Articles: pandemics.
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Global health advocates often turn to medicine and science for solutions to enduring health risks, but law is also a powerful tool. No state acting alone can ward off health threats that span borders, requiring international solutions. ⋯ Moreover, major health concerns remain largely unregulated at the international level, such as non-communicable diseases, mental health, and injuries. Here, we offer reforms for this global health law trilogy.
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Real-time modelling is an essential component of the public health response to an outbreak of pandemic influenza in the UK. A model for epidemic reconstruction based on realistic epidemic surveillance data has been developed, but this model needs enhancing to provide spatially disaggregated epidemic estimates while ensuring that real-time implementation is feasible. ⋯ Modelling studies investigating the impact of pandemic interventions (e.g. vaccination and school closure); the utility of alternative data sources (e.g. internet searches) to augment traditional surveillance; and the correct handling of test sensitivity and specificity in serological data, propagating this uncertainty into the real-time modelling.
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An influenza pandemic has the potential to overwhelm intensive care resources, but the views of the general public on how resources should be allocated in such a scenario were unknown. We aimed to determine Australian and New Zealand public opinion on how intensive care unit beds should be allocated during an influenza pandemic. ⋯ In an influenza pandemic, when ICU resources would be overwhelmed, survey respondents preferred that ICU triage be performed by a senior doctor, but also perceived the use of pre-determined triage criteria to be fair.