Tom Frieden

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'Nightmare Bacteria' Spread In Southeast

Laura Ungar | USA Today | July 31, 2014

Superbugs known as CRE — called "nightmare bacteria" by federal health officials because they are deadly and virtually untreatable — are skyrocketing in the Southeastern USA, new research shows...

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A Deadly Superbug Appears to Be Invading America's Hospitals

Helen Branswell | The Week | January 23, 2017

A dangerous type of superbug has more tricks up its sleeves than we may be giving it credit for, a recent study suggests. The researchers found that this class of bacteria, CREs — that's short for carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae — has more ways to evade antibiotics than have been currently identified, and that these bugs share their tricks readily across the families of bacteria that make up this grouping...

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A Nevada Woman Dies of a Superbug Resistant to Every Available Antibiotic in the US

Helen Branswell | STAT | January 12, 2017

If it sometimes seems like the idea of antibiotic resistance, though unsettling, is more theoretical than real, please read on. Public health officials from Nevada are reporting on a case of a woman who died in Reno in September from an incurable infection. Testing showed the superbug that had spread throughout her system could fend off 26 different antibiotics. “It was tested against everything that’s available in the United States … and was not effective,” said Dr. Alexander Kallen, a medical officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s division of health care quality promotion...

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Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola

Robert Fortner | Huffington Post | April 30, 2017

In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...

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Bill Gates Won’t Save You From The Next Ebola Outbreak

Robert Fortner and Alex Park | HuffPost | May 1, 2017

In late August 2014, Tom Frieden, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traveled to West Africa to assess the raging Ebola crisis. In the five months before Frieden’s visit, Ebola had spread from a village in Guinea, across borders and into cities in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Médecins Sans Frontières, the first international responder on the scene, had run out of staff to treat the rising numbers of sick people and had deemed the outbreak “out of control” back in June...

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CDC Calls Out Antibiotic Prescribing Problems

Lisa Schnirring | Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) | March 4, 2014

In a major report today that looked at antibiotic usage, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said some clinicians in similar hospital units prescribe triple the amounts, with some making the types of errors that fuel drug-resistance problems that put many more patients at risk. Read More »

CDC Closes Labs After Anthrax, Bird Flu And Small Pox Scares

David Ludwig | Government Executive | July 14, 2014

Days after the discovery of small pox vials in a NIH medical laboratory in Bethesda, the Center For Disease Control announced Friday that labs connected to anthrax and bird flu scares would be temporarily closed...

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CDC Director On Ebola: ‘The Window Of Opportunity Really Is Closing’

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | September 2, 2014

...Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a lengthy press conference immediately after returning to the US from a visit to the Ebola zone. Frieden has shown in the past that he knows how to be outspoken in a very strategic way; yet even so, the urgency of his language, and his call for an immediate, comprehensive global response, was striking...

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CDC Threat Report: ‘We Will Soon Be In A Post-Antibiotic Era’

Maryn McKenna | Wired | September 16, 2013

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just published a first-of-its-kind assessment of the threat the country faces from antibiotic-resistant organisms, ranking them by the number of illnesses and deaths they cause each year and outlining urgent steps that need to be taken to roll back the trend. Read More »

CDC Urges Increased Prevention, Surveillance Of Superbugs

Anthony Brino | Government Health IT | March 6, 2013

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking hospitals and public health agencies to increase their efforts to track, isolate and hopefully slow the growth of an emerging variety of highly antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Read More »

CDC: Action Needed Now To Halt Spread Of Deadly Bacteria

Press Release | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) | March 5, 2013

Data show more inpatients suffering infections from bacteria resistant to all or nearly all antibiotics Read More »

CDC: Some Hospitals Need Assistance Using Antibiotics Properly (And The New Federal Budget May Help)

Maryn McKenna | Wired | March 4, 2014

[...] In an analysis of several sets of hospital data, gathered by the agency and also purchased from independent databases, the CDC said it found that more than 37 percent of prescriptions written in hospitals involved some sort of error or poor practice, increasing the risk of serious infections or antibiotic resistance. Read More »

Dallas Hospital Had The Ebola Screening Machine That The Military Is Using In Africa

Patrick Tucker | Nextgov.com | October 17, 2014

The military is using an Ebola screening machine that could have diagnosed the Ebola cases in Texas far faster, but government guidelines prevent hospitals from using it to actually screen for Ebola...

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Definitive Link Confirms Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Transmits From Livestock To Humans

Press Release | Congresswoman Louise M. Slaughter | March 28, 2013

Today, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (NY-25), the only microbiologist in Congress, reacted to a new study that conclusively identified transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) from livestock to humans. Currently, MRSA kills more Americans each year than HIV/AIDS. Read More »

Do The CDC’s Ebola Precautions For U.S. Hospitals Go Far Enough?

Steven Ross Johnson | Modern Healthcare | August 21, 2014

U.S. hospitals have gone on alert since two American healthcare workers were brought to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta this month after being infected with the Ebola virus while treating Ebola patients in West Africa...

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