Late on Friday, working with Pima County Health Department, our Arizona State Public Health Laboratory confirmed Arizona’s first case of measles of 2019. A family and their young child traveled internationally to an area with active measles cases and the child became sick with measles. The child’s health is improving now, but the work of [...]
While summer may be in full swing, the influenza season is lingering longer than usual here in Arizona. In June, we typically see around 200 laboratory confirmed influenza cases. This year there were nearly 1,300 confirmed influenza cases in June . Our ADHS disease detectives and county health departments monitor influenza activity all year. In [...]
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the nation's health protection agency, working 24/7 to protect America from health and safety threats, both foreign and domestic. In 1951, CDC established the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a two-year postgraduate fellowship for health professionals interested in public health and epidemiology. EIS officers are physicians, veterinarians, [...]
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 [...]
For the past three months, state and local public health disease detectives have been working tirelessly to bring an end to the measles outbreak originating from a private detention facility in Eloy, Arizona. This week, the outbreak is officially closed. A total of 22 cases have been reported during this three month outbreak, all of [...]
Did you know Valley Fever (Coccidioidomycosis) is one of the most commonly reported infectious diseases in Arizona? While most people infected with Valley Fever experience mild or no symptoms at all, some suffer from more severe symptoms including pneumonia or the spread of the fungus to other parts of the body, including the brain. Although [...]
Our statewide disease detectives (whose job it is to slow the spread of communicable diseases) need real-time electronic surveillance in order to get the job done. Our I.T. folks and the people in Public Health Preparedness have been working on an upgraded system to help them for the last several months- and our new Medical Electronic [...]
Check out CDC’s new iPad App, Solve the Outbreak, which lets you pretend you’re a disease outbreak investigator in the world-class Epidemic Intelligence Service by solving outbreaks based on real-life. When new outbreaks happen, disease detectives are sent in to figure out how they started, before they can spread. You get to investigate the outbreak and [...]
Awhile back, our epidemiology and licensing team of disease detectives including Jason Lempp, Cara Christ, Vinita Oberoi, Jessica Rigler, Ken Komatsu, Kathy McCanna, Connie Belden, Ken Komatsu, and Shoana Anderson learned of a severe case of a Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) through our 24-hour disease reporting system. Our team quickly contacted the county public health department which immediately began an [...]
