On Dec 1 2009, the Centers for Disease Control  & Prevention issued a general alert to citizens of the United States regarding a “phishing” scam that was discovered recently.  This type of announcement is rather unusual.

Following is a screenshot of the official CDC page which addresses this potential security hazard:

Image Credit: http://www.cdc.gov/hoaxes_rumors.html – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

Today is World AIDS Day 2009

33.4 million people in the world are living with AIDS

Image Credit: http://UNAIDS.org – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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Following is a brief list of statistical or factual sources for HIV/AIDS information:

• The UNAIDS.org (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) website offers a variety of factual and global epidemiological reports found on their Knowledge Center page.   Also see the 72-page 2008 UNAIDS Annual Report, available to download at no cost.

• World AIDS Day – from U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services

• World AIDS Campaign.org

• Top AIDS News from Alltop.com

• Summary statistical data about sexual attitudes or behaviors can be scanned via the HIV/AIDS Survey Indicators Database from MeasureDH.com (Note: Not all reports are available at no cost).  The MeasureDH site is where I found a link to HIVMapper.

• Center for Disease Control: National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention

• CDC staff collects a wide variety of epidemiological statistics about HIV/AIDS in the United State.  One useful page is a link to factual data for individual U.S. states…. as an example,  click here to view the latest HIV/AIDS data for the state of Connecticut.   For other HIV/AIDS state data, also see this site from CDC.

• StateHealthFacts.org page provides a lengthy group of resources about HIV/AIDS incidence, prevalence and trends in the U.S. and worldwide (at no cost). This resource is sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

• This site, HIV Reality (from the UK), has a group of interviews with people living with AIDS.

• World Health Organization HIV/AIDS Page.  WHO issued updated HIV/AIDS treatment recommendations on Nov 30 2009… here is a press release announcing that information.

• POZ.com

• AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)

• MEDLINEPlus.gov has free patient-fact materials and links to current information on HIV medications or treatment protocols.

• An excellent subscription resource available for UCHC library users, GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network) provides an impressive list of HIV/AIDS related statistical sources for countries worldwide.  Here is a link to a FAQ-handout on using GIDEON handout.

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Finally, knowing one’s own HIV status is essential information.  At HIVTest.org an interactive list of local testing or counseling resources from U.S. healthcare agencies can be assembled (by zipcode).  The pop-up list will show which agencies will test for free.

A screenshot below (from HIVTest.org page) shows a list of current testing recommendations for those who are sexually active:

Image Credit: HIVTest.org - All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

Tagged: AIDS-Epidemiology, AIDS-Statistics and Factual Information, AIDS/HIV-Current Awareness, Global Health, HIV/AIDS-Public Health, World Aids Day 2009 ]]> http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/news-global-health-public-health-today-is-world-aids-day/feed/ 0 creaky WorldAidsDay2009 STDRecommendationsChart http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/news-public-health-public-service-h1n1-fact-page-from-ebsco/ http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/news-public-health-public-service-h1n1-fact-page-from-ebsco/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:24:30 +0000 creaky http://creakysites.wordpress.com/?p=14036 ]]>

This year, Ebsco Publishing has created an evidence-based medicine source for current factual diagnostic or treatment information for H1N1 influenza virus, written for clinicians, nurses and the general public.

This site is open to anyone in the world to access, at no cost.  Following is a brief description found on the front page of Ebsco Publishing Influenza Evidence-Based Information Portal:

” Due to Pandemic H1N1 Influenza (formerly known as Swine Flu) and concerns about the 2009/2010 flu season, the EBSCO Publishing Medical and Nursing editors of DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™ (NRC) and Patient Education Reference Center™ (PERC) have made key influenza information from these resources freely available to health care providers worldwide. The information is designed to inform patients and their families, and provide information to clinicians to help them with H1N1 diagnosis and H1N1 treatment by making up-to-date diagnosis and treatment information available… This site includes more than 50 evidence-based topics including patient education information in 17 languages.”

Source/ text credit: http://www.ebscohost.com/flu/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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As shown in this screenshot below, there are sections written for clinicians, nurses and patients.

Photo credit: http://www.ebscohost.com/flu/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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If you treat patients who speak Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Chinese (traditional or simplified), Japanese, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Farsi, Polish, Tagalog, Vietnamese (or English), this is an excellent free resource – bookmark it!

Thanks to Ebsco for producing this EBM influenza page.

Today, Nov 19 2009 is designated by the American Cancer Society as…

The Great American Smokeout

Image credit: Courtesy of American Cancer Society – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

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There are many excellent reasons for quitting smoking.  A new international study announced this week presents a novel (and compelling) reason to stop using tobacco once and for all.

Dr. Amy Sapkota, PhD, MPH, is an assistant professor for the School of Public Health at University of Maryland with a joint appointment at Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health.  She describes her research as  “… utilizing metagenomic methods to understand total bacterial biodiversity in cigarettes, smokeless tobacco products and environmental tobacco smoke“.

In 2007, Dr. Sapkota and two microbial biologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, Sibel Berger and Timothy M. Vogel, sampled tobacco taken from four commercial brands of American cigarettes for evidence of bacterial contamination, using DNA microarray analysis techniques.

Following is an excerpt from a press release about the study results (Courtesy of Eurekalert, Nov 19 2009):

” Fifteen different classes of bacteria and a broad range of potentially pathogenic organisms were detected in all cigarette samples.  Most notably, we detected Acinetobacter, Bacillus, Burkholderia, Clostridium, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Serratia in ≥ 90% of all cigarette samples. Other pathogenic bacteria detected included Campylobacter, Enterococcus, Proteus, and Staphylococcus.   No significant variability in bacterial diversity was observed across the four different cigarette brands “.

Excerpt from press release at Eurekalert (Nov 19 2009) – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

The title of the paper is “Human Pathogens Abundant in the Bacterial Metagenome of Cigarettes” and will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP)

It can be read online, at no cost, via this link from EHP.

Tagged: American Cancer Society Great American Smokeout 2009, Cigarette Smoking-Epidemiology, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), Tobacco-Pollutants, Tobacco-Use ]]> http://creakysites.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/news-public-health-epidemiology-tobacco-great-american-smokeout-2009-and-another-reason-to-quit/feed/ 0 creaky AmCanSocietySmokout2009