Posts about the work of the Health Protection directorate
I’m walking through an English woodland. The bluebells are beginning to flower and the cuckoos are calling. It really is a great time to be outdoors. Many of the overwintering insects are stirring and the air is filled with the …
We have had some fantastic news recently. More children have been vaccinated against measles and the number of measles infections has reduced. This means that we are getting back on track towards eliminating the disease. Measles has been relatively rare …
Syndromic surveillance is an innovative way of collecting and analysing health surveillance data and is becoming an increasingly popular way of monitoring public health across the world. Syndromic surveillance complements existing programmes, which are usually based upon traditional laboratory reporting, …
Field epidemiology is one of the mainstays of examining outbreaks of infectious disease. Public Health England’s field epidemiology service (FES) contributes to investigating anything from the more common food poisoning incidents to the more exotic such as the new MERS-Coronavirus recently identified …
In the past month, windstorms and flooding have been knocking at our doors more frequently than we would like. Like an unwelcome guest, severe weather brings with it many problems and often ones that are not always easily visible. It …
HIV remains a major source of harm to people’s health, much of which is avoidable. There are more HIV tests being performed in England than at any time in the three decades we’ve been battling this virus. That’s welcome, but …
Antibiotics have been around for nearly 70 years. Many people still alive today may remember them first being used to treat casualties from the Second World War. Around 1944 a newspaper billboard proclaimed that ‘Penicillin cures gonorrhoea in four hours …
For those who haven't heard of it, Lyme disease is a bacterial infection transmitted by tick bites, with between 900 and 1000 confirmed cases each year in the UK. It can lead to serious health issues if left untreated, so raising …
This year the fight against flu takes on a public health perspective. Up till now, flu vaccination has been offered on an individual basis to protect those most at risk. Offering flu vaccine to all healthy children, starting with the …
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has now published its fifth assessment report, confirming the scientific evidence that the climate is indeed changing, and that this change is even more certainly due to human activities than was previously thought. …
