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T
oday's Headlines: January 18, 2019
Biological Agents & Infectious Diseases
Romaine, Goldfish Recalls Are Just the Tip of the Food Contamination Iceberg
(Bloomberg)
A report released Thursday by the US PIRG Education Fund found that recalls of food have increased 10 percent since 2013, with meat and poultry incidents soaring 67 percent. The most hazardous -- Class 1 recalls, or when there's a "reasonable probability that eating the food will cause health problems or death" -- edged up 6 percent overall and a whopping 83 percent for meat and poultry, the study found. Go to article
Global Health Security
Q & A: The Odd- and Sometimes Tense- Intersection of Cops, Soldiers, and Public Health
(Science Mag)
In 2003, epidemiologist Nicholas Thomson was doing HIV prevention work in Chiang Mai, Thailand, when the country's president, Thaksin Shinawatra, launched an aggressive war on drugs. "Thaksin gave permission to extra-judiciously take out what were meant to be drug traffickers, and we lost a couple hundred people out of our prevention trials who weren't drug traffickers," says Thomson, who was working with a team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "We were decimated." Go to Article
Health Workers and Security Forces Must Collaborate, Not Collide
(Stat)
H
ealth care workers, police officers, and members of the military share the goal of keeping people safe. All too often, though, they are working at cross purposes, set on a collision course with fatal consequences for the populations caught in the middle. As we and 17 others write in the Lancet Special Series on Security and Health, it is time to explore how all countries can prosper from partnerships that bridge health and security silos based on this shared vision: engagement of security forces, including police and the military, in public health is synergistic and beneficial. Go to article
Invest in Health for Global Security and Growth, Gates Urges Donors
(Reuters)
Donating billions of dollars to global funds that fight poverty and disease is one of the best investments governments can make to boost security and economic growth, philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates said on Thursday.
Ending epidemics of infectious diseases such as malaria, polio, HIV and malaria is proving tough, they said, but dramatic progress made by global aid mechanisms recent decades means the world's people are now healthier and more productive.
Go to article
AP Exclusive: UN Health Chief Orders Probe into Misconduct (
AP News
)
The head of the WHO has ordered an internal investigation into allegations the U.N. health agency is rife with racism, sexism and corruption, after a series of anonymous emails with the explosive charges were sent to top managers last year.
Three emails addressed to WHO directors - and obtained by the Associated Press - complained about "systematic racial discrimination" against African staffers and alleged other instances of wrongdoing, including claims that some of the money intended to fight Ebola in Congo was misspent. Go to article
Security and Public Health: The Interface
(The Lancet) Security and health sectors are often interconnected in their attempt to resolve public or global health issues; however, military involvement can have contrasting effects. Security or military involvement reinforce public health efforts (such as assisting in the response to the 2014 Ebola virus disease and the 2015 Zika virus outbreak) but can also have negative effects on health, such as targeting humanitarian and health-care workers in conflict settings.
With countries becoming increasingly willing to involve the military in health matters, collaborative efforts between these two sectors need to be defined to support health priorities. Go to article
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