BACKGROUND Haff disease is unexplained rhabdomyolysis caused by consumption of fishery products in the previous 24 h. It was first identified in Europe in 1924 but the condition is extremely rare in China. Here we describe a past outbreak of acute food borne muscle poisoning that occurred in Guangdong Province (South China) in 2009. METHODS The first full outbreak of Haff disease reported in ...

Over the past few years, emergent threats posed by infectious diseases and bioterrorism have become public health concerns that have increased the need for prompt disease outbreak warnings. In most of the existing disease surveillance systems, disease outbreak risk is assessed by the detection of disease outbreaks. However, this is a retrospective approach that impacts the timeliness of the war...

This paper provides insight into crisis management of infectious disease outbreaks by comparing the current 2014 Ebola outbreak with a well-documented 1793 Yellow Fever outbreak. These reflections on crisis approaches and management from a human factors and cognitive engineering perspective may help encourage the application of historical epidemiology to better prepare for the next global infec...

An epidemic curve is a graph in which the number of new cases of an outbreak disease is plotted against time. Epidemic curves are ordinarily constructed after the disease outbreak is over. However, a good estimate of the epidemic curve early in an outbreak would be invaluable to health care officials. Currently, techniques for predicting the severity of an outbreak are very limited. As far as p...

Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) is a major public health problem in Bihar claiming thousands of lives every year in Bihar. Initially, the disease outbreak was focused in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar but recent trend shows that disease outbreak has spread its foci in many other districts as well. AES cases were recorded from district reporting units comprising Govt Medical College & Hospitals...

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a primary transboundary livestock disease of international concern. Outbreaks of the disease have recently occurred in several countries that were previously FMD-free. For countries with limited direct experience of this disease, modelling is a useful tool for the study of a potential outbreak. The objectives of this study were to determine specific FMD risk para...

A telematic system to support decisions and operations in case of animal health emergencies has been designed and implemented in the Abruzzo region of Italy. The system aims to improve decision-making by Veterinary Services in the event of an outbreak of exotic disease. The system has been tested, first by a simulated outbreak of foot and mouth disease, and then during an outbreak of swine vesi...