At least one little corner of the biodiversity problem seems to be doing well: biodiversity among deadly diseases. An outbreak of Ebola disease in Uganda in 2007 has now been shown to be caused by a previously unknown variant, now called Bundibugyo ebolavirus.

According to the US News and World Report, the ongoing salmonella saintpaul outbreak is the largest food-borne disease outbreak in the history of the US.

These days, Sedlack and dozens of other Marin firefighters trained as paramedics find themselves responding to far more medical cases than any other call for service. The phenomenon is part of a nationwide trend in which the fire service has evolved into a kind of mobile emergency room.

There is no evidence of any infectious disease outbreak related to the death of a VIA train passenger en route to Toronto, says Ontario's chief medical officer of health.

New Medicaid regulations that will reduce federal funding to states will not hurt hospitals’ ability to prepare for terrorist attacks and other national emergencies, Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt told a House panel Wednesday.

In an investigation that included dozens of interviews with city officials, front-line workers and experts as well as a review of hundreds of documents including dispatch logs and 911 audiotapes, The Chronicle found that delayed emergency medical responses are the result of numerous causes, from chronic understaffing, language barriers and botched dispatches at the city's 911 call center to traffic congestion and unavailable nearby ambulances.

Every once in a while we run across introductory presentations of basic bird flu-ology we think are particularly good. This is one.

On any given day, Dr. Roy Levin might treat a patient with a sprained arm, another with stomach flu or a child suffering from a cold and high fever. He used to treat patients in a hospital emergency room. Today he is medical director of an urgent-care center in Clovis.

The reality is that the majority of the uninsured delay seeking any care until they are very ill. The overriding reason for lengthening wait times is the boarding of acute patients, sometimes for days in emergency departments, while waiting for inpatient beds on other floors.

Use the ER as a magnifying glass and you will shine a glaring light on all the big challenges in the system: the crying need for chronic-disease management; the dysfunction of primary care; the paucity of electronic health records; the shortage of health professionals, and nurses in particular; the gaping holes in community-based services (particularly for those with mental illness), and the lack of continuity of care.

Yes - John Hillery says that patients are best served by hospitals large enough to have a critical mass of expertise. No - Marie O'Connor says the closure of smaller hospitals is about medical empire building, not patient safety.

Today Microsoft unveils new web application HealthVault, a medical records manager that will let users—and their doctors—store and track personal health information online.

Swedish scientists are warning about Tamiflu in the environment because it passes through sewage treatment plants more or less unchanged.

An average of one ambulance per hour in New Jersey is being diverted to another hospital as residents increasingly seek treatment in emergency departments throughout the state, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. According to the report, ED visits in 2005 increased to 3.36 million -- a more than 25% increase since 1998.

With more ill and injured people needing emergency care but do not speak English, hospitals, clinics and rescue squads are turning to picture boards to bridge the communication gap with easily understood images.

Pandemic influenza gets its share of headlines but there are other viruses out there that also are good tabloid fodder, most notably Ebola virus which causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever, whose gruesome effects were depicted in Richard Preston's book, The Hot Zone.

We keep seeing these discussions about the probability of a pandemic next year. Sometimes they center on the "overdue" for a pandemic notion, sometimes on using available data to give an estimate of the rough chances of a pandemic.

As more and more people take their meals already prepared ("ready to eat" or RTE) from supermarkets and delicatessens, so will more and more people take their pathogens the same way.

The first human trial of a DNA vaccine designed to prevent H5N1 avian influenza infection began recently, when the vaccine was administered to the first volunteer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, MD.

QUEENSLAND public hospitals are free to suspend elective surgery to relieve pressure on their emergency departments, Health Minister Stephen Robertson says.

It's mid summer, so it's time to drag out what we say each summer about spraying for West Nile Virus.

Now there is open talk about the need and potential efficacy of non pharmaceutical interventions, or as the jargon has it now, "community mitigation guidelines."

The first of the putative "universal" vaccines against influenza A is entering Phase I (small scale safety and efficacy) testing. Manufactured by UK vaccine company Acambis, the vaccine is designed to protect against a wide range of influenza A viruses of many subtypes and many strains.

The incidence of serious strep infections has risen dramatically in the last three decades, and this increase is largely attributed to the spread around the globe of a single strain of strep known as the invasive M1T1 clone.

Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and biodefense critic said today the power loss last month at the CDC's new high-security research lab in Atlanta could have exposed researchers to dangerous diseases.

If you aren't worried about bird flu you probably aren't in the poultry business. The pandemic that has yet to materialize for humans is already here for birds, where it is called a panzootic.

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

Google has created a health care advisory group of prominent medical and health care experts -- many with an interest in speeding up the use of technology in health care delivery, including online medical searches and sharing of health information.

Late last month, the AMA began publishing a new journal entitled, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

The Council of General Practitioners says the Western Australian Health Department should have issued its flu warning to parents earlier than yesterday afternoon to give hospitals and doctors a chance to cope with demand.

The globe-trotting American lawyer who caused an international health scare by traveling while infected with tuberculosis has a less severe form of the disease than previously diagnosed, a federal health official said Tuesday.

The World Health Organization has issued new rules to limit the international spread of epidemics and other public health emergencies.