Venezuela doctors sound alarm on reported return of diphtheria

CARACAS – Venezuelan doctors on Thursday warned of a diphtheria outbreak in the crisis-stricken country, calling on the government to boost availability of scarce vaccines and antibiotics to stem the disease which local media and the opposition report has killed some two dozen people.

Diphtheria is an infectious disease that chiefly affects the throat and upper airways and is spread through physical or respiratory contact. It is fatal in around 5 to 10 percent of cases, according to the World Health Organization.

Last seen in Venezuela in 1992, diphtheria has been spreading in the southern jungle state of Bolivar, according to a statement by two local public health associations on Thursday.

---

Turkey Hill ice cream, pet products recalled

Giant Food Stores Sunday announced two recalls of food products from its stores.

Turkey Hill Dairy issued a recall for its 48-ounce containers of Turkey Hill Dutch Chocolate Premium Ice Cream, since some packages may contain Rocky Road Premium Ice Cream. The lid of affected products may be labeled as Rocky Road.

These packages may contain almonds and eggs, allergens not listed on the ingredient label. The products are safe to consume for those who do not suffer from an almond or egg allergy.

The product in the recall is:

Turkey Hill Dutch Chocolate Premium Ice Cream, 48 oz. (1.5 QTS - 1.42L), UPC 20735-42095, sell-by date: 05/23/17 (found printed on the bottom of the package)

Giant said it has not received any reports of illnesses to date. For more information, customers may call Turkey Hill Dairy at 1-800-693-2479.

In addition to Turkey Hill, MARS Petcare has issued a recall for its Cesar Classics Filet Mignon Dog Food and Cesar Classics Variety Pack, due to a potential choking risk from hard, white pieces of plastic that entered the food during the production process.

The products in the recall are:

• Cesar Classics Filet Mignon, 3.5 oz., UPC 23100017792, Item #: 21443, All Date Codes

• Cesar Classics Variety Pack 24 pk., UPC 23100010257, Item #: 143949, All Date Codes

Giant said it has not received any reports of injuries. Customers can call MARS Petcare at 800-421-6456 Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. EST for more information.

Customers should discard the products and bring their purchase receipts to Giant for a full refund.

---

Nestlé recalls drumstick ice cream treats because of Listeria

Nestlé USA Inc. has launched a nationwide recall of an undisclosed volume of ice cream Drumstick cones that were “inadvertently” distributed after the company found Listeria monocytogenes in its Bakersfield, CA, production plant.

“There have been no positive test results for LM (Listeria monocytogenes) present in the Drumstick cones themselves,” according to the Nestlé recall posed on the food and Drug Administration website.

---

Zika Virus Cases Soar in Asia, WHO Says

Zika infections are expected to continue rising in the Asia-Pacific region, where authorities are increasing surveillance, preparing responses to complications and collaborating on information about the disease, the World Health Organization said Monday.

Complicating the fight against the virus, spread by mosquitoes, is the lack of a "foolproof" approach to mosquito control, as shown by decades of efforts to contain dengue virus, WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in her address to a Western Pacific regional meeting of the world health body.

---

If Patient in the Hospital Bed Before You Got Antibiotics -- Take Heed

MONDAY, Oct. 10, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- When a hospital patient is taking antibiotics, the next person to use the same bed may face an elevated risk of infection with the dangerous germ Clostridium difficile, a new study suggests.

C. difficile, a bacterium that causes inflammation of the colon and causes life-threatening diarrhea, is found in U.S. hospitals. Scientists have known that antibiotic use can contribute to the germ's spread, but this new report says it's not just the patient taking the medication who's at risk.

Because the germ spores can persist, patients later assigned to the same hospital bed may have increased odds of getting C. difficile, researchers found.

"This study provides evidence that there is a herd effect with antibiotics," said lead researcher Dr. Daniel Freedberg, a gastroenterologist at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. "In other words, antibiotics have the potential to affect the health of people who don't themselves receive antibiotics."

A doctor who wasn't involved in the study said the findings suggest a need to improve sterilization procedures in hospitals.

"This underscores the idea that hospitals are not being sanitized enough or they can't be sanitized enough," said Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City. "There is an increased need for increased sterilization procedures between patients."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, C. difficile causes nearly half a million infections a year in the United States and 29,000 deaths. Older adults are most at risk.

In this study, researchers found that if the previous patient in the hospital bed was given antibiotics (not for C. difficile), the odds of C. difficile infection in the next patient were nearly 1 percent, compared with less than half of 1 percent if no antibiotics were given.

"Antibiotics encourage the spread of C. difficile from patients who asymptomatically carry C. difficile to patients who are C. difficile-free, even if the C. difficile-free patients do not receive any antibiotics," Freedberg said.

In patients infected by C. difficile, antibiotics may cause the germ to proliferate and add to the number of its spores shed nearby. C. difficile spores can thrive in the environment for months, the researchers noted.

In addition, antibiotics may affect good bacteria living in the gut that protect against C. difficile, Freedberg said.

The new report, published online Oct. 10 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, emphasized the need to use antibiotics judiciously.

To evaluate the risk of getting C. difficile from a hospital bed in which the prior patient had received antibiotics, Freedberg's team studied more than 100,600 patient pairs. All were in one of four New York-area hospitals from 2010 to 2015. New patients had to have spent 48 hours in a bed in which the last patient spent at least a day and had left the bed less than a week before the next occupant.

The suspected connection was borne out in 576 pairs. In those cases, the later patient developed C. difficile within two to 14 days after occupying the bed, the researchers found.

Average time to infection was around six days. And these newly infected patients were more likely to have the usual C. difficile risk factors -- older age, increased levels of the waste protein creatinine, decreased levels of the protein albumin, and past use of antibiotics.

The risk of C. difficile was 0.72 percent when the prior occupant of the hospital bed received antibiotics, compared with 0.43 percent when the prior occupant of the bed did not receive antibiotics, the researchers found.

The association was small, and the study doesn't establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. But apart from antibiotics, no other factors related to the prior bed occupants were associated with increased risk for C. difficile in subsequent patients. That remained the case after excluding nearly 1,500 patient pairs in which the prior patient recently had C. difficile, according to the study.

"I don't find this surprising. We knew that antibiotic use increases the risk of C. difficile," said Siegel.

It's another way that antibiotics aren't harmless, Siegel said. When you make the decision to give antibiotics, "you have to keep in mind that you may be letting loose a germ that is in itself an infectious risk to the hospital," he said.

---

WHO confirms 11 cholera cases in Yemen

The World Heath Organization said Tuesday it had confirmed 11 cases of cholera in Yemen's capital Sanaa, after the UN announced an outbreak of the disease last week.

"So far, we have 17 suspected cholera cases, and 11 that are confirmed," WHO expert Amro Saleh told reporters in the rebel held capital.

All confirmed cases came from one neighbourhood, Saleh said, adding that no deaths had so far been reported from the disease.

Saleh also said that "143 cases of severe diarrhoea" were admitted to hospitals in other provinces, including 49 in southwestern Taez and 42 in Hodeida, by the Red Sea.

All those cases have tested negative for cholera, according to another WHO expert present at Tuesday's press briefing.

---

Ebola drug ZMapp might not be a game-changer, study finds

ZMapp, an experimental drug that doctors thought may have helped save lives in recent high-profile Ebola cases, may not have been the key factor in survival, a new study says.

The Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,000 people and made more than 28,000 sick between 2014 and 2016.

The drug, considered “most promising,” was still in the testing phases at the time. But because it was an emergency, doctors got special permission to use it on their patients, including some treated in the United States.

The drug had showed real promise in tests on primates, but it hadn’t been fully tested on humans. Many of the infected people who got it did recover, but even at the time, doctors weren’t able to tell whether it was ZMapp that helped them survive while thousands of others died.

Now, according to a study in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, the results of a randomized controlled trial may come as a surprise to some.

Researchers tested the drug in 72 people from Africa and the United States who had Ebola infections. They found that although it was beneficial overall, ZMapp “did not meet the prespecified statistical threshold for efficacy.”

---

Efforts to beat tuberculosis fall far short, WHO warns

LONDON – Health authorities worldwide need to move much faster to prevent, detect and treat a "deadly epidemic" of tuberculosis if they are to reduce TB infections and deaths by 2030, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.

In its annual report on tackling TB, a highly contagious lung disease which kills more people each year than HIV and malaria combined, the WHO said progress had been dismal and called for "bold political commitment and increased funding".

Without it, the world would continue to chase the epidemic rather than get on top of it, it said.

---

Efforts to beat tuberculosis fall far short, WHO warns

LONDON – Health authorities worldwide need to move much faster to prevent, detect and treat a "deadly epidemic" of tuberculosis if they are to reduce TB infections and deaths by 2030, the World Health Organization warned on Thursday.

In its annual report on tackling TB, a highly contagious lung disease which kills more people each year than HIV and malaria combined, the WHO said progress had been dismal and called for "bold political commitment and increased funding".

Without it, the world would continue to chase the epidemic rather than get on top of it, it said.

There's also a Help Stop TB project on WCG...so anyone who wants to donate your computer (CPU only) power to it, link is on graphic in my signature!
;)

---

non-profit org. Play4Life in Zagreb, Croatia, EU

Florida IDs new Miami neighborhood as Zika zone

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. Health officials have identified a new Zika zone in Miami – a setback less than a month after declaring the nearby Wynwood neighborhood cleared of the virus following aggressive mosquito spraying.

Five people have been infected with Zika in a 1-square-mile area of the city just north of the Little Haiti neighborhood and about 3 miles north of Wynwood, according to a statement released Thursday by Gov. Rick Scott’s office.


Thanks KLiK.

---

Amid government silence, Venezuela's microcephaly babies struggle


GUARENAS, Venezuela – Deep inside a hilly Venezuelan slum, Ericka Torres rocks her three-month-old son Jesus to soothe his near-constant crying.

Jesus was diagnosed with microcephaly, a birth defect marked by a small head and serious developmental problems, after his mother contracted what was probably the mosquito-borne Zika virus during pregnancy in the poor city of Guarenas.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/10/17/amid-government-silence-venezuelas-microcephaly-babies-struggle.html

---

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article108783717.html

Four new mosquito-borne Zika cases in Miami-Dade County

Florida health officials on Monday reported four more mosquito-borne Zika infections in Miami-Dade County, including one case linked to the area of ongoing transmission in Miami Beach and two associated with the newly designated zone in Miami’s Little River neighborhood.

---

Zika Virus Found in Woman's Vagina for Weeks

A woman infected with Zika carried the virus in her vagina for weeks, researchers reported Tuesday.

It's yet more evidence that the virus can hang out in the human body for weeks or months after symptoms have cleared up. The findings, rushed online by the


journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, also add to evidence the virus might be commonly transmitted sexually.

That, in turn, helps explain Zika's rapid spread. Mosquitoes that carry the virus don't go more than a few hundred yards in their lives. People travel much further.

---

Ebola nurse Nina Pham close to settlement with Texas Health Resources

Attorneys for Ebola nurse Nina Pham and Texas Health Resources told a judge today that they are close to reaching a settlement, according to sources who asked not to be named.

Both sides have agreed on the terms, but no paperwork has been signed and the settlement is not final. The deal could fall through.

Pham, a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas ICU nurse, filed the lawsuit after she contracted Ebola while caring for the first person in the United States diagnosed with the disease.

Go Nina!

---

Imagine this:


Tasmanian devil milk fights superbugs

Milk from Tasmanian devils could offer up a useful weapon against antibiotic-resistant superbugs, according to Australian researchers.

The marsupial's milk contains important peptides that appear to be able to kill hard-to-treat infections, including MRSA, say the Sydney University team.

Experts believe devils evolved this cocktail to help their young grow stronger.

The scientists are looking to make new treatments that mimic the peptides.

They have scanned the devil's genetic code to find and recreate the infection-fighting compounds, called cathelicidins.

PhD student Emma Peel, who worked on the research which is published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, said they had found six important peptides.

---

Zika Testing for All Pregnant Women Who Have Been in Florida County: CDC



THURSDAY, Oct. 20, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health officials are now recommending that all pregnant women who have recently spent time in any part of Miami-Dade County in Florida be tested for Zika infection.

Previously, testing had only been urged for pregnant women who had been in areas of the county where Zika had been spreading locally. This latest advisory extends that recommendation to the entire county and covers the period going back to Aug. 1, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

http://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2016-10-20/zika-testing-for-all-pregnant-women-who-have-been-in-florida-county-cdc

---

Polio vaccine makers failing to make enough doses: WHO experts

Two companies making vaccines to help the world eradicate polio are failing to produce enough, so many countries should prepare to give lower doses to make stocks last, a group of experts has advised the World Health Organization.

With polio on the brink of eradication globally, the WHO wants to see a worldwide switch from the traditional "live" oral polio vaccine, which runs the risk of spreading the disease, to an inactivated vaccine that needs to be injected.

But WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE), which meets twice a year, said a severe shortage of inactivated vaccine means many countries should use a fractional dose, via an intra-dermal rather than intra-muscular injection, allowing each dose to go twice as far.

---

Dallas nurse who had Ebola settles lawsuit against hospital

DALLAS

Nina Pham, a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola in 2014, has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against Texas Health Resources, according to a joint statement released by both parties Monday.

“Texas Health Resources and Ms. Pham have resolved the pending lawsuit, and wish the best for each other going forward,” the statement said. “All parties have agreed the terms of the resolution are confidential and will not make additional statements or grant media interviews.”

Pham, a Fort Worth native, was working as an intensive care nurse at the Dallas hospital in 2014 when she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia. Duncan died at the hospital of the virus.

Pham and another nurse, Amber Vinson, contracted Ebola but survived.

Good News!

---

Dallas nurse who had Ebola settles lawsuit against hospital

DALLAS

Nina Pham, a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola in 2014, has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against Texas Health Resources, according to a joint statement released by both parties Monday.

“Texas Health Resources and Ms. Pham have resolved the pending lawsuit, and wish the best for each other going forward,” the statement said. “All parties have agreed the terms of the resolution are confidential and will not make additional statements or grant media interviews.”

Pham, a Fort Worth native, was working as an intensive care nurse at the Dallas hospital in 2014 when she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia. Duncan died at the hospital of the virus.

Pham and another nurse, Amber Vinson, contracted Ebola but survived.

Good News!

She's a bit of a opotunisic money grabing bit#h ain't she ??

---

Life is what you make of it :-)

When i'm good i'm very good , but when i'm bad i'm shi#eloads better ;-) In't I " buttercups " p.m.s.l at authoritie !!;-)

Dallas nurse who had Ebola settles lawsuit against hospital

DALLAS

Nina Pham, a Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola in 2014, has reached a settlement in her lawsuit against Texas Health Resources, according to a joint statement released by both parties Monday.

“Texas Health Resources and Ms. Pham have resolved the pending lawsuit, and wish the best for each other going forward,” the statement said. “All parties have agreed the terms of the resolution are confidential and will not make additional statements or grant media interviews.”

Pham, a Fort Worth native, was working as an intensive care nurse at the Dallas hospital in 2014 when she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, who contracted Ebola in Liberia. Duncan died at the hospital of the virus.

Pham and another nurse, Amber Vinson, contracted Ebola but survived.

Good News!

She's a bit of a opotunisic money grabing bit#h ain't she ??

The hospital was not prepared to deal with Ebola. The hospital also used her. She is a survivor, good for her. Glad she won her lawsuit.

---