Melanoma skin cancer is the deadliest form of skin cancer. Many believe that Arizona has similar age adjusted incidence rates to Australia, the world’s highest rate. But during the middle of the last decade, the Arizona Cancer Registry data showed a puzzling decline in cancer rates. The AZ Melanoma Task Force to look at the [...]
By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Arizona began recognizing same gender marriages (as an outcome of a recent federal court case). The court decision will influence some of the things that we do in our Vital Records shop - mostly as we process of death certificates. Arizona law specifies the people that can get [...]
HIV/AIDS affects or infects over 15,000 people in the state of Arizona. HIV has become a chronic disease, one that can be managed, which means most people are not dying of AIDS. However, there are still a lot of difficulties associated with being HIV positive. The prescriptions alone can be expensive and the side effects [...]
Every time a different disease surfaces in the news like MERS, Ebola or Enterovirus D 68, one of the first questions people ask is, “Is there a vaccine for it?” A new documentary created for NOVA on PBS – Vaccines – Calling the Shots recently outlined the history of vaccines and the possibility of vaccine-preventable diseases [...]
This week the Governor signed an Executive Order establishing the Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response. The Council consists of 20 public health, health-care, and other multi-sectorial partners, with the ADHS Director as the Chair. Our task will be to ensure that Arizona is prepared to rapidly and effectively respond to various infectious [...]
Epidemiologists (aka disease investigators) use a number of tools to estimate the contagiousness and spread of a disease. One such tool is the R0 (R nought), which represents the average number of people one sick person will infect. It's calculated by estimating the chances of exposure, number of susceptible persons, length of contagious period, how the disease [...]
One of the roles we play in any outbreak is making sure that our partners in the state have all the information they need to respond to a situation and be safe in that response. I’ve posted about our continuing education of those partners, but now we’ve created a one-page stop for partner. Our Ebola [...]
Two Ebola virus disease cases have been identified among healthcare workers in Texas, underscoring the importance of maintaining strict adherence to infection control precautions when working with Ebola patients. We know that the general public in the US isn't at risk - but we also know that healthcare workers have the highest risk. The good news is that the risk of transmission can be dramatically [...]
As Ebola cases continue to rise worldwide and in the US, ADHS is redoubling our efforts to ensure Arizona's healthcare and public health systems are prepared to respond to potential Ebola cases. Right now, our top priorities are ensuring the rapid identification and prompt isolation of cases in order to reduce disease spread to healthcare workers and [...]
Ring around the roseies, A pocket full of posies, Ashes, ashes! We all fall down! In 1348, London was 4 million strong, but within 2.5 years a third of those had “fallen down.” The streets were narrow and cramped, often piled ankle deep with human and animal waste. The putrid smell contaminated everything in the [...]
