Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309095042
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.
Author: Donald Emmeluth
Publisher: Infobase Holdings, Inc
ISBN: 1438194137
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
Although influenza, commonly known as the flu, is a familiar disease to many people, its effects can be deadly. The virus holds the record for having the highest death rate in a two-year period of any disease (1918–1919), is highly potent, and is difficult to research because it is constantly mutating. Influenza, Third Edition examines symptoms and complications of the disease, as well as treatment, prevention, and the need for flu vaccines. Chapters include: Deadly World Traveler Viral Replication “I’ve Got the Flu, What Can I Do?” Influenza—Nature’s Frequent Flyer: Prevention Dealing with Complications What May the Future Bring?
Author: John M. Barry
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143036494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 580
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Book Description
#1 New York Times bestseller “Barry will teach you almost everything you need to know about one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history.”—Bill Gates "Monumental... an authoritative and disturbing morality tale."—Chicago Tribune The strongest weapon against pandemic is the truth. Read why in the definitive account of the 1918 Flu Epidemic. Magisterial in its breadth of perspective and depth of research, The Great Influenza provides us with a precise and sobering model as we confront the epidemics looming on our own horizon. As Barry concludes, "The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that...those in authority must retain the public's trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. Lincoln said that first, and best. A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete. Only then will people be able to break it apart." At the height of World War I, history’s most lethal influenza virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years, more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century. But this was not the Middle Ages, and 1918 marked the first collision of science and epidemic disease.
Author: Gina Kolata
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429979356
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Veteran journalist Gina Kolata's Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It presents a fascinating look at true story of the world's deadliest disease. In 1918, the Great Flu Epidemic felled the young and healthy virtually overnight. An estimated forty million people died as the epidemic raged. Children were left orphaned and families were devastated. As many American soldiers were killed by the 1918 flu as were killed in battle during World War I. And no area of the globe was safe. Eskimos living in remote outposts in the frozen tundra were sickened and killed by the flu in such numbers that entire villages were wiped out. Scientists have recently rediscovered shards of the flu virus frozen in Alaska and preserved in scraps of tissue in a government warehouse. Gina Kolata, an acclaimed reporter for The New York Times, unravels the mystery of this lethal virus with the high drama of a great adventure story. Delving into the history of the flu and previous epidemics, detailing the science and the latest understanding of this mortal disease, Kolata addresses the prospects for a great epidemic recurring, and, most important, what can be done to prevent it.
Author: E.D. Kilbourne
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468452398
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
My lifetime encompasses the postwar subsidence in the early 1920s of the greatest influenza pandemic in history, direct encounters with FM1 virus at Fort Mon mouth in 1947, the care of influenza patients in the 1950s, the pursuit of the in fluenza virus through the modern pandemics of 1957 and 1968, and a present in which the genes of the virus have dissembled in the DNA of vaccinia virus and Escherichia coli through the wand of "high tech. " If my corpus could be fossilized for archival and archaeological purposes, it would be found to contain immune cells branded with the imprint of the "swine" influenza virus of post-1918 and brain cells no less imprinted with memories of the abortive return of its descendant during America's bicentennial. But before that unlikely event, I wanted to try to make some sense out of this baffling dis ease and its viruses-expecting no definitive revelations but hoping for a sharper definition of problems. Hence this book. It is an audacious act in these days of specialization to essay a book such as this singlehandedly, but I have done so for selfish reasons. I wanted to reexam ine old questions about the nature of influenza and its epidemics in the light of the dazzling advances in molecular biology of the past few years. No virus has been better studied, but few diseases are less well understood.
Author: Alfred W. Crosby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107394015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369
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Book Description
Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming over 25 million lives - more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event. This 2003 edition includes a preface discussing the then recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and the SARS epidemic.
Author: Jeremy Brown
Publisher: Thorndike Press Large Print
ISBN: 9781432865009
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
On the 100th anniversary of the pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, veteran ER doctor and Director of Emergency Care Research at the National Institutes of Health, explores the troubling and complex history of the flu virus. He breaks down the current dialogue about the disease, explaining the controversy over vaccinations, antiviral drugs, and the federal government's role in preparing for pandemic outbreaks. Influenza is an enlightening and unnerving look at a deadly virus that has been around longer than people and may be for many more years before we are able to conquer it for good.
Author: Susan K. Kent
Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education
ISBN: 131924162X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 appeared suddenly at the end of the First World War and with explosive impact took the lives of at least 30 million people worldwide. Spreading rapidly across the globe, it defied all previous understandings of the disease, striking the youngest and healthiest individuals most acutely and confounding the doctors and governments who struggled to contain it. In this volume, Susan Kingsley Kent presents an overview of the disease, detailing its symptoms, tracking its spread, and offering insights into the medical communitys understanding of and reaction to the pandemic. Documents from period newspapers, medical journals, and government publications, as well as letters, journal entries, memoirs, and novels written by survivors and medical staff, provide a variety of perspectives from six continents and illuminate the impact of the pandemic — from the lives of children orphaned by the flu to colonial rebellions for which the pandemic served as a major catalyst. Document headnotes, maps and illustrations, a chronology, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index enrich students understanding.
Author: R.E. Hope-Simpson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1489923853
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
THE PLAGUE YEARS Mankind has always been fascinated by "origins," and biologists are no exception. Darwin is our most famous example. What is the origin of mankind, of species, of infectious diseases? In the last few years we have seen the emergence and spread of some apparently "new" viruses, such as HIV -1 and the virus causing bovine spongiform encephalomyelopathy. But are these, in fact, entirely new agents, or mutated forms of "old" viruses that have evolved along with us for eons? Edgar Hope-Simpson could not have written this book at a more opportune moment. He is a firm believer in gradual evolution, rather than the sudden arrival of new agents. I suspect that he would also have a naturalist's Darwinian approach for the origin of AIDS. It has been a source of some amazement to me over the years how even the most innovative scientists conform to a current hypothesis. Pioneer thinking comes more easily to persons outside the scientific mainstream. Edgar Hope Simpson has always struck me as a modem-day naturalist of the classic style, observant and perhaps a little maverick in line of thought. Certainly, the central hypothesis propounded in this book will be controversial to many scientists. From his unique citadel, the Epidemiological Research Unit in Cirencester, he has carefully reexamined mortality data from old records as well as new.
Author: Nancy K. Bristow
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190238550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
In 1918-1919 influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history. Focusing on those closest to the crisis--patients, families, communities, public health officials, nurses and doctors--this book explores the epidemic in the United States.
