Categories: Disease Detectives, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Global Health Threats, Innovative Labs, Public Health Partners, State & Local Success, U.S. Disease Outbreaks
January 18th, 2013 3:37 pm ET -
Blog Admin
As America’s health protection agency, CDC works around-the-clock to save lives and protect people from health threats, whether they start at home or abroad, are chronic or acute, are curable or preventable, or are the result of human error or deliberate attack.
Here’s a look at 13 public health issues CDC is working on for you in 2013:
1. Healthcare-Associated Infections: Protecting Patients, Saving Lives
More than 1 million Americans get a healthcare-associated infection during the course of their medical care, which accounts for billions of dollars in excess healthcare costs. CDC is working toward the elimination of healthcare-associated infections across all settings. CDC continues to target untreatable drug resistant infections that threaten patient safety and, in early 2013, will be releasing updated national and state numbers on healthcare-associated infections prevention in U.S. hospitals. (Above photo: CDC scientist Alicia Shams demonstrating K. pneumoniae growth on a MacConkey agar plate.)
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Categories: Disease Detectives, Emergency Preparedness & Response, Global Health Threats, Innovative Labs, Public Health Partners, State & Local Success, U.S. Disease Outbreaks
December 21st, 2012 2:36 pm ET -
Blog Admin
Photo of Hurricane Sandy courtesy of NASA
CDC has America’s back. We work around-the-clock to protect Americans from health and safety threats, both foreign and domestic. We also help people lead longer, healthier, more productive lives by preventing heart attacks, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and other leading causes of death.
Here’s a list of 13 ways CDC has been there for America and the world in 2012:
1. Multistate Fungal Meningitis Outbreak
CDC, in collaboration with state and local health departments and the Food and Drug Administration, is investigating a multistate outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections among patients who received contaminated preservative-free MPA steroid injections from New England Compounding Center. Several patients suffered strokes that are believed to have resulted from their infections. The investigation also includes other infections from injections in a peripheral joint, such as a knee, shoulder, or ankle. Read the CDC Works for You 24/7 blog post, The Critical Role of State Health Depts. in the U.S. Fungal Meningitis Outbreak: 4 Key Efforts.
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Categories: Emergency Preparedness & Response, State & Local Success
November 29th, 2012 3:52 pm ET -
Blog Admin
About Federal Medical Stations
Twenty-four hours. That is how long it took CDC’s Division of Strategic National Stockpile (DSNS) to unpack and set up a 40,000-square-foot federal medical station (FMS) in the Middlesex College gymnasium in Edison, New Jersey (pictured above), capable of caring for up to 250 people displaced by Hurricane Sandy and in need of non-acute (non-emergency) medical care. (This was one of seven FMSs deployed to the region after the hurricane, all of which required a swift yet coordinated effort between CDC’s DSNS and the Health and Human Services Secretary’s Operations Center in Washington, D.C.)
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Categories: Emergency Preparedness & Response, State & Local Success, U.S. Disease Outbreaks
November 21st, 2012 9:38 am ET -
Dr. Beth Bell, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, CDC
CDC remains at the front line of the current U.S. fungal meningitis outbreak, which has since early October sickened 490 people and caused 34 deaths in 19 states. On Nov. 15, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions held a hearing about this outbreak. This post is an excerpt from the testimony of Dr. Beth Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at CDC, who discussed, among other things, the critical role state health departments played in detecting and sounding the alarm on this outbreak of fungal meningitis and other infections.
(To read Dr. Bell’s complete written testimony, visit the CDC Washington website. To watch the full hearing, visit the committee’s website. Dr. Bell appears at the 40 minute mark. )
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Categories: Emergency Preparedness & Response, State & Local Success
November 9th, 2012 2:34 pm ET -
Dr. Scott M. Shone, Newborn Screening Lab, New Jersey Dept. of Health
First, About Newborn Screening:
Life-saving public health initiatives like newborn screening (NBS) can’t be put on hold, even during and after a devastating storm like Hurricane Sandy. In this guest blog post, Dr. Scott M. Shone, a research scientist and manager of the NBS lab (pictured above) at the New Jersey Department of Health, talks about his staff’s remarkable dedication and hard work to keep NBS testing going during the storm.
Dr. Shone’s lab is one of more than 70 NBS labs in the country that screens newborns within 48 hours of birth – a short but critical period when babies, even those who look healthy, are tested for hearing loss and certain genetic, endocrine, and metabolic conditions. The timing of these blood tests is critical because early detection, diagnosis, and treatment can prevent death or more serious health problems later in life. Sometimes newborns need immediate medications or a special diet to save their lives or protect them from a lifetime of disability.
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