Health, Outbreak | featured news

As the country's flu outbreak becomes an epidemic, odds are that you've had a few sheepish feelings about not doing something you probably should have: Gotten a flu shot. As of this November, the majority of American adults 64.8 percent, to be exact had not received a flu immunization. This wasn't a surprise to researchers: Flu is a disease with one of the lowest vaccination rates.

It was just an e-mail about a single case of illness, but a gut instinct developed through years of disease detective work made Dr. Marion Kainer sense a bigger danger. Kainer, the director of health care-associated infections for the Tennessee Department of Health, started investigating the day she got that e-mail and hasn't stopped since. She camped out in her office for three weeks, leading a team of state workers as they traced the source of what would become a national outbreak of fungal meningitis.

The number of people infected with a rare type of meningitis tied to contaminated steroid injections has climbed to 105, federal health officials said Monday.

As authorities continue to focus on a potentially contaminated steroid as the source of a widening outbreak of fungal meningitis, some patient-safety advocates are calling for greater restrictions on the type of injection involved.

An outbreak of a rare form of meningitis is likely to grow after sickening 26 people in five states, including four who died, health officials warned... All received steroid injections used mostly for back pain that have been traced back to a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. The pharmacy issued a recall last week and has shut down operations.

The United States seems to be on track to have more measles cases than any year in more than a decade, with virtually all cases linked to other countries, including Europe where there's a big outbreak.