We’ve all had those times when our stomach doesn’t feel just right, often after eating. And often, that stomachache is no more than minor discomfort that lasts just a short time. Even though the American food supply is among the safest in the world, an estimated 128,000 people each year require a hospital stay because [...]
Public health is always hard at work identifying and solving outbreaks. In the case of foodborne diseases, public health epidemiologists, nurses, and lab scientists are teaming up at local, state and federal levels to find out what food made people sick. When two or more people with the same foodborne disease get sick from the [...]
This is the time of year when we start closing out all of our infectious disease data from the previous year. That means our epidemiology and data entry staff will be hard at work to identify potential duplicate cases, make sure reported disease cases are classified correctly and similarly between the state and local health [...]
Last month I told you about a rare cluster of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) along the US-Mexico border near Yuma, AZ. Since then, we’ve identified 8 more cases for a total of 24 (7 in AZ, 17 in Sonora). GBS is a rare condition that results in paralysis of the legs, but can sometimes affect the arms and [...]
