Posts about the work of the Health Protection directorate
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 …
...of year. Syndromic surveillance primarily measures the reporting of symptoms caused by anything from flu to norovirus. It’s not simply bugs we look at, either. This surveillance can also measure...
...300 people reported having been ill with gastrointestinal illness. Initially the FES were notified of one person who was hospitalised with severe headache, nausea, fever and sweating. Two friends of...
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...
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...
...and works against a wider range of different flu strains. However, a Google news search for “Flu Nasal Spray” might suggest that many people have a concern about Fluenz other...
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. …
