Posts relating to PHE Priority 3: Protecting the country's health
Over the past 70 years antibiotics have been hugely important in our defence against infectious diseases caused by bacteria. However, bacterial resistance to antibiotics is becoming a global public health problem and if we are to develop new treatments for …
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, …
The last few weeks have been tough. Flooding across many parts of the country has brought communities together but also highlighted how isolated and vulnerable many citizens are. Nurses and midwives continue to play an important role in managing and …
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 …
Microbiology is the study of microscopic organisms such as viruses and bacteria. In the past as microbiologists we would have relied on growing, staining and peering down microscopes as a way of identifying and characterising clinically important organisms, such as …
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 …
In December 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron announced the “100,000 Genome Project” where the personal DNA code (known as a genome) of up to 100,000 patients, or infections in patients, will be decoded over the next 5 years. This will …
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 …
