U.S. not prepared for emerging diseases

Anne Zieger — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:17:11 -0400

We haven't had a severe outbreak of the flu or other type of illness in recent years, and yet 170,000 Americans die each year from new or re-emerging infectious diseases. A new report from the Trust for America's Health points out that if there were to be a major outbreak of such infectious diseases, those mortality numbers would go up dramatically.

According to NIAID, these include pathogens that have just been recognized in the past two decades, such as helicobacter pylori, hepatitis E and lyme borreliosis; re-emerging pathogens such as the mumps virus, enterovirus 71 and C. diff.; new threats like the West Nile virus; or the return of pathogens once eradicated, such as yellow fever and typhus.

We are not prepared for such an outbreak, the report says, because while the amount of global travel to and from the U.S. has drastically increased, our ability to fight the diseases people bring back from abroad has not. The report suggests increased federal funding and a global effort to prevent emerging diseases from spreading as two partial solutions of the problem.

To learn more about the report:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)
- read NIAID's list of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases

Study: Number of drug-resistant germs rising

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 07:59:54 -0400

Here's an unsettling statistic, to say the least. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the number of germs resistant to antibiotics is growing. The Institute, which is part of NIH, will publish an article in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, stating that one in five of the 94,360 patients who developed an invasive MRSA infection in 2005 died. Also, 20 percent of tuberculosis cases worldwide are drug-resistant, with 10 percent "extensively" drug resistant, the agency said. Perhaps most sobering, as of 2002: 14 percent of certain bloodstream infections were resistant to antibiotics, up from 4 percent in 1993.

To learn more about this study:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

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Case study: NC hospital cuts MRSA rates. Report
VA program slashes MRSA infection rates. Report
Study: Disinfectant cuts down on MRSA. Report

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

U.S. not prepared for emerging diseases

Study: Number of drug-resistant germs rising