Articles: pandemics.
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To review the National Integrated Strategic Plan for Pandemic Influenza for 2009-2013 and assess whether it is in congruence with the nation's emergency preparedness status. ⋯ The authors concluded that the Plan is incongruent with Ghana's public health emergency preparedness. The evaluation is important for Ghana and the subregion.
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Emerging Infect. Dis. · May 2013
Changes in severity of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection from pandemic to first postpandemic season, Germany.
We studied risk factors for a severe clinical outcome in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 infection at the University Hospital Heidelberg in the pandemic and first postpandemic seasons. We identified 102 patients in 2009-10 and 76 in 2010-11. The proportion of severely diseased patients dramatically increased from 14% in 2009-10 to 46% in 2010-11 as did the mortality rate (5%-12%). ⋯ Multivariate analysis showed that older male patients with chronic lung disease were at increased risk for a severe clinical outcome. In summary, the proportion of patients with severe disease and fatal cases increased in the postpandemic season. Therefore, patients with suspected infections should be promptly identified and receive early treatment.
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The American psychologist · May 2013
A pandemic of the poor: social disadvantage and the U.S. HIV epidemic.
The U. S. HIV/AIDS epidemic has evolved over the past 30 years and is now concentrated in socially marginalized and disenfranchised communities. ⋯ Guided by a well-established conceptual model of health disparities, we then describe the social positions of those most affected by HIV and AIDS, particularly racial and gender groups. Structural and economic conditions-including environmental resources, constraints, access to care, and psychosocial influences-are examined in relation to HIV disease trajectories. Greater attention to contextual factors and comorbidities is needed to reduce the health disparities in HIV/AIDS.
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The influenza A (H1N1) 2009 monovalent vaccination programme was the largest mass vaccination initiative in recent US history. Commensurate with the size and scope of the vaccination programme, a project to monitor vaccine adverse events was undertaken, the most comprehensive safety surveillance agenda in the USA to date. The adverse event monitoring project identified an increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome after vaccination; however, some individual variability in results was noted. Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare but serious health disorder in which a person's own immune system damages their nerve cells, causing muscle weakness, sometimes paralysis, and infrequently death. We did a meta-analysis of data from the adverse event monitoring project to ascertain whether influenza A (H1N1) 2009 monovalent inactivated vaccines used in the USA increased the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome. ⋯ US Federal Government.