Articles: pandemics.
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Historical Article
Vulnerability to Pandemic Flu Could Be Greater Today Than a Century Ago.
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Historical Article
The Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes and the Black Death of 1498: a poetic description of the plague.
The study is a presentation of the sole written testimony of the great plague epidemic that struck the island of Rhodes in 1498, at the time when the Order of the Knights of St. John was settled there. The Greek poem "The Thanatikon (i.e., plague) of Rhodes", which was written by Emmanuel Georgillas Limenitis in the late 15th century and recounts the terrible events of the epidemic, was used as a source of information. ⋯ Within the historical context of the era, evaluation and analysis of the data reveal the correlation between human activities and the physical history of the disease in the Mediterranean during the 15th century. The Plague of Rhodes confirms the value of non-medical sources in the medico-historical and historico-epidemiological study of the evolution of the disease caused by Yersinia pestis while highlighting an enduring intrinsic weakness of surveillance systems. Despite modern means of epidemiological surveillance, the risk of relaxation of a health system after a long period of absence of an infectious disease constitutes a major factor for future resurgence of the specific disease.
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Prompt treatment of ill persons with influenza antivirals will be an important part of a future pandemic influenza response. This essay reviews key lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the changing landscape of antiviral drug availability, and identifies and describes the multiple components needed to ensure the timely administration of antiviral drugs during a future pandemic. Fortunately, many of these planning efforts can take place before a pandemic strikes to improve outcomes during a future public health emergency.
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Telephone nurse triage lines, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Flu on Call®, a national nurse triage line, may help reduce the surge in demand for health care during an influenza pandemic by triaging callers, providing advice about clinical care and information about the pandemic, and providing access to prescription antiviral medication. We developed a Call Volume Projection Tool to estimate national call volume to Flu on Call® during an influenza pandemic. The tool incorporates 2 influenza clinical attack rates (20% and 30%), 4 different levels of pandemic severity, and different initial "seed numbers" of cases (10 or 100), and it allows variation in which week the nurse triage line opens. ⋯ Assuming a 20% clinical attack rate and a case hospitalization rate of 0.8% to 1.5% (1968-like pandemic severity), we estimated the nationwide number of calls during the peak week of the pandemic to range from 1,551,882 to 3,523,902. Assuming a more severe 1957-like pandemic (case hospitalization rate = 1.5% to 3.0%), the national number of calls during the peak week of the pandemic ranged from 2,909,778 to 7,047,804. These results will aid in planning and developing nurse triage lines at both the national and state levels for use during a future influenza pandemic.