Recent News

By Region: North America

New Plan To Increase Global Access To Vaccines Endorsed By World Health Assembly

(Medical News Today) Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly have endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities…

Senators ask downgrade of brucellosis pathogen

(Billings Gazette) Montana’s senators have stepped into the Yellowstone bison fray by requesting that two federal agencies downgrade the pathogen that causes brucellosis to ease research into a vaccine. The disease, carried by the park’s bison and now prevalent in some western Montana elk, can cause cattle to abort.

Lawmaker Seeks HHS Assessment of Strategic National Stockpile

(Global Security Newswire) Representative Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) this month requested that the U.S. Health and Human Services Department conduct an assessment of existing and future requirements for the Strategic National Stockpile of medical countermeasures against WMD agents, Government Security News reported on Thursday. In addition, the department should “consider ways to ensure that HHS reacts  Read More »

Statehouse Live: Officials vow to fight for NBAF funding

(Lawrence Journal World) TOPEKA — A bipartisan effort led to Kansas winning a state-of-the-art federal research lab, but the project is running into opposition in Washington, D.C., officials said Tuesday. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, didn’t put funding for the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in his proposed budget, and Republican leaders in Congress have  Read More »

Powerful New Approach to Attack Flu Virus

(Science Daily) An international research team has manufactured a new protein that can combat deadly flu epidemics. The paper, featured on the cover of the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, demonstrates ways to use manufactured genes as antivirals, which disable key functions of the flu virus, said Tim Whitehead, assistant professor of chemical engineering and  Read More »