While newly available electronic transmission methods can increase timeliness and completeness of infectious disease reports, limitations of this technology may unintentionally compromise detection of, and response to, bioterrorism and other outbreaks. We reviewed implementation experiences for five electronic laboratory systems and identified problems with data transmission, sensitivity, speci...

Hava Yilmaz; Vedat Turhan; Kadriye Kart Yasar; Mustafa Hatipoglu; Mustafa Sunbul Prof; Hakan Leblebicioglu, Prof; Infectious Diseases, Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, Turkey; Gata Haydarpasa Training Hospital, Infectious Disease and Clinical Microbiology Deparment, Istanbul, Turkey; Infectious Diseases, Bakirkoy Sadi Konuk Training and Research Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey; Infectious Diseases,...

24 As many emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases are associated with food 25 animals, the relationship between available healthy food sources and population 26 health and social stability has become evident. A recent example of the importance of 27 this relationship was observed during the current flu pandemic. This recent pandemic 28 brought attention to novel target groups of susceptib...

Infectious diseases spreading in a human population occasionally exhibit sudden transitions in their qualitative dynamics. Previous work has successfully predicted such transitions in New York City's historical measles incidence using the seasonally forced susceptible-infectious-recovered (SIR) model. This work relied on a dataset spanning 45 years (1928-1973), which we have extended to 93 year...

Population migration plays a critical role in the spread of disease by initiating outbreaks of acute diseases, changing the prevalence of infectious diseases at a given location, and changing the face of chronic disease resulting from previous infection. This article focuses on the recent demographic changes in North America that have facilitated the introduction and spread of new microbial thr...

Introduction: The Serology section of the Microbiology Department performs Rubella immunity screening mainly from antenatal patients and staff health clinics, with a small number of tests being performed for the diagnosis of Rubella infection. Since the implementation of the NSW Department of Health Circular 2003/91 “Occupational Screening and Vaccination against Infectious Diseases”, the numbe...

Molecular epidemiology is an emerging science. The development of new and rapid protocols to isolate and identify pathogens, coupled with the sophisticated phylogenetic analysis of their gene sequences, is providing a new and fascinating insight into the biology, origin and spread of infectious diseases. In this essay, I describe some of the ways in which the techniques of modern molecular biol...

BACKGROUND About a third of the countries affected by shortage of human resources for health are the emerging market economies (EMEs). The greatest shortage in absolute terms was found to be in India and Indonesia leading to health system crisis. This review identifies the patterns of migration of health workers, causes and possible solutions in these EMEs. METHODS A qualitative synthesis app...