So far this week, for National Public Health Week, faculty bloggers from Drexel’s School of Public Health have discussed issues of health at home and safety at school. Today’s theme is wellness at work, and two Drexel public health students have taken on the subject.

Mary Figgatt, a student pursuing a master’s degree in public health, writes about workplace safety, and helping employers adopt a safety-focused culture to protect the health of employees:

Setting the “tone” in the office can really make or break the business. If it’s a carefree, or careless environment, who’s going to double or triple check that you have a clear path in front of the forklift carrying six hundred pounds of equipment. So, how can we change the way the management views safety and health in the workplace? Well, we are working on it.

Arvin Magusara, a student in the Executive MPH program, writes about the impact of workplace wellness programs – and what factors give them the greatest likelihood of success:

In recent years, workplace wellness programs have gained popularity among employers due to noticeable increases in productivity, reduction of stress, and reduction of absenteeism. This return on investment (ROI) has also had a positive impact on bottom lines with many companies/organizations reporting significant reduction of healthcare costs.

A cherry on the workplace wellness sundae, today: Drexel University was just named one of the healthiest employers in Philadelphia by the Philadelphia Business Journal for the “A Healthier U” program and other efforts to promote employees’ good health. Read more about that here.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, speaking at Drexel University about campus safety and preparedness

Safety in schools is the theme of the day, especially here at Drexel. This is a story with two parts:

On our campus today, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano announced a Campus Resilience Pilot Program that the Department of Homeland Security will coordinate for colleges to develop and share effective strategies to prepare, respond, and recover from crisis and emergency situations. Drexel is one of the seven colleges and universities across the country to participate in the pilot program.

And, as the daily theme of National Public Health Week, “Safe Schools” inspired Dr. Sandra Bloom, an associate professor in Drexel’s School of Public Health, to look beyond the obvious forms of physical protection from criminal activity and physical violence, in her blog post today.

What do these two things have in common? It’s about community.

Dr. Sandra Bloom, an associate professor in the Drexel University School of Public Health and founder of the Sanctuary Model®

In her blog post, Bloom points out that trauma and its psychological and social effects are an important consideration in making schools and other places safe. Making students truly safe means creating a nonviolent school culture that places a deep value on multiple categories of safety. And that culture arises from a committed community:

As anyone knows who has been a child, there are many different ways to hurt a person that usually predate the actual emergence of physical violence. Most bullying, cyber-bullying, gossiping, spreading of rumors, disrespectful and insulting attitudes or behaviors are not physically violent. But they certainly are psychologically, socially, and morally violent. I have been a part of creating safe environments for children, families and adults – including within schools – for over three decades and what we know is that every school is a community and the only solution to violence is actively create and sustain a nonviolent school culture.

In her remarks at Drexel, Secretary Napolitano echoed that idea.

“Strong, resilient communities, including academic communities such as Drexel,” Secretary Napolitano said, are among the strongest resources we have to enhance safety. Strong communities aid in prevention of crisis and emergency scenarios, and they promote resilience after those emergencies that do occur.

More information about Secretary Napolitano’s visit to Drexel and the announcement of the Department of Homeland Security Campus Resilience Pilot Project is available here.

Learn more about Dr. Sandra Bloom and her work with promoting safe schools in Philadelphia, here.

Furthermore, smartphones are not the most widely used mobile phone among everyday citizens yet but they are being implemented widely in the areas of marketing, e-commerce and are especially utilized in improving healthcare procedures and care quality. In such cases,

An article by the independent web-research institute, Baymard, “8 Limitations When Designing for Mobile” by Jamie Appleseed lists the top 8 of these issues:

• No Hover State: This means that web pages with numerous features and content can make navigation difficult. Appleseed outlines two distinct features, visibility and conventionality as other factors that complicate Internet use.

• Slow and Error-Prone Typing: This can have serious implications especially in terms of hospital and health use. Data errors in e-commerce as well can be disastrous especially if handing significant sums of money

• Less Context: Smaller screens and visibility cause similar issues to typing as discussed above. When the full typed text of an email or post for example cannot be viewed as one piece this increases the likelihood of errors.

• Inaccurate Clicks: slow hardware, lack of a right-click option and lack of a hover state can cause inaccurate clicks which all affect user-friendliness.

• Poor Connectivity: Regions where Internet connectivity is difficult even with laptops and computers, connecting with a mobile device becomes even less reliable. Slow download speeds are also a major factor in use and effectiveness of mobile phones as ICTs. Without Internet connectivity, they lose their basic purpose.

• Slow Hardware: Similar to poor connectivity above, this is another hassle. Poor hardware quality may also mean a shorter lifespan of the tech device.

• Usage Situation: If smartphones are used in more serious situations such as business or healthcare, there are interrupting factors such as push notifications, calls, texts, and application notifications that distract from Internet use.

• No Right-Click: Many mac users may be used to the concept of no direct right-click (macs can still right-click by control + click) however, no right-click capabilities at all significantly slow down time spent in accessing tools and further internet features among other limited capabilities.

Many of these issues such as the increased likelihood of errors, lack of accurate clicking and poor connectivity may seem trivial as many experience them on a semi-regular basis. When used in conjunction with laptops, computers, iPads, etc. limitations of the iPhone for example seem like obvious, common knowledge. As students at a private university, our perspective and background is very different from those who may use smartphones as their sole technology tool. One of the biggest factors is discouragement from use. These types of interruptions and confinements on quality of use can discourage users from trying or reaching out to other forms of technology as well.

Overall, Internet use is a valuable factor of mobile phone use but their capabilities need to be better understood before being hailed as the next big thing in ICT4D.

Resources: Baymard Institute “8 Limitations When Designing for Mobile”

Chemical & Engineering News

Dust photo by Stilfehler (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Dr. Anneclaire De Roos, an associate professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, penned a blog post about dust bunnies on the daily theme of “Healthy Homes” for the School’s week-long series of public health blogging during National Public Health Week:

Dr. Anneclaire De Roos, an associate professor in the Drexel University School of Public Health

When I think about this National Public Health Week’s topic – ‘Healthy Homes’ – what immediately comes to mind are themes like injury, fire safety, lead, radon, mold, and secondhand smoke. Most people’s thoughts about healthy homes probably don’t include dust.  How harmful can dust bunnies be?  Actually, we’ve long known that people with asthma and allergies are sensitive to dust mites.  And now there is ever-increasing documentation of a different type of health hazard from house dust – exposure to a diverse mix of pollutants including metals, pesticides, dioxins, flame retardants such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and phthalates.

These chemicals adhere to dust particles and blow into your household after being stirred up by traffic, are released from your sofa or appliances as they degrade over time, are deposited from disintegrating home building materials, and are introduced from cigarette smoking or pesticide applications indoors. Some of the pollutants are known to cause adverse health effects, such as lead and dioxins.  Others, including PBDE and phthalates, are not as well understood, although there is emerging evidence that these chemicals cause hormonal changes and may be particularly damaging when exposure happens during pregnancy or childhood.

The trouble arises because people inadvertently swallow small amounts of dust during their normal daily activities like eating, drinking, and breathing.  For example, it’s well known that exposure to organochlorines, such as dioxins, comes from the diet – from fatty foods including fish, meat, and dairy.  However, we are now learning that a major source of our exposure also comes from ingestion of dust, in amounts that rival dietary exposures.  This is an especially important pathway of exposure for small children, who crawl on the floor and explore their environment using hand-to-mouth behavior.  House cats also ingest very high amounts of house dust through self-grooming.  In fact, studies in the US and Europe have found that house cats had 50 times higher blood levels of PBDEs than people.

Aside from not breathing or swallowing, or fruitlessly trying to change the behaviors of your toddler or pet, what can be done to reduce exposure to pollutants from household dust?

Get the tips and the full post by De Roos: What’s Lurking Beneath Your Sofa in Your (Otherwise) Healthy Home

De Roos is new to Drexel’s faculty this year. Her research focuses on chemical exposures, including pesticides and solvents, and their relationship to cancer. She has also recently begun studying autoimmune disorders and other types of reactions to chemicals, including allergic responses. Read more about De Roos here.

New strain of bird flu which has never been seen in humans before kills two people in China

• Victims were infected in Shanghai and were aged 87 and 27
• Third person is critically ill in hospital after contracting virus in nearby province

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 06:12 EST, 31 March 2013 | UPDATED: 06:33 EST, 31 March 2013

Two people in China have died from a strain of the bird flu virus never previously passed to humans.

The victims, two men aged 87 and 27, became sick in Shanghai, one of the country’s largest cities, in late February and died earlier this month.

Another woman in nearby Anhui province also contracted the virus in March and is in a critical condition.

Deadly: A new strain of avian flu has killed two people in China. The disease spreads easily among birds and is prevalent in south east Asia but Britain was hit by an outbreak in 2007

Worry: The two victims were infected in the city of Shanghai, one of the biggest in China

The strain of the bird flu virus found in all three people was identified as H7N9, which had not been transmitted to humans before, according the Chinese National Health and Family Planning Commission.

BIRD FLU: THE DISEASE THAT COULD KILL MILLIONS

The first birds were infected in 1996, while the disease spread to a humans for the first time in Hong Kong a year later.

It began to move throughout Asia before cases were later found in Europe

Experts have warned the high contagious disease is the world’s biggest pandemic threat and could kill between 5 million and 150 million people.

The disease is expected to continue mutating within birds but has largely been brought under control in Asia due to vaccination programmes.

Seventeen governments around the world are preparing vaccines to combat a pandemic.

The victims showed symptoms of fever and coughs that later developed into pneumonia.

It is still unclear they were infected.

The World Health Organization says it is ‘closely monitoring the situation’ in China, regional agency spokesman Timothy O’Leary said in Manila, Philippines, and said the latest strain was not contagious.

‘There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low,” O’Leary said.

While WHO is confident the latest strain will not easily spread -  no symptoms have been reported in any people who had been in contact with the victims -  the deaths will reignite fears over the disease.

The most common strain of bird flu, H5N1, found mainly in south east Asia, is highly contagious among birds and can spread to humans.

Tens of millions of birds have been culled to stop the spread, which has been brought under control by animal vaccination programmes.

The World Health Organisation says there have been 566 confirmed human cases of H5N1 since 2003 and 322 deaths.

Governments around the world are pumping millions of pounds into developing vaccines in the scenario of a pandemic.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2301885/New-strain-bird-flu-seen-humans-kills-people-China.html#ixzz2P8kmFPia

Big headlines today state the obvious: Texting while driving is dangerous, practically everyone knows it, and a lot of people do it anyway.

That’s the widely reported finding of a new AT&T survey about texting while driving: More than 98 percent of adult drivers know it’s unsafe, but almost half of them admitted to doing it anyway.

Some drivers may try to rationalize that they put the phone away under tough driving conditions, when the road truly demands their full attention – complex traffic patterns, winding or slippery roads, highway speeds – but is that enough to reduce the danger?

A recent Drexel University study suggests that even under the simplest driving conditions, texting is still unsafe.

The title says it all: “Driver Performance While Texting: Even a Little is Too Much.”

Dr. Maria Schultheis works with a student volunteer using a virtual reality driving simulation in her lab at Drexel University. Credit: Bruce Pinchbeck

The study, led by psychology graduate student Joshua McKeever and co-authored with his advisor, Dr. Maria Schultheis, an associate professor, used a virtual reality driving simulation setup to test driving behavior under controlled conditions.

Unlike most studies that use virtual-reality simulation for driving, this one didn’t ramp up the difficulty settings. The young adult participants practiced driving through a simulated easy route with minimal demands or distractions. The study authors noted that, even compared to real-world driving, the conditions they simulated were “considerably easier and simpler.”

After some practice driving and a baseline drive, they were asked to perform “distraction” tasks along the way, either texting or tuning the car radio.

Even under the simple simulated driving conditions, performing a task such as texting while driving was associated with greater lane deviation – a danger sign of driver distraction.

Plus, the texting tasks took drivers almost twice as long to complete compared to the radio tuning task — meaning drivers who are texting are distracted for a longer time.

The study was small, but Schultheis pointed out that they found interesting differences in the type of phones participants used, too. (All participants used their own cell phones in the experiment.) The texting task took longer on touchscreen phones than on some other types of phones – again extending the duration of time over which drivers are distracted. What happens if people continue texting while driving despite known risks, as touchscreen phones become more and more popular?

Citation:

McKeever J.D., Schultheis M.T., Padmanaban V. & Blasco A. (2013). Driver Performance While Texting: Even a Little is Too Much, Traffic Injury Prevention, 14 (2) 132-137. DOI: 10.1080/15389588.2012.699695

Match Day is held in the spring of each year, and is the big day when fourth-year medical students “match” into their intern year and residency programs. For the Harry Potter fans, it’s like a gigantic Sorting Hat for all graduating medical students. On Monday of this week, students were told if they Matched, but would not find out until noon on Friday where they would be going. This is, understandably, a huge deal. Residency is usually a minimum of 3 years long, but for some specialties, such as some surgery residencies, can be as long as 7 years–and if they want to go on to complete a fellowship, tack on another 3 years or more.

Last year was the first year I ever got to actually be present during a Match Day celebration. It is quite the party! Family, friends, smiles and cheers… it’s a wonderful ceremony at this particular school.

This week has been a rough one for me. I knew quite a few medical students that would graduate this year, as I would have graduated this year if I would have been pulled off the waitlist the first year I applied. I feel so incredibly old. In some alternate dimension, maybe I am graduating and going into my intern year. (I don’t really think all that theoretical physics mumbo jumbo has any merit, but still.) Instead, I’m just now going to be starting on the long journey to (hopefully!) having a wonderfully joyous Match Day, only four years from now. I do feel a bit bitter and jaded over the whole thing–when your dream is so close you can taste it, and it doesn’t happen… and today having it thrown in your face (granted, it was my choice to attend)… didn’t have me thinking very good thoughts about myself, I confess.

Some of my future classmates already make me feel so old. One of them was talking about getting ‘crunk’ the other day (crazy + drunk). I thought that term went out of style in the early 2000′s. I mean, seriously? I forget how young some of these people are sometimes. Never held a real job, fresh out of undergrad. Oh my. I wonder if I’ll be able to fit in and make friends. Guess we’ll see.

Anyway, back to the Match Day celebrations. There were lots of BIG smiles, lots of family, tears of joy, students literally squealing, crying, and jumping for joy when they opened their letters and announced to everyone where they’d be spending several years of their lives. A girl that I went to college with–a tiny little no-name school–matched into Forensic Pathology at Yale. Pretty impressive! (Granted, I know nothing about the competitiveness of Forensic Pathology.) There were a ton of people who matched into pediatrics or combined pediatrics programs; I was pretty surprised there were so many! Overall, it was a really beautiful day. The energy in the room was palpable, and I couldn’t help being all smiles myself. It’s no secret that medical school is a long, hard four years that can put strain on the students and their family and friends; seeing the end result, and seeing everyone so incredibly happy over those results, really said a lot to me. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

One thing that encouraged me was seeing so many babies at Match Day; kids under two years old that belonged to the med students. I doubt that we’ll wait til I’m out of medical school to start our family, and I’ve been pretty nervous wondering when in the long four years would be a “good” time to start trying. Seeing so many little ones, some only a couple weeks old, is making me feel less anxious about that part of life during medical school.

It really was a truly good day, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to be present for another Match Day, especially when I knew so many people who got good news. For now though, I’m closer to making my final decision about which school to attend, and making plans on when to see family in friends before the move, checking into everything I’ll need to do before then, like setting up a new bank account, letting our apartment management know that we’ll be moving. It’s getting closer to the beginning of my four years of this particular type of stress and strain, but I hope I get to keep this image in my mind when days are tough: a joyous Match Day.

You won’t bee-lieve it! Could manuka honey beat drug-resistant superbugs?

By Nick Mcdermott

PUBLISHED: 20:53 EST, 15 March 2013 | UPDATED: 05:55 EST, 17 March 2013

Strong stuff: Manuka honey could fight drug-resistant superbugs

It is a natural medicine used for thousands of years to clean wounds and fight bacteria.

Now, however, honey could hold the key to combating the very modern threat of drug-resistant superbugs.

A study has shown that manuka honey can fight back on two fronts. Not only can it help to kill MRSA and other superbugs, it can also prevent bacteria from becoming resistant to antibiotics.

The danger of the rise of bugs which do not succumb to drugs was outlined this month by the Chief Medical Officer.

Professor Dame Sally Davies described it as a ‘ticking timebomb’ which could leave millions vulnerable to untreatable germs within a generation.

But a study in Australia offers a solution. At the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), tests were carried out on manuka, kanuka and clover honeys to find which was best at treating bacteria commonly found in chronic skin wounds

Researchers looked at key ingredients known to inhibit bacterial growth.

The best at doing this was Comvita medical-grade manuka honey, made by bees foraging on New Zealand’s manuka trees.

When combined with common antibiotics, the treatment hampered the spread of bacteria on wounds.

Crucially, scientists found the honey prevented the bugs from developing any resistance to the antibiotic.

ANCIENT REMEDY

 

• Apitherapy, the use of honey as a medicine, has been practised since the  times of Ancient Greece (2,000BC – 600AD)

• Honey from the manuka, an evergreen shrub originating from New Zealand, was used by Maoris and settlers as medicine

• The honey has an anti-bacterial level four times greater than standard antiseptic

• It is used to clean wounds, heal  stomach ulcers and treat eczema, acne and insect stings

Professor Liz Harry, of UTS, said: ‘Manuka honey should be used as a first resort for wound treatment, rather than the last resort, as it so often is.’
The research, in the journal PLOS ONE, follows a previous study which found that the honey was effective against more than 80 types of bacteria, including MRSA.

Commercial honey bought at shops is not suitable as it needs to be sterilised to make it medical grade.

Infections are becoming more difficult to defeat but no new class of antibiotic has been discovered since the 1980s.

It follows a previous study that found manuka honey is effective against more than 80 different types of bacteria, including hospital superbug MRSA.

Professor Liz Harry at UTS said: ‘We have shown bacteria do not become resistant to honey in the laboratory. Consistent with these facts, we also found that if MRSA were treated with just rifampicin [antibiotic], the superbug became resistant very quickly,’ she said.

‘However, when manuka honey  and rifampicin are used in combination to treat MRSA, rifampicin-resistant MRSA did not emerge. In other words, honey somehow prevents the emergence of rifampicin-resistant MRSA – this is a hugely important finding.’

With overuse of antibiotics partly blamed for the increase in resistant superbugs, GPs will be asked to prescribe fewer antibiotics to patients.
And while infections are becoming increasingly difficult to beat, no new class of antibiotic has been discovered since the 1980s.

Dr Harry added: ‘With the existence now of bacteria that are resistant to all available antibiotics, and the death of new antibiotics on the market, manuka honey should be used as a first resort for wound treatment, rather than the last resort as it so often does.

‘What we need is an acceptance by society that antibiotics are not going to provide all that we hoped for when they were discovered in the 1940s; and that we need to start getting very serious about using alternatives to this, or use honey in addition to them.’

While all types of honey have some antibacterial properties, the ingredients of manuka honey make it particularly powerful.

It is possible to buy dressings that already contain the honey, as well apply honey directly to bandages and other dressings.

However, supermarket honey will not do.  Any honey used be sterilised to make it of medical grade.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2294229/You-wont-bee-lieve-Could-manuka-honey-beat-drug-resistant-superbugs.html#ixzz2Nr7BQBye

A small company, Siga Technologies, developed the drug in recent years. Whether the $463 million order is a boondoggle or a bargain depends on which expert is talking. The deal will transform the finances of Siga, which is controlled by Ronald O. Perelman, a billionaire financier, philanthropist and takeover specialist.

Smallpox was eradicated by 1980, and the only known remaining virus is in government laboratories in the United States and Russia. But there have long been rumors of renegade stocks that could be sprayed in airports or sports stadiums. Experts say the virus could also be re-engineered into existence in a sophisticated genetics lab.

As part of its efforts to prepare for a possible bioterrorism attack, the government is paying more than $200 for each course of treatment.

Siga argues that the price is a fair return on years of investment. And Robin Robinson, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, the overseer of the contract for the drug, Arestvyr, defended the size of the order and the price paid. He said that two million doses was the amount analysts predicted would be needed to contain a smallpox outbreak in a large city and that the whole country would require 12 million, along with vaccines.

The price, he said, was arrived at through federal purchasing guidelines and was “fair and reasonable” compared with the price of other commercial antiviral drugs, which he said ranged from $108 to $7,364.

But when stockpiling a smallpox drug was first proposed in 2001 after the Sept. 11 and anthrax attacks, it was expected to cost only $5 to $10 per course, said Dr. Donald A. Henderson, who led a government advisory panel on biodefense in the wake of those attacks. Dr. Henderson was a leader in the eradication of smallpox in the 1960s and is now at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Dr. Richard H. Ebright, a bioweapons expert at Rutgers University, said there was little need for so much Arestvyr since the country has raised its stockpile of smallpox vaccine to 300 million doses now, up from only 15 million in 2001.

“Is it appropriate to stockpile it? Absolutely,” he said. “Is it appropriate to stockpile two million doses? Absolutely not. Twenty thousand seems like the right number.”

Vaccines are normally given before an infection to prevent a disease, while antivirals like Arestvyr are given after virus infections, to treat them. Smallpox has such a long incubation period that the vaccine can prevent disease even if it is given as late as three days after infection. Arestvyr may also prevent infection if given early enough, but that has not been proven.

Dr. Eric A. Rose, the president of Siga and a vice president of Mr. Perelman’s holding company, MacAndrews & Forbes, acknowledged that the drug cost little to make, but said the price being charged for a patented drug was a bargain compared with AIDS antiretrovirals that cost $20,000 a year and cancer drugs that cost more than $100,000 a year.

Asked about the size of the purchase, he compared it with a flu drug. “There are 80 million courses of Tamiflu in the strategic national stockpile,” he said. “Smallpox is just as contagious and has 30 times the mortality. By measures like that, I’d say 2 million is on the low end.”

He also said that Mr. Perelman had invested $80 million in the company through years of research with no sales. Without a profit potential, no company would take up smallpox, Ebola and other lethal but very rare diseases, he said.

And Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse, who was formerly head of pandemic planning for the New York City health department and is now Siga’s medical policy director, said that plans calling for tens of million Americans to be vaccinated within days of a major smallpox outbreak were unrealistic and that Arestvyr could save lives.

Arestvyr — which until November was known as ST-246 or tecovirimat — prevents the virus from forming the double outer envelope that lets it break out of the first cells it infects and spread throughout the body. A 14-day course can be taken in combination with smallpox vaccine, offering double protection, which Dr. Henderson called “quite amazing.”

Arestvyr is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration except for use in emergencies.

It has never been tested on smallpox in humans because the disease was eradicated. However, it has prevented death in dozens of monkeys injected with what would normally have been lethal doses of smallpox or a related virus, monkey pox.

It also appears to have helped several humans suffering from potentially lethal reactions to smallpox vaccine, which is itself a live smallpox-related virus but is normally harmless. They included a child near death after catching his father’s vaccination virus, a soldier vaccinated just before discovering he had leukemia, and a woman whose immune system was suppressed by steroids and who was infected by touching bait meant for raccoons that contained a combined rabies/smallpox vaccine.

However, those patients were also given immune globulin, other drugs and hospital care, so it is hard to know exactly what worked.

Bio-terrorism experts say the need for Arestvyr has declined since the United States increased its stockpile of smallpox vaccine, which was once given to people routinely before the disease was brought under control, including a less potent but less risky backup vaccine for those who cannot tolerate the standard one.

The word “smallpox” still strikes fear. John Grabenstein, a retired colonel and a top biodefense adviser to the Defense Department after the 2001 attacks, recalled reports of refrigerated Soviet warheads loaded with the virus that could, in theory, aerosolize it over large areas. Others have envisioned a few infected terrorists mingling in crowds.

Left untreated, smallpox kills a third of victims. But prominent experts say the danger is overblown. Because it can take up to two weeks before an infected person becomes seriously ill, and up to five more days before he or she begins to infect others, there is time to respond, they said.

Also, they said, by the time smallpox victims reach the infectious stage, when their pox are erupting, they are too sick to wander around. That is why outbreaks in schools or factories were nearly unheard of.

Smallpox was eradicated by “ring vaccination” — finding each case and vaccinating just the 50 to 200 people closest to it.

If there were a lage-scale bioterrorism attack using smallpox, health officials could move quickly, some experts say.

“If we had to, we could vaccinate the entire country in three days,” said Dr. William H. Foege, another leader of the smallpox eradication effort who now advises the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This vaccine does not use a syringe, but a forked pin that Dr. Foege said he could “train anyone to use in 10 minutes.” In a true emergency, he argued, schoolteachers, police officers, firefighters and others would all be vaccinators.

Other experts think that is overoptimistic, since an attack would cause panic.

Also, Dr. Rose of Siga pointed out, there are only an estimated 700 million doses of smallpox vaccine in a world of 7 billion people, so the United States might use its vaccine and Arestvyr stockpile to help other countries. (Only the United States, Japan and Israel are believed to have enough doses for their entire populations, experts said.)

Dr. Henderson and Dr. Philip Russell, who formerly headed the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and served on the advisory panel with him, said they expected the government to pay much less for an antiviral drug since they cost little to make and the alternative, vaccines, cost the government $3 a dose. “If they’re talking $250 a course, they’re a bunch of thieves,” Dr. Russell said.

Other experts, like Dr. Grabenstein, said that since the drugs have no other use, they are like aircraft carriers: to entice companies to make them, the government has to pay all the costs plus guarantee the producer a profit — and that it might be prudent to have extras on hand.

Mr. Perelman’s company, MacAndrews & Forbes, has spent more than $1 million lobbying each year since 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. A spokeswoman for the company, Christine Taylor, said it had done “absolutely no lobbying” for the Siga contract.

Original post here

story at The Guardian

In “Why Radio Matters,” Mary Myers outlines numerous applications of radio which she believes to be extremely effective if applied correctly in a development setting. Her emphasis on the ability of radio to educate and empower reminded me of a small UNESCO-funded conference I heard about recently from a friend in Nicaragua who works for AMARC (Asociación Mundial de Radios Comunitarias). Last October, female radio broadcasters from all around the country convened in Matagalpa to discuss sexism they face in their everyday lives as well as the most effective and empowering ways to discuss sexual violence on the air. Among the things highlighted by the workshop were linguistic techniques to avoid assigning blame to victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse and the importance of using “vos” rather than “tú’ whenever possible in such discussions.

The workshop followed the enactment of Nicaragua’s recent Law 779, which was officially enacted in June and essentially provides the country with a far more modern, protective set of laws surrounding issues of sexual violence, spousal abuse, and women’s rights as a whole. While the law has been seen as an impressively comprehensive step towards sexual equality in Nicaragua, it has drawn resistance from native tribal populations, such as the Mayagna Indians, who see it as a threat to their existing tribal laws. The female broadcasters at the conference discussed tactful ways to encourage sexual equality in such situations without imposing judgment on existing cultural standards. Another interesting dimension of the conference was a discussion of the problems caused by the particularly odd work hours experienced by radio broadcasters. Many of the women ended or began work at odd hours in the morning and different radio stations had various ways of ensuring that they were at least somewhat protected while walking to and from work on deserted streets.

Bihar is the poorest state in India and has the highest fertility rates. The average fertility rate in India is 2.6, yet the rate in Bihar remains above four. Only 34% of single females in Bihar reported using contraception of any kind, according to the 2001 Census in India. High fertility rates contribute greatly to maternal. A local NGO, Janani (which provides reproductive health care), a non-profit “Population Communication International,” and researchers from Ohio University paired up to address the dismal maternal health situation in Bihar. They produced and entertainment-education campaign targeting about 190 million men and women living in rural Bihar and three neighboring states. They reached their target audience through a radio program soap opera that aired once a week for a year. This 52- episode series was about the life of a fictional woman named Taru. As Vijaykumar (2008) states, the campaign sought to, “motivate listeners to take charge of their own health, seek health services, and better their living” (p. 182).

The campaign was a great success. Baseline vs. follow-up surveys of 1,500 households in Bihar showed that there was an increase in awareness family planning and an overall greater approval from people’s social networks about the use of family planning after the radio series. Utilization of family planning services also increased which portrays a great success; not only was this campaign able to educate and inform its audience, it actually caused behavior change which is not always an immediate outcome of mass media campaigns. In addition, condoms and other forms of contraception and pregnancy test sales increased “exponentially,” in several villages according to Vijaykumar (2008, p. 184). The study even found that there was an overall increase in gender equality beliefs among the respondents, which is a huge step in the right direction for maternal health because maternal mortality stems from the general lack of value placed on women’s lives in many developing countries. The fact that there were changes not only at the individual level, but also at the community and service-demand level highlights the extent of the success of this campaign. It was also able to influence social norms and behaviors, which is a huge barrier to public health movements and is especially important in a destitute area like Bihar where traditional cultural beliefs often persist and present themselves as barriers to modern public health campaigns. The only obvious downfall of this campaign in my opinion is that it only used one channel to attempt to reach a population of 190 million, but clearly, it still worked.

Radios can do more than you thought, huh?

Reference: Vijaykumar, S. (2008). Communicating safe motherhood: Strategic messaging in a globalized world. Marriage & Family Review, 44(2-3), 173-199. doi:10.1080/01494920802177378