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Airports Are Gateways For The Spread Of Infections

July 5th, 2009 by Medgadget in Better Health Network
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A team of Canadian researchers analyzed the air traffic patterns during March and April of this year, looking for correlation between departure/arrival cities of passengers and the spread of H1N1 swine-origin influenza. Turns out that the two are closely correlated and confirm that airports are gateways of pathogens as well as vacationing tourists.

Our analysis showed that in March and April 2008, a total of 2.35 million passengers flew from Mexico to 1018 cities in 164 countries. A total of 80.7% of passengers had flight destinations in the United States or Canada; 8.8% in Central America, South America, or the Caribbean Islands; 8.7% in Western Europe; 1.0% in East Asia; and 0.8% elsewhere. These flight patterns were very similar to those during the same months in 2007 (see Fig. 1 in the Supplementary Appendix). We then compared the international destinations of travelers departing from Mexico with confirmed H1N1 importations associated with travel to Mexico, and we found a remarkably strong degree of correlation. Of the 20 countries worldwide with the highest volumes of international passengers arriving from Mexico, 16 had confirmed importations associated with travel to Mexico as of May 25, 2009. A receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) curve plotting the relationship between international air-traffic flows and H1N1 importation revealed that countries receiving more than 1400 passengers from Mexico were at a significantly elevated risk for importation. With the use of this passenger threshold, international air-traffic volume alone was more than 92% sensitive and more than 92% specific in predicting importation, with an area under the ROC curve of 0.97.

Letter to NEJM: Spread of a Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus via Global Airline Transportation

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Why Aren’t We Worrying About HIV Anymore?

May 12th, 2009 by Nancy Brown, Ph.D. in Better Health Network
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Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that there were 40 percent more new HIV infections each year than was previously believed. And yet, a new (2009) survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found that Americans, even those in the high risk groups for HIV, are worrying less about HIV/AIDS. How can this be?

The survey suggests that:

• Fewer Americans consider HIV an urgent health problem.
• Only 17 percent of people aged 18-29 (those traditionally the most sexually active) reported that they were personally very concerned about becoming infected with HIV.
• In spite of HIV rates being seven times higher among African Americans, personal concern about HIV has decreased in this population.
• More than half of people aged 18-29 have not been tested for HIV, in spite of the fact that the CDC now recommends HIV testing for all adults.

The survey also found that misinformation and stigma about people living with HIV still exist.

• Although 44 percent of the 2,554 adults surveyed reported that they would be comfortable with a coworker who had HIV, 51 percent would be uncomfortable having their food prepared by someone who was HIV positive.
• One-third of the people surveyed incorrectly believed that HIV could be transmitted by sharing a glass of water; touching a toilet seat; or swimming in a pool with an HIV positive person.
• 18 percent believed there was a cure for HIV and 24 percent believed there was a vaccine available to prevent HIV.

This is scary stuff and suggests that families, parents, schools, and medical professionals have their work cut out for them – more HIV education, please!

This post, Why Aren’t We Worrying About HIV Anymore?, was originally published on Healthine.com by Nancy Brown, Ph.D..