a community near Sudbury, Ont., after officials notified police that someone was feeling ill. More than 260 people were aboard the train when it stopped in Foleyet. Police believe there are...

BEIJING (AP) - A highly infectious virus that has killed 24 children in China is unlikely to be a threat to the Beijing Olympics, although it is too early to tell whether it has peaked, the World Health Organization said Sunday. The death toll from the virus, which mostly sickens children, rose to 24 Sunday as two more deaths were reported in a new province amid heightened efforts by China's Health Ministry to contain it. The outbreak of enterovirus 71—which causes a severe type of hand, foot and mouth disease—is another headache for the Communist government as it prepares for...

BEIJING (Reuters) - A deadly virus has spread rapidly in eastern China, killing at least 21 children and infecting nearly 3,000, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

New Details Presented In Outbreak In Pork Processing Plant Workers ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2008) — New details on the neurological illness that has affected workers at several pork processing plants were presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 60th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago, April 16, 2008. Neurologists have identified the illness as a new disorder which causes symptoms ranging from a transverse myelitis syndrome, inflammation of the spinal cord, in one patient to mild weakness, fatigue, numbness and tingling in arms and legs. Researchers are classifying this condition as an immune polyradiculoneuropathy, (a disease of the peripheral nerves and...

Authorities testing for deadly strain as new bird flu outbreak hits South Korea AP - Saturday, April 5 SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea reported another bird flu outbreak at a poultry farm Saturday, days after confirming the return of the deadly H5N1 virus following a yearlong absence. ADVERTISEMENT Ducks at the farm tested positive for a general bird flu virus, but more tests are needed to determine if it is the specific strain that has caused worldwide concern, said Kim Ung-sang, an Agriculture Ministry official said. Results are expected by Monday. Several strains of bird flu typically circulate in...

Reagan National Airport (web|news) officials say fire and rescue crews have been busy with a number of ill people, after they attended a conference at Gaylord National at the National Harbor. Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority spokeswoman Courtney Prebich says the authority's Fire and Rescue Department received calls for five people who had become ill in different areas of the airport Thursday evening. She said they had come to the airport separately. A spokesperson with Gaylord National says around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, they were informed by Airport Authorities that several guests, who attended a convention, became sick at Reagan National Airport....

Mystery food poisoning traced to salads 24 March 2008 NewScientist.com news service Analysis of 2006 spinach poisoning outbreak in the US The rate of food poisoning from salad greens in the US is hugely outstripping increases in their consumption. Three large outbreaks in 2006 that between them made 300 Americans sick were traced to bulk-prepared greens. "For most outbreaks, investigators are unable to pinpoint where contamination occurred," says Michael Lynch of the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. Whatever the cause, increased consumption is not it. Between 1986 and 1995, Americans ate 17 per cent more leafy greens...

The number of deaths linked with hospital superbug Clostridium difficile has soared in England and Wales, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. Between 2005 and 2006 the number of death certificates which mentioned the infection rose by 72 per cent to 6,480. Elderly people were most at risk from the bacteria, which caused more than 55,000 infections in NHS hospitals last year. It is thought that some of the increase may be due to more complete reporting on death certificates, but there has been a fiftyfold increase in C. difficile infections since 1990. Deaths citing C. difficile as...

ATLANTA — The flu season is getting worse, and U.S. health officials say it's partly because the flu vaccine doesn't protect against most of the spreading flu bugs. The flu shot is a good match for only about 40 percent of this year's flu viruses, officials at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The situation has even deteriorated since last week when the CDC said the vaccine was protective against roughly half the circulating strains. In good years, the vaccine can fend off 70 to 90 percent of flu bugs. Infections from an unexpected strain have...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Hundreds of students have been diagnosed with the flu in recent weeks at the University of Maryland College Park campus. Officials are calling it the most severe outbreak in 10 years, News4's Cheryl Butler reported. More than 400 students have been diagnosed with the flu on campus, and that number is rising. Students are lining up at the university's health center for diagnosis and relief. Junior music major Rachel Israel said the flu has made her miss clarinet rehearsals and classes. "It started with a really severe cough and then a fever. It got worse from...

A new, highly drug-resistant strain of the “flesh-eating” MRSA bacteria is being spread among gay men in San Francisco and Boston, researchers reported on Monday. In a study published online by the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the bacteria seemed to be spread most easily through anal intercourse but also through casual skin-to-skin contact and touching contaminated surfaces. The authors warned that unless microbiology laboratories were able to identify the strain and doctors prescribed the proper antibiotic therapy, the infection could soon spread among other groups and become a wider threat. The new strain seems to have “spread rapidly” in...

'Flesh-eating' MRSA threatens Britain By Caroline Gammell and Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles Last Updated: 5:49pm GMT 15/01/2008 A potentially deadly and highly drug resistant strain of MRSA has developed which can lead to a flesh-eating form of pneumonia, researchers have warned. The USA300 strain is spreading outside hospitals into the general population Spreading rapidly among gay men in several major US cities, the bug can cause boils as large as tennis balls, blood poisoning or a necrotising condition which eats away at a person's lungs. The type of Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) was identified in gay men in...

Britain in grip of norovirus as cases hit 3m By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor Last Updated: 1:50am GMT 12/01/2008 Three million people have been struck down by the winter vomiting bug - with experts fearing that cases could rise through this month and next. The norovirus season began a month earlier than normal this winter. Cases of the bug increased rapidly, with more than 200,000 people a week now catching the infection, official figures claim. Those with symptoms are urged to engage in good hygiene to prevent the virus spreading further Hospitals struggling to cope have closed hundreds of wards...

GPs urge millions hit by bug to stay at home By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor and Aislinn Simpson Last Updated: 2:14am GMT 03/01/2008 Doctors' leaders warned people struck down by a violent stomach bug sweeping the country not to return to work as GPs reported that they were being inundated by sufferers. More than 100,000 people a week are catching norovirus, which causes sudden vomiting and diarrhoea, and the numbers contracting the disease will peak this month. The NHS advises patients affected to stay at home for 48 hours after they last suffered the symptoms Thousands of workers and children...

COALINGA, Calif. — When any of the 5,300 inmates at Pleasant Valley State Prison begin coughing and running a fever, doctors do not think flu, bronchitis or even the common cold. They think valley fever; and, more often than they would like, they are right. In the past three years, more than 900 inmates at the prison have contracted the fever, a fungal infection that has been both widespread and lethal. At least a dozen inmates here in Central California have died from the disease, which is on the rise in other Western states, including Arizona, where the health department...

<p>A Santa Clara County resident infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis flew back to the United States earlier this month without alerting authorities of her illness - potentially threatening fellow passengers and people at Stanford Hospital's emergency room with whom she came into contact. Now public health officials are trying to alert those who may be at risk.</p>

Rumblings on the Norwegian Cruise Line boards alerted Cruise Critic to the fact that there is a norovirus outbreak on Norwegian Pearl, which is en route back to Miami after a nine-night southern Caribbean sailing that started on November 30. The outbreak may cause the ship's next sailing, slated to depart on December 9, to be delayed. At noon (EST) yesterday, member JJSlim posted that he had heard from two people onboard the ship that there was a possible outbreak. Nothing at that time had been posted to the Center for Disease Control’s Web site. Later, member Dogbeau posted from...

Uganda Ebola death toll hits 19 3 hours ago KAMPALA (AFP) — The dreaded Ebola virus has killed 19 people in western Uganda since September, officials said Tuesday, with new outbreaks of linked diseases surfacing in other parts of the country. Hours after the 19th Ebola patient died in Bundibugyo district, State Health Emmanuel Otaala highlighted fears of extremely contagious cholera, plague, meningitis and hepatitis outbreaks. "As we are trying to contain Ebola, we came across four other outbreaks," Otaala told reporters. The health ministry reported cholera in western Hoima and northeastern Nebbi districts; plague in Nebbi; meningitis in Nebbi...

Whooping cough makes comeback Pertussis kills 1, strikes 8,000 in all 50 states, closes schools, colleges Posted: December 4, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2007 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – Cover your mouth when you cough. Wash your hands frequently. And don't knowingly expose yourself to those infected with an illness you may have thought was a thing of the past. That's the advice from public health officials who report small outbreaks of whooping cough, or pertussis, in all 50 states – with some pockets resulting in school closings and even one infant death. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta reports...

ATLANTA (AP) - A mutated version of a common cold virus has caused 10 deaths in the last 18 months, U.S. health officials said Thursday. Adenoviruses usually cause respiratory infections that aren't considered lethal. But a new variant has caused at least 140 illnesses in New York, Oregon, Washington and Texas, according to a report issued Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The illness made headlines in Texas earlier this year, when a so- called boot camp flu sickened hundreds at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The most serious cases were blamed on the...

When the SARS (Severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic broke out in 2002, Israeli scientist Dorit Arad was alarmed. She was living in the US at the time, and had to fly frequently for her work, exposing herself to risk. During the outbreak, which lasted from November 2002 to July 2003, 774 people died of the highly contagious respiratory disease - a mortality rate of 9.6 percent. "I was panicked," admits Arad. "I even started wearing a mask." It gave her an idea, however. One of the problems with this pneumonia-like disease, was diagnosis, which was expensive, slow, and had a...

A Los Angeles County hospital has opened the first clinic in the country devoted to studying and treating Chagas disease, a deadly parasitic illness that has long been the leading cause of heart failure in Latin America and is now being seen in immigrant communities in the United States. Unless Chagas is treated early, little can be done to halt its advance. Yet because 10 to 20 years can pass before heart or gastrointestinal complications develop, many people don't realize they're infected with what has been called a silent killer. "We really, really need to become more aware of the...

Prince William County Schools had four new cases of the antibiotic-resistant staph infection, bringing the total to nine. The new student cases were confirmed at Benton Middle School, Lake Ridge Elementary and Vaughan Elementary schools. The employee case was reported at Freedom High School. The school district released the information about the new cases Friday evening

A high school student hospitalized for more than a week with an antibiotic-resistant staph infection died on Monday, as schools across the country were reporting outbreaks of staph infections, including the antibiotic-resistant strain. The student, Ashton Bonds, 17, was a senior at Staunton River High School in Moneta, Va., and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, was diagnosed in him, his mother said. Officials shut down all 22 schools in Bedford County for cleaning today in an effort to keep the illness from spreading, after students at Staunton River organized a protest overnight Monday, using text messages and social networking sites....

PENSACOLA, Fla. -- A tornado touched down Thursday, damaging this city's major shopping mall, as a line of violent thunderstorms made their way across the western Panhandle. There were no immediate reports of injuries. The twister could be seen tossing debris around, and preliminary damage reports were still coming in, said Escambia County sheriff's spokesman Glenn Austin. He said the tornado struck a section of Cordova Mall, the major shopping mall in Pensacola. He said he did not know the extent of damage. Snip

Appalling standards of care and a catalogue of failures contributed to the deaths of 331 patients in the worst outbreak of a hospital superbug ever recorded in the NHS, a report has found. Crowded wards, a shortage of nurses and financial problems led to 1,176 people contracting Clostridium difficile over two and half years at three hospitals in Kent. Though the superbug was rife on the wards, managers failed to act. Isolation units were not set up, nurses were so rushed they did not have time to wash their hands and patients were left in soiled beds. Bedpans were not...

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Dengue fever is spreading across Latin America and the Caribbean in one of the worst outbreaks in decades, causing agonizing joint pain for hundreds of thousands of people and killing nearly 200 so far this year. The mosquitoes that carry dengue are thriving in expanded urban slums scattered with water-collecting trash and old tires. Experts say dengue is approaching record levels this year as many countries enter their wettest months. "If we do not slow it down, it will intensify and take a greater social and economic toll on these countries," said Dr. Jose Luis...

Nine cases of Ebola confirmed in DR Congo region KINSHASA (AFP) — Nine cases of Ebola virus have been confirmed in the West Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo that is at the epicentre of an outbreak that has killed at least 174 people, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said Friday. "We have now nine cases of Ebola haemorrhagic fever confirmed in the laboratory, five cases of typhoid and one case of Shigella," WHO spokeswoman in DR Congo Cristiana Silvi told AFP. Symptoms of the epidemic -- high temperature, bloody diarrhoea, visible hemorrhaging -- were first seen...

An insect-borne virus is being blamed for killing nearly 200 deer across Virginia in recent weeks, and the state is bracing for the toll to go higher. Epizootic hemorrhagic disease does not affect humans, but it's frustrating for game officials because the only thing that will stop it is the onset of cold, wet weather that will kill off insects. "It's worse in the western part of the state because of the drought creating the perfect environment for this," said Julia Dixon, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Since late July, the game department has received...

Mystery DR Congo fever kills 60 More than 60 people have died because of a fever epidemic in the centre of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, health officials say. Many of the victims are people who have been in contact with the deceased, including medical staff, and who lack equipment to deal with the illness. The latest victim was a nurse at a local hospital. She died on Thursday after taking care of infected patients. Health officials say the medical staff had no masks and this put them at risk. Speaking from Kananga, the capital of the West Kasai...

A NSW Senate candidate has compared the immigration of Muslims to Australia to the bird flu and says it should stop. Christian Democratic Party (CDP) Senate candidate Paul Green called today for a moratorium on Muslim immigration while a study on its social impacts was carried out. He said it would be easier to carry out such a study with the country's Muslim population at 300,000, rather than three million at a later date. A study would also give the Australian people a chance to have a say on the immigration program, Mr Green said. *snip*

A plague carried around the world by travellers, pets and curious teenagers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers have said. Luckily, the world involved is an internet game. The outbreak of "Corrupted Blood" indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory - the culture of online gamers. "It really looked quite a bit like a real disease," Nina Fefferman of Princeton University, who worked on the report with her then-student Eric Lofgren, said in a telephone...

LONDON (Reuters) - Foot and mouth disease has been found in cattle on a British farm, the government said on Friday as it banned livestock movements to prevent a repeat of a 2001 outbreak that blighted farming and rural tourism. Infected livestock were found on a farm near Guildford, close to London, and all cattle on the farm were being culled, the agriculture department Defra said. Officials immediately halted movements of pigs and ruminant animals such as cows and sheep across the United Kingdom to stop the spread of the disease and set up a 10-km (six-mile) surveillance zone around...

Over 100 Poultry Workers in South Carolina Test Positive for TB Acting on reported TB case of one of the workers at the Columbia Farms factory, Health Officials in conjunction with other authorities decided to formally evaluate the entire processing plant and conduct a close-contact investigation. There were 900 workers at this site, but in accordance to a CDC algorithm that assesses risk contacts, officials only tested 286 of the factories employees. Out of this group, 131 exhibited a positive skin test for tuberculosis. Tuberculosis (TB, Tuberculum Bacillum) is chiefly caused by a species of bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis. This...

CHINA GROVE, N.C. – Captain’s Galley, the restaurant linked to an E. coli outbreak in Rowan County, has been shut down after health officials confirmed that a goat was slaughtered inside the restaurant. The Rowan County Health Department announced today they learned of the slaughter from an anonymous tip by a former employee, which was confirmed by management and ownership. They’re not saying the slaughter is the exact cause of the E. coli outbreak, which sickened 20 people and killed one woman. But health officials say it is biologically plausible that the goat slaughter may have been the source of...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Inundated with politics long before the 2008 presidential election, U.S. voters are in danger of suffering wearying bouts of the uniquely American affliction of "campaign fatigue" in coming months. Experts say voters who follow the news closely are most at risk of the condition striking this year earlier than ever. It takes its toll with information overload, long hitches of unpaid work for campaign volunteers and the all-important undecided voters on the fence longer than usual. Voter attention tends to wane in between the early debates, major primaries and conventions and, in a contest so long...