Twitter has become the latest online tool to be used to monitor the spread of disease. Researchers are looking at whether health providers can identify the locale of a disease outbreak by monitoring the…
Kate Mandeville, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
When new health threats emerge, the media is often accused of hyping up the risk to the public. But we tend to believe that health experts provide rational, independent viewpoints on the real risks posed…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
When people talk about ‘big data’, there is an oft-quoted example: a proposed public health tool called Google Flu Trends. It has become something of a pin-up for the big data movement, but it might not…
After standing in line for the latest year’s flu jab one might wonder why all this in necessary. The answer lies in the flu virus itself and its ability to rapidly evolve and avoid the human immune system…
Nausea, vomiting, tummy pain and cramps, watery diarrhoea … We’ve all had acute gastroenteritis at some stage. As a general practitioner, my patients usually refer to their condition in more colloquial…
Facts about Flu - Perhaps the misery you feel when ill in winter isn’t the fault of the much-maligned influenza virus after all. RSV, hMPV, CoV… these may all sound like random acronyms, but they are influenza’s…
Facts about Flu - We often hear of an expected pandemic and had a scare in 2009 with the swine flu, but how well are we prepared? Although no longer considered an immediate risk, the recent outbreak of…
Facts about Flu - Ever wondered what flu classifications mean? Read on. The pandemic influenza strain, or swine flu, that spread globally in 2009 was referred to as H1N1 and the new bird flu currently…
Are you worried about how decisions involving public money are made? You should be. Last week, the National Audit Office disclosed that the Department of Health spent £424 million on the anti-flu drug…
Welcome to Facts about Flu - Our week-long series of articles about influenza. Ever wonder why the flu, coughs and colds that you suffered from in your youth have become a monster killer that rolls out…
The 2009 influenza pandemic prompted the fastest effort in history to develop a vaccine. Within six months of the pandemic declaration, vaccine-makers had developed, produced and distributed hundreds of…
When people say they have “the flu”, what they’re experiencing most of the time is the common cold, which is not caused by the influenza virus at all. But the term “flu season”, which Australia is in the…
It’s ten years since SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) upset our complacency about infectious diseases and now we are faced by another “new” disease. H7N9 bird flu is currently spreading through…
Flu vaccines given to children should be more rigorously tested before before being allowed onto the market, researchers say, to prevent a repeat of the 2010 vaccine release, which caused a spate of high…
NSW Health authorities should withdraw advertisements urging people to cover their coughs and sneezes with their hands and instead tell people to use their inner elbow, according to a letter to the editor…
Controversial research into the H5N1 virus, more commonly known as bird flu, is set to recommence, after it was delayed in 2011 following a request from the US government. The research had raised biosecurity…
Public health researchers have stepped up their campaign to access clinical trial data about influenza drug Tamiflu, amid concerns about its effectiveness. Professor Peter Gøtzsche, leader of the Nordic…