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Infection Control Week 2016

The theme of this year’s National Infection Control Week is Infection Control Professionals: The Core of Infection Prevention and Control. To celebrate this theme, all the BC Health Authorities are running features on their IPAC staff this month. (Although we’d like to add that we believe everyone is at the core of infection prevention!) You can view your health authority’s features by following the links below. (Some health authority employees are able...

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Enterovirus cases in BC

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) Public Health Laboratory has detected several cases of Enterovirus D-68 (EV-D68) in children since mid-August. These are the first laboratory-confirmed cases in B.C. since 2014.  “As of September 14, 2016, eight children, including six under the age of two, have had confirmed EV-D68 infections,” said Dr. Mel Krajden, the Medical Director of the Public Health Laboratory.  EV-D68 is a virus that causes mild to severe...

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Colistin-resistant E.Coli found in another U.S. patient

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that a strain of E.Coli that is resistant to the antibiotic of last resort was found in a 2-year-old girl in Connecticut, causing alarm about the potential of dangerous drug resistance spreading across the United States. The girl and three other Americans have been found to have E. coli bacteria that were resistant to an important medicine called colistin. Colistin is...

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Video shows bacteria developing antibiotic resistance

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have created a visualization showing how quickly bacteria can develop antibiotic resistance. If you are unable to view the video below, you can view the video and read accompanying article on GlobalNews.ca.  ...

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FDA bans antibacterial agents from soaps

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided to ban anti-bacterial hand and body washes. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are considered one of the biggest threats to human health today. By 2050, infections that cannot be treated with antibiotics are expected to kill more people than cancer. Antibiotics are not only used for treating bacterial infections, but also for preventing infections during surgical procedures, treatment of cancer, etc. Antibiotic resistance threatens to...

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Canada’s Ebola vaccine in Guinea

Excerpted from the Ottawa Citizen: The World Health Organisation is running phase III clinical trials for Ebola virus disease vaccine in Guinea. The technique being used is "ring vaccination" which was used in the 1970s to eradicate smallpox. Co-ordinated by the World Health Organization, the vaccine trial employed the same ring vaccination strategy that was used to eradicate smallpox in the 1970s. Contacts were vaccinated in a “ring” around an infected...

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Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever Cases in Spain

From the New York Times: Doctors are closely watching about 200 people in Spain after a patient at a hospital in Madrid died of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, the first time the disease has been found in Western Europe in someone who had not traveled to an endemic area. The patient apparently caught the virus after being bitten by a tick, and then passed it to a nurse before he died. It has...

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