More swine flu vaccine will soon be on its way to Douglas County and three clinics are planned this week to provide the vaccine to those who are most at risk of contracting swine flu, officially known as the H1N1 influenza.
As of Thursday, 8,100 doses of H1N1 vaccine have arrived in Douglas County, according to a news release. Douglas County Public Health expects another 3,100 doses to arrive sometime in the next week. The vaccine will be made available to registered H1N1 influenza providers and to people who are at greatest risk of contracting swine flu at three planned clinics. The priority groups, in no particular order: Those ages six months to 24 years old; pregnant women; people caring for, or living with, infants who are younger than six months of age; people from the ages of 25 to 64 who have health conditions that may put them at risk for complications from influenza — such as asthma, immune deficiencies, lung or heart disease and diabetes; health care workers and emergency medical service providers; law enforcement officers and firefighters who have frequent physical contact with the public as a part of their usual work; correction personnel in state prisons, local jails and juvenile correctional facilities who come into contact with adult or juvenile offenders; and public safety emergency telecommunications workers, including 911 call-takers and dispatchers.
The Roseburg Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, State Department of Corrections, Oregon National Guard, Oregon State Hospital and Oregon Youth Authority receive their own H1N1 vaccine allocations to vaccinate their respective populations.H1N1 flu symptoms are similar to the symptoms of seasonal flu. They include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, runny or stuffy nose, headache, nausea, chills and fatigue. Some people have reported diarrhea and vomiting due to H1N1 flu.
Most people will recover on their own after a week or so of illness and don't need to see a doctor, the release said. In other cases, though, it might be necessary to seek medical attention.
People who have severe illness or are at high risk for flu complications should contact their health care providers, the release said. People who don't have access to health care may call the Oregon Flu Hotline at 1-800-978-3040 and talk with a health information specialist.
According to the CDC, people should only seek care in the emergency room if they are very sick, the release said. If you have the emergency warning signs of flu sickness, that's when you should go to the emergency room.
For more information, visit the following — Oregon Flu Web site, www.flu.oregon.gov or the county Health Department Web site, www.co.douglas.or.us/health — or call the Health Department Flu Info Line at 464-3815.
Showing posts with label illness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illness. Show all posts
Monday, November 9, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
CDC Leery of Estimates About Swine Flu's Toll
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/26/health/AP-US-MED-Swine-Flu.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
Filed at 4:38 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government health officials are urging people not to panic over estimates of 90,000 people dying from swine flu this fall.
''Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change,'' Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.
While the swine flu seems quite easy to catch, it so far hasn't been more deadly than the flu strains seen every fall and winter -- many people have only mild illness. And close genetic tracking of the new virus as it circled the globe over the last five months so far has shown no sign that it's mutating to become more virulent.
Still, the CDC has been preparing for a worst-case flu season as a precaution -- in July working from an estimate slightly more grim than one that made headlines this week -- to make sure that if the virus suddenly worsened or vaccination plans fell through, health authorities would know how to react.
On Monday the White House released a report from a group of presidential advisers that included a scenario where anywhere from 30 percent to half of the population could catch what doctors call the ''2009 H1N1'' flu, and death possibilities ranged from 30,000 to 90,000. In a regular flu season, up to 20 percent of the population is infected and 36,000 die.
''We don't think that's the most likely scenario,'' CDC flu specialist Dr. Anne Schuchat said of the presidential advisers' high-end tally.
What's really expected this year? CDC won't speculate, finding a numbers game pointless as it tries to balance getting a largely complacent public to listen to its flu instructions without hyping the threat.
Along with how the virus itself continues to act, the ultimate toll depends on such things as vaccinations beginning as planned -- currently set for mid-October -- and whether the people who need them most get them. CDC also is working to help hospitals keep the not-so-sick from crowding emergency rooms and to properly target anti-flu drugs to the most vulnerable.
What is likely: A busy flu season that starts earlier than usual, Schuchat told The Associated Press. This new H1N1 strain never went away over the summer, infecting children at summer camps in particular. Already clusters of illnesses are being reported at some schools and colleges around the country,
Filed at 4:38 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Government health officials are urging people not to panic over estimates of 90,000 people dying from swine flu this fall.
''Everything we've seen in the U.S. and everything we've seen around the world suggests we won't see that kind of number if the virus doesn't change,'' Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a C-SPAN interview taped Wednesday.
While the swine flu seems quite easy to catch, it so far hasn't been more deadly than the flu strains seen every fall and winter -- many people have only mild illness. And close genetic tracking of the new virus as it circled the globe over the last five months so far has shown no sign that it's mutating to become more virulent.
Still, the CDC has been preparing for a worst-case flu season as a precaution -- in July working from an estimate slightly more grim than one that made headlines this week -- to make sure that if the virus suddenly worsened or vaccination plans fell through, health authorities would know how to react.
On Monday the White House released a report from a group of presidential advisers that included a scenario where anywhere from 30 percent to half of the population could catch what doctors call the ''2009 H1N1'' flu, and death possibilities ranged from 30,000 to 90,000. In a regular flu season, up to 20 percent of the population is infected and 36,000 die.
''We don't think that's the most likely scenario,'' CDC flu specialist Dr. Anne Schuchat said of the presidential advisers' high-end tally.
What's really expected this year? CDC won't speculate, finding a numbers game pointless as it tries to balance getting a largely complacent public to listen to its flu instructions without hyping the threat.
Along with how the virus itself continues to act, the ultimate toll depends on such things as vaccinations beginning as planned -- currently set for mid-October -- and whether the people who need them most get them. CDC also is working to help hospitals keep the not-so-sick from crowding emergency rooms and to properly target anti-flu drugs to the most vulnerable.
What is likely: A busy flu season that starts earlier than usual, Schuchat told The Associated Press. This new H1N1 strain never went away over the summer, infecting children at summer camps in particular. Already clusters of illnesses are being reported at some schools and colleges around the country,
Monday, June 1, 2009
Gravest Challenge of the 21st Century May Be Disease
Overcrowding and Lack of Sanitary Conditions Could Contribute to Future Global Pandemic
By ALEXA DANNER
May 30, 2009—
Earthquakes and hurricanes can devastate an entire country in just moments. Global warming could gradually raise sea levels, wreaking havoc on the climate and on people's way of life.
And with these potential disasters may come an even more insidious menace, one that could silently sneak up on a population and has the potential to kill thousands, even millions of people in a single strike: disease.
"One of the real challenges we may face in the future is a new disease that sweeps across the planet -- because we're all so tightly connected together," says Thomas Homer Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."
Watch "Earth 2100," a two-hour television event, Tuesday, June 2, at 9 p.m. ET.
The stage has already been set for life-threatening illnesses to pass effortlessly across international borders, without discriminating between old and young, male or female. Our modern lifestyles and high volume of global air travel enable rapid and efficient dissemination of germs and viruses. Now a changing climate may be contributing to the spread of disease as well.
Illnesses like malaria, dengue fever and the lesser-known Chickengunya, a mosquito-transmitted virus, have already reached beyond the tropical regions where they are normally confined into more temperate zones. In today's world, it is difficult to predict the journey a contagious illness will take or how many people may become sick. Swine flu, thought to have originated in Mexico, has infected people across the world.
"People can be persistently infected with certain types of viruses and bacteria and show no signs of disease," says Dr. Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and neurology at Columbia University. "But they can also be capable of transmitting infection with terrible consequences to people who've not seen it before."
In developing countries, overcrowding in large cities, underfunded health-care systems and lack of sanitary conditions set the stage for disease to fester. Each year, millions of people die from diseases related to unclean water, such as cholera and guinea worm. These deaths are largely preventable, but if drastic measures aren't taken to clean up the world's water supplies, the problem will only get worse.
Diseases Ravage Crops and Food Supply
Population size also plays a role. As the number of people on the planet grows, so does incidence of overcrowding and poverty, which are directly linked to rising rates of infectious disease.
"When people are hungry and malnourished, they are clearly more susceptible to infections," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But diseases don't just affect people. They can also ravage crops and food supplies, wiping out the means of survival for entire population. And our reliance on a system of agriculture that requires food to travel great distances before ending up on our dinner plates renders us extremely vulnerable to diseases caused by food contamination.
"Any contamination which is present in meats or poultry, fish or vegetables or fruits, winds up being distributed to tens of thousands of people," says Dr. Lipkin. "We are very vulnerable through our food distribution networks to the emergence of new or known pathogens."
And what about pathogens that are spread intentionally? The threat of bioterrorism looms large in the 21st century. Scientists say that infectious agents such as anthrax or small pox could be disseminated easily -- and cheaply -- if they got into the wrong hands, causing massive outbreaks of disease.
One of the compounding worries is that our widespread use of antibiotics has degraded our natural ability to fend off certain bacteria and also made possible the evolution of medicine-resistant bugs.
"Some of the simple antibiotics we've had for treatment of common infections no longer work," says Dr. Lipkin. "We've been slow to respond to this challenge."
All of these factors make it possible for some sort of global pandemic to sweep the globe, an event that could potentially kill millions of people, devastate economies and cause worldwide panic. And scientists warn that unless we act to address some or all of the risk factors, such a pandemic could occur in the 21st century.
The good news? New diseases are constantly emerging, and so far, modern medicine has been able to keep up.
"Infectious diseases have been around forever, and they will continue to be around," says Dr. Fauci.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100/story?id=7715902&page=1
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures
By ALEXA DANNER
May 30, 2009—
Earthquakes and hurricanes can devastate an entire country in just moments. Global warming could gradually raise sea levels, wreaking havoc on the climate and on people's way of life.
And with these potential disasters may come an even more insidious menace, one that could silently sneak up on a population and has the potential to kill thousands, even millions of people in a single strike: disease.
"One of the real challenges we may face in the future is a new disease that sweeps across the planet -- because we're all so tightly connected together," says Thomas Homer Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."
Watch "Earth 2100," a two-hour television event, Tuesday, June 2, at 9 p.m. ET.
The stage has already been set for life-threatening illnesses to pass effortlessly across international borders, without discriminating between old and young, male or female. Our modern lifestyles and high volume of global air travel enable rapid and efficient dissemination of germs and viruses. Now a changing climate may be contributing to the spread of disease as well.
Illnesses like malaria, dengue fever and the lesser-known Chickengunya, a mosquito-transmitted virus, have already reached beyond the tropical regions where they are normally confined into more temperate zones. In today's world, it is difficult to predict the journey a contagious illness will take or how many people may become sick. Swine flu, thought to have originated in Mexico, has infected people across the world.
"People can be persistently infected with certain types of viruses and bacteria and show no signs of disease," says Dr. Ian Lipkin, professor of epidemiology and neurology at Columbia University. "But they can also be capable of transmitting infection with terrible consequences to people who've not seen it before."
In developing countries, overcrowding in large cities, underfunded health-care systems and lack of sanitary conditions set the stage for disease to fester. Each year, millions of people die from diseases related to unclean water, such as cholera and guinea worm. These deaths are largely preventable, but if drastic measures aren't taken to clean up the world's water supplies, the problem will only get worse.
Diseases Ravage Crops and Food Supply
Population size also plays a role. As the number of people on the planet grows, so does incidence of overcrowding and poverty, which are directly linked to rising rates of infectious disease.
"When people are hungry and malnourished, they are clearly more susceptible to infections," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
But diseases don't just affect people. They can also ravage crops and food supplies, wiping out the means of survival for entire population. And our reliance on a system of agriculture that requires food to travel great distances before ending up on our dinner plates renders us extremely vulnerable to diseases caused by food contamination.
"Any contamination which is present in meats or poultry, fish or vegetables or fruits, winds up being distributed to tens of thousands of people," says Dr. Lipkin. "We are very vulnerable through our food distribution networks to the emergence of new or known pathogens."
And what about pathogens that are spread intentionally? The threat of bioterrorism looms large in the 21st century. Scientists say that infectious agents such as anthrax or small pox could be disseminated easily -- and cheaply -- if they got into the wrong hands, causing massive outbreaks of disease.
One of the compounding worries is that our widespread use of antibiotics has degraded our natural ability to fend off certain bacteria and also made possible the evolution of medicine-resistant bugs.
"Some of the simple antibiotics we've had for treatment of common infections no longer work," says Dr. Lipkin. "We've been slow to respond to this challenge."
All of these factors make it possible for some sort of global pandemic to sweep the globe, an event that could potentially kill millions of people, devastate economies and cause worldwide panic. And scientists warn that unless we act to address some or all of the risk factors, such a pandemic could occur in the 21st century.
The good news? New diseases are constantly emerging, and so far, modern medicine has been able to keep up.
"Infectious diseases have been around forever, and they will continue to be around," says Dr. Fauci.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Earth2100/story?id=7715902&page=1
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures
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