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H1N1
Is Swine Flu Poised for a British Invasion of the US?
By David Knowles - AOL NewsHere it comes again. An outbreak of H1N1 flu has hospitalized 302 people in England and accounted for 14 deaths in recent weeks, the Guardian reported. Making matters worse, many British citizens, including health workers, have yet to receive flu shots this year after the frenzy of attention paid to H1N1 subsided at the conclusion of last year's pandemic season. This year's flu shot covers both seasonal and the so-called "swine" flu strains, but vaccination rates have been 2.5 percent lower this year than last, the BBC reported. "It was ill-advised not to have the public awareness campaign ...
Opinion: Let's Lift the Roadblocks to Vaccinations
By not in system - AOL News
(Nov. 17) -- With the flu season just getting under way, it's a good time to ask this question: In an age of readily available vaccines, why are so many Americans dying of preventable diseases? About 200,000 will be hospitalized and 36,000 will die of the flu between now and when the flu season ends in May. In California, pertussis -- more commonly known as whooping cough -- has re-emerged with a vengeance. This year, nearly 6,000 pertussis cases have erupted -- health officials call this the biggest whooping cough outbreak since 1950. Tragically, pertussis has killed 10 California infants ...
Tobacco-Based Vaccines Could Pwn Future Pandemics
By Katie Drummond - AOL News(Nov. 4) -- Pandemics and bio-terror threats might one day be a health hazard of the past. A massive undertaking by the U.S. military is rapidly transforming vaccine production, yielding fast-tracked approaches to wipe out new illnesses before they spread. The military's been after better bio-threat prevention methods since 2005, but it was only last year that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launched its Blue Angel program to come up with quicker responses to emerging flu viruses. H1N1 (the virus originally referred to by the media as "swine flu") was the catalyst for ...
H1N1 Declared Over; Experts Ponder Lessons
By Katie Drummond - AOL News(Aug. 10) -- More than a year after swine flu was declared a global pandemic, leading to a flurry of fast-tracked vaccine production, travel restrictions and public health advisories, the world has finally entered a "post-pandemic period." That's the word from the World Health Organization, which today downgraded H1N1 from pandemic status on its six-stage alert system. The virus has killed an estimated 19,000 people worldwide so far, compared with the 500,000 the WHO estimates die during a typical flu season. "The new H1N1 virus has largely run its course," Margaret Chan, WHO's director ...
WHO Admits Errors in Handling H1N1
By Katie Drummond - AOL News(April 12) -- The World Health Organization has admitted to errors and a lack of clear communication in handling the H1N1 pandemic last year, but its top influenza expert says the agency doesn't regret proclaiming the flu a pandemic. "The reality is there is a huge amount of uncertainty [in a pandemic]. I think we did not convey the uncertainty. That was interpreted by many as a nontransparent process," Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's leading influenza expert, told a panel of experts convening this week for a post-pandemic analysis of the organization's response to H1N1. The agency uses a six-stage ...
Health Officials Worry Over H1N1 Uptick
By Katie Drummond - AOL News(March 30) -- An outbreak of H1N1 cases in Georgia and mini-surges in other Southeastern states have federal health officials urging vaccinations and vigilance to thwart the threat of a third wave of the flu. H1N1 has been largely contained across most of the country. But in Georgia, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the number of those sick is higher than it was in October, when the second wave of the flu swept the nation. In the last week alone, the state has seen 40 hospitalizations. That's more than any other week since last fall. Specialists with the CDC are ...
Hyping H1N1: Did It Create a Dangerous Flu Fatigue?
By Katie Drummond - AOL News(Feb. 27) -- With the World Health Organization warning yet again this week that the H1N1 virus has yet to reach its peak, a flu season that's milder than average hardly seems that way. Now, the nearly yearlong coverage of H1N1 has left some worried that future influenza outbreaks will be met with ambivalent flu fatigue among the public. "It's inevitable that there's H1N1 fatigue," Dr. Robert Daum, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told AOL News. "Health officials, the media and the public are all stuck between a rock and a hard place on this one." ...
Radio Spots Target African-Americans at Risk for H1N1 Complications
By Mary C. Curtis - Politics DailyIn case you didn't know, it's National Influenza Vaccination Week. The day after she was sworn in as Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin and other health officials announced new public service radio spots urging African Americans to get the H1N1 flu vaccine. The once-scarce vaccine is now readily available and cases of the flu have decreased since the fall. Still, Benjamin – along with Dr. Anthony Fiori, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Dr. Garth Graham, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health at the Department of Health and Human Services -- warned ...
Thousands of Doses of Kids' H1N1 Vaccine Recalled
By not in system - AOL NewsATLANTA (Dec. 15) -- Hundreds of thousands of swine flu shots for children have been recalled because tests indicate the vaccine doses lost some strength, government health officials said Tuesday. The recall is for about 800,000 pre-filled syringes intended for children ages 6 months to nearly 3 years. The shots, made by Sanofi Pasteur, were distributed across the country last month, and most have already been used, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors were notified of the voluntary recall Tuesday. Dr. Anne Schuchat, a CDC flu expert, said parents don't need ...
Five Things Amanda Knox Should Have Known Before Arriving in Italy
By Aaron Steiner - Politics Daily(Update, 6:45pm EST -- Amanda Knox was convicted late Friday in the throat-slashing murder of her former roommate in Perugia, Italy. Her parents and lawyers say they'll appeal, and we've not likely seen the end of this case yet.) Amanda Knox's parents and lawyers say prosecutors' claims are preposterous and imaginative. Cast as the "Devil with an Angel Face" from America, Knox has been tabloid fodder for the Italian press throughout the drawn-out trial, mostly depicted in a very unflattering way. Contrast that with her depiction in American media: a damsel in distress, facing an inhumane ...
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