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Coronavirus: Deaconess Asks Public to Sew CDC-Compliant Face Masks for Staff

           

Screenshot from a YouTube video on how to make a medical face mask. (Photo: Screen capture from YouTube)

courierpress.com - by Thomas B. Langhorne - March 18, 2020

Citing shortages, Deaconess Health System, including Henderson's Methodist Health, has asked the public to sew face masks for staff fighting coronavirus.

"This does follow CDC protocols that you can find on their website that if all other supplies are not available, that handmade masks that meet certain criteria are acceptable," Deaconess spokeswoman Becca Scott said.

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CLICK HERE - CDC - Strategies for Optimizing the Supply of Facemasks

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World Must Prepare for Inevitable Next Flu Pandemic, WHO Says

           

A logo is pictured on the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

CLICK HERE - WHO - Global influenza strategy 2019-2030

reuters.com - by Kate Kelland - March 11, 2019

The world will inevitably face another pandemic of flu and needs to prepare for the potential devastation that could cause, and not underestimate the risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Outlining a global plan to fight the viral disease and get ahead of a potential global outbreak, the WHO said the next influenza pandemic “is a matter of when, not if”.

“The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement. “We must be vigilant and prepared – the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention.”

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WHO - Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019

                                                

who.int

The world is facing multiple health challenges. These range from outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria, increasing reports of drug-resistant pathogens, growing rates of obesity and physical inactivity to the  health impacts of environmental pollution and climate change and multiple humanitarian crises.   

To address these and other threats, 2019 sees the start of the World Health Organization’s new 5-year strategic plan – the 13th General Programme of Work. This plan focuses on a triple billion target:  ensuring 1 billion more people benefit from access to universal health coverage, 1 billion more people are protected from health emergencies and 1 billion more people enjoy better health and well-being. Reaching this goal will require addressing the threats to health from a variety of angles. 

Here are 10 of the many issues that will demand attention from WHO and health partners in 2019.

1.  Air pollution and climate change

2.  Noncommunicable diseases

3.  Global influenza pandemic

4.  Fragile and vulnerable settings

5.  Antimicrobial resistance

6.  Ebola and other high-threat pathogens

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The Flu is Coming. Are We Ready for the Next Pandemic?

           

Infectious disease experts have had plenty to worry about in recent decades, including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Zika. But one disease scares them above all others—influenza. That’s right, the flu.

news.emory.edu - by Martha McKenzie - December 2018

Even though many people dismiss and misunderstand it—calling everything from a cold to a stomach bug “the flu”— influenza actually claims 12,000 to 56,000 lives in the U.S. every year. And that’s in a normal flu season.

Every so often, a flu pandemic emerges. That’s when a new strain appears that is so different from what has circulated before that people have no immunity to it. A hundred years ago, the 1918 H1N1 pandemic swept the globe infecting about a third of the world’s population and killing 50 million to 100 million people. Since then, there have been three more pandemics, in 1957, 1968, and 2009.

The next pandemic, say experts, is a question of when, not if. Are we ready?

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A shot-in-the-dark email leads to a century-old family treasure — and hope of cracking a deadly flu’s secret

           

Slides of human tissue at the University of Arizona taken by British military pathologist William Rolland a century ago.  MAMTA POPAT FOR STAT

statnews.com - by Helen Branswell - December 5, 2018

Late one night Michael Worobey began poking around on the internet, looking for descendants of a World War I British military doctor named William Rolland.

Rolland, a pathologist, had written a report in 1917, the year before the start of the Spanish flu. It described cases of British soldiers in France who had contracted an unusually fatal respiratory illness.

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China Has Withheld Samples of a Dangerous Flu Virus

           

Health workers attending to an H7N9 avian flu patient in Wuhan, China, in 2017. CreditCreditAgence France-Presse -- Getty Images

CLICK HERE - WHO - Pandemic influenza preparedness Framework for the sharing of influenza viruses and access to vaccines and other benefits (68 page .PDF document)

Despite an international agreement, U.S. health authorities still have not received H7N9 avian flu specimens from their Chinese counterparts.

nytimes.com - by Emily Baumgaertner - August 27, 2018

For over a year, the Chinese government has withheld lab samples of a rapidly evolving influenza virus from the United States — specimens needed to develop vaccines and treatments, according to federal health officials.

Despite persistent requests from government officials and research institutions, China has not provided samples of the dangerous virus, a type of bird flu called H7N9. In the past, such exchanges have been mostly routine under rules established by the World Health Organization.

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This mock pandemic killed 150 million people. Next time it might not be a drill.

CLICK HERE - CLADE X LIVESTREAM (ARCHIVED)

A panel of experts play out a pandemic exercise on May 15 to demonstrate what policies and strategies the U.S. government should have in place. (Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security)

submitted by Mike Kraft - washingtonpost.com - by Lena H. Sun - May 30, 2018

A novel virus, moderately contagious and moderately lethal, has surfaced and is spreading rapidly around the globe . . .

. . . So began a recent day-long exercise hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. The simulation mixed details of past disasters with fictional elements to force government officials and experts to make the kinds of key decisions they could face in a real pandemic.

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