Communication

BIOSECTOR PRESS  by Chris Shilling                    March 9, 2015

As efforts intensify at all levels by international health organisations and on the ground by community health workers in providing treatment, supplies and preventive measures,  young people and children – perhaps the ones most affected – need to have access to good health education resources to help them better understand both the medical and health aspects of Ebola.

To address this issue, Afrelib is working in partnership with Medikidz, (http://www.medikidz.com/gb-en/) the world’s first medical information company aimed at children, to produce learning material in an interactive, comic book format. With this health education comic, it should be possible to provide easy-to-understand and engaging information so that it not only helps in disseminating good preventive measures as recommended by public health organisations but also helps them in dealing with the cultural and social issues surrounding this epidemic.

EUROSURVEILLANCE                                                              Volume 20, Issue 1, Jan. 8 2015

Australian researchers reported on an automated text-message system used for actively monitoring people potentially exposed to Ebola. The system prompts contacts to submit information on symptoms and temperature twice a day. The Department of Health in Western Australia uses the system, called "EbolaTracks," to track travelers returning from West Africa and (potentially) contacts of any local cases.

Twenty-two people were enrolled in the program as of Jan 5, and 14 have completed active monitoring. The system sent 1,108 text messages and got a 91% response rate. Health officials followed up by phone when they didn't get a reply. Such systems could be valuable tools for larger-scale contact monitoring for Ebola or other infectious diseases, they concluded.

http://www.eurosurveillance.org/ViewArticle.aspx?ArticleId=20999

Submitted by Albert Gomez

crn.com - July 11th, 2014 - Robert Westervelt

The Identity Theft Resource Center, which tracks public reports of data breaches, said it has logged nearly 400 incidents exposing credit card data and sensitive information in 2014. While retailers gain the most attention as a result of attacks against their payment systems, healthcare data, university information was also exposed in attacks. Security experts say the incidents expose password management lapses, poor data base management and oversight and the failure to identify and correct common Web application vulnerabilities.

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Across newspapers, TV, and Internet, confidence no higher than 22%

gallup.com - by Andrew Dugan - June 19, 2014

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' faith in each of three major news media platforms -- television news, newspapers, and news on the Internet -- is at or tied with record lows in Gallup's long-standing confidence in institutions trend. This continues a decades-long decline in the share of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers or TV news, while trust in Internet news remains low since the one prior measure in 1999.

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