May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Disease Control Priorities
Through the work of international public health organizations and advancements in the biological and technological sciences, substantial progress has been made in our ability to prevent, control, locally eliminate, and in one case eradicate infectious diseases. Yet each successful control or local...Read more
May 2010
Malaria, Antibiotic Resistance
OBJECTIVE: To assess the co-colonization rates of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) producing bacteria and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) obtained on active surveillance cultures.DESIGN: Prospective cohort study.SETTING: Medical and surgical intensive care units (ICUs) of a tertiary-...Read more
May 2010
Environmental Health, Environmental Health
This paper examines the impacts of measures to reduce emissions from buses, cars, and two-wheelers in Mumbai, India. We have considered three possible policies: conversion of diesel buses to CNG, an increase in the price of gasoline and a tax on vehicle ownership. Our results suggest that the most...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Malaria
May 2010
Environmental Health
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Malaria
Rolling back malaria is possible. Tools are available but they are not used. Several countries deploy, as their national malaria control treatment policy, drugs that are no longer effective. New and innovative methods of vector control, diagnosis, and treatment should be developed, and work towards...Read more
May 2010
Malaria, Malaria
Background: The efficient allocation of financial resources for malaria control using appropriate combinations of interventions requires accurate information on the geographic distribution of malaria risk. An evidence-based description of the global range of Plasmodium falciparum malaria and its...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Antibiotic Resistance
The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of hygiene routines and characteristics of the daycare centre (DCC) on sickness absence in preschool children. Background In Sweden most children attend daycare outside home during daytime. Daycare outside home results in cognitive and social gains...Read more
May 2010
Malaria, Malaria
The quantification of malaria transmission for the classification of malaria risk has long been a concern for epidemiologists. During the era of the Global Malaria Eradication Programme, measurements of malaria endemicity were institutionalised by their incorporation into rules outlining defined...Read more
May 2010
Environmental Health, Malaria
Background: Efficient allocation of resources to intervene against malaria requires a detailed understanding of the contemporary spatial distribution of malaria risk. It is exactly 40 y since the last global map of malaria endemicity was published. This paper describes the generation of a new world...Read more
May 2010
Health and Development, Health and Development
Sir Oliver Razum and colleagues (May 17, p 1739) rightly describe the difficulty inherent in fitting cumulative case data for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to exponential functions and then extrapolating the resulting curve. There are additional subtleties involved in these calculations...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Environmental Health
Objectives: To estimate the fraction of human cases of enterically transmitted illness by five major pathways (food, environment, direct animal contact, human-human transmission, and travel) and by 11 groups within the food pathway.Methods: Food safety experts were asked to provide their estimates...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Antibiotic Resistance
Policies for handling cases of penicillin-non-susceptible Streptococcus pneumoniae (PNSP) in day-care groups vary between different counties in Sweden. The aim of this study was to evaluate the epidemiological effect of excluding PNSP-carriers from children's day-care centres (DCC). We...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance
Objectives: The aim of this study was to use detailed weekly data on outpatient antibiotic sales for pre-school children in Sweden to test for the significance of trends during 1992-2002. We also report on the special features found in weekly antibiotic data, and how the interrupted time series (...Read more
May 2010
Environmental Health, Environmental Health
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Antibiotic Resistance
Using data from an ongoing Swedish intervention project, the observed durations of nasopharyngeal carriage of penicillin-nonsusceptible Streptococcus pneumoniae (PNSP) (MIC of penicillin G of [≥]0.5 {micro}g/ml) stratified by both pneumococcal serogroup and age of the carrier were compared...Read more
May 2010
Environmental Health, Antibiotic Resistance
Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) has become a major problem in US hospitals already dealing with high levels of hospital-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA). Using antimicrobial drug susceptibility data for 19992006 from The Surveillance Network, we characterized the...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Disease Control Priorities
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Disease Control Priorities
In cost-benefit analyses of environmental programs for pollutants affecting health, two numbers dominate: the concentration response coefficient (the relationship between pollution concentrations and death risk) and the value of a statistical life (VSL) (or its variants, such as value of a life...Read more
May 2010
Malaria, Malaria
BACKGROUND: Mutations in Plasmodium falciparum that confer resistance to first-line antimalarial drugs have spread throughout the world from a few independent foci, all located in areas that were likely characterized by low or unstable malaria transmission. One of the striking differences between...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Disease Control Priorities
The fields of epidemiological disease modeling and economics have tended to work independently of each other despite their common reliance on the language of mathematics and exploration of similar questions related to human behavior and infectious disease. This paper explores the benefits of...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Antibiotic Resistance
Hospital-acquired infections with Staphylococcus aureus, especially methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) infections, are a major cause of illness and death and impose serious economic costs on patients and hospitals. However, the recent magnitude and trend of these infections have not been...Read more
May 2010
Alcohol and Tobacco, Antibiotic Resistance
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Antibiotic Resistance
The use of antibiotics for animal growth promotion has been controversial because of the potential transfer of antibiotic resistance from animals to humans. Such transfer could have severe public health implications in that treatment failures could result. We have followed a risk assessment...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Health and Development
In Vietnam, shigellosis, typhoid fever, and cholera are important enteric diseases. To determine their magnitude and geographical distribution, and explore associated risk factors, we examined national surveillance data from 1991 to 2001 and potential ecological determinants. Average annual...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Disease Control Priorities
This article examines the effect of familiarity with chronic lung disease on people's willingness to pay to reduce their risk of contracting chronic bronchitis, and on their willingness to increase their risk of auto death to reduce chronic bronchitis risk. We find that persons who have a...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Disease Control Priorities
We present the results of a contingent valuation survey eliciting willingness to pay (WTP) for mortality risk reductions. The survey was self-administered using a computer by 930 persons in Hamilton Ontario aged 40 to 75. Visual and audio aides were used to enhance risk comprehension. Mean WTP...Read more
May 2010
Disease Control Priorities, Environmental Health
This study is an initial effort to estimate one important category of benefits of environmental improvements in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), those related to the effects of air pollution on human health. Our estimates are derived from data on ambient air quality in selected CEE locations,...Read more
May 2010
Environmental Health, Environmental Health
This paper reports on the results of a detailed epidemiological investigation of daily acute health effects in adults and children associated with daily exposure to ozone and other air pollutants. Using a Markov process model of health effects, we find statistically significant and robust effects...Read more
May 2010
Antibiotic Resistance, Environmental Health
This paper examines the record of urban population growth, health, and health care spending in developing countries, describes the linkage between urban air pollution and health, and weighs policy responses to reduce stationary and mobile source air pollution. Specifically, the stylized facts of...Read more
