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An urgent health alert has been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the United States witnesses a sharp increase in the incidence of invasive meningococcal disease. According to CDC, meningococcal disease “refers to any illness caused by bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis. These illnesses are often severe, can be deadly, and include infections of the lining of the brain and spinal cord (meningitis) and bloodstream.” Transmission occurs through close contact, prompting urgent calls for individuals with symptoms to seek care promptly to improve outcomes with timely antibiotic treatment. With 422 cases recorded last year, this figure...

In China, the deadly pathogen has killed 623 of the 1,625 people which have been infected. The symptoms of H7N9 include a high fever, cough and shortness of breath which can then develop into pneumonia. Once the disease has developed, those infected develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, septic shock and organ failure. Older people, pregnant women and those with existing health problems are most at risk, according to the World Health Organization. Bird flu can spread to people when they have direct contact with the infection

A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection. The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status. As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled “Behind Bars”, which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons. Proponents of criminal laws assert, however, they are designed...

A stop livestock movement exercise is taking place on the Oklahoma/Kansas border on Oct. 22. The goal is to practice stopping animal movement across borders during times of contagious animal disease. Traffic will be screened at two border locations; one three miles north of Turpin on Highway 83 and the other at the intersection of Highways 160 and 183 near Sitka, Kansas.

As another World AIDS Day dawns this morning, prepare for the usual media blitz of stories designed to promote more spending on failed approaches to HIV/AIDS, and more bashing of the Bush Administration despite increases in spending by the billions each year.  Here are some of the questions that the media probably won’t ask the professional HIV/AIDS lobby, which grows ever fatter while the human tragedy rises: • What have American taxpayers gotten for the $20 billion per year (and rising) government spending on HIV/AIDS? • What has happened to the more than half a billion condoms that the...

All of the employees at the Wayne Farms fresh processing plant in Decatur have received tuberculosis skin tests and 212 of them tested positive. Health workers read and tabulated a final batch of tests Wednesday, said Scott Jones, interim director of the State Department of Public Health's Tuberculosis Control Division. Of the 598 tests administered Monday, 165 tested positive. In skin tests administered to 167 fresh processing employees Oct. 11, 47 tested positive. One of the 47 has active tuberculosis disease, which is contagious. All told, 28 percent of those who received skin tests at the fresh processing plant tested...

FORT LAUDERDALE, August 23, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At a news conference at City Hall this week, Jim Naugle, the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Florida has called on homosexual men to end their public sexual encounters in order to curb the local HIV/AIDS rate. "We want to put a stop to that activity," he said. Since his first public comments in July, Naugle has been attacked on all sides for being nearly the only US public figure to oppose on moral grounds the encroachment of homosexual activity in his town. Now Naugle is in the news again for his determination to...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A man placed in isolation after he was diagnosed with contagious tuberculosis broke a hospital window and fled, health officials said. Unlike the Georgia lawyer who was under a federal quarantine after flying to Europe with what was then believed to be extensively drug-resistant TB, Arkansas health officials said the man who fled has a form of tuberculosis that would respond to treatment. Franklin Greenwood, 50, is still contagious, though, health officials said. Greenwood was placed in isolation at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital on June 29 after he was seen coughing up...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa Mary Goedken (GED'-ken) of Monticello, the matriarch of an Iowa family that lost eight people to AIDS, has died. She died on Monday at a Monticello nursing home following a brief illness. She was 91. Goedken's family says she had been in declining health since suffering a stroke in December. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, no other family in the U-S is known to have lost more members to AIDS than the Goedkens. Six of her seven sons suffered from hemophilia. One son died of complications from hemophilia in 1971. In the 1980s,...

VASHON ISLAND, Wash. — Kate Packard, the school nurse here, has a nightmare she sums up in five words: "measles coming across the water." If measles did make the 20-minute ferry ride across Puget Sound from Seattle — hardly unthinkable, since a case occurred last year near a ferry terminal in West Seattle — public health officers say the whole Vashon Island school district could be shut down until the island's last case disappeared or an emergency vaccination drive took effect. Eighteen percent of Vashon Island's 1,600 primary school students have legally opted out of vaccination against childhood diseases, including...