The Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government, in partnership with Australia's Chief Medical Officer (CMO) and the Department of Health, released a new report showing that targeting high-prescribing physicians with a letter from the CMO helped lower the number of antibiotic prescriptions within 6 months.
After officials received more test results from suspected cases, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) dropped their Ebola case count to 55, including 28 deaths. There are now 38 confirmed cases, 14 probable cases, and 3 suspected cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in an update.
The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released new data showing that national efforts to reduce hospital-acquired conditions, including adverse drug events and infections, helped prevent an estimated 8,000 deaths and save $2.9 billion from 2014 through 2016.
Chinese scientists yesterday reported on the emergence of extensively drug-resistant (XDR) Escherichia coli carrying both New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM) and MCR-1 genes in chickens at slaughter in China and detailed the features of two novel NDM-carrying plasmids.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) recorded a new case of MERS-CoV yesterday in Sakakah, a city in the northwestern corner of the country.
The study dashes hopes that combining piperacillin and tazobactam might help prevent overuse of carbapenems.
Chinese and Swedish researchers have detected the colistin resistance gene MCR-5 in an Aeromonas hydrophila isolate from pigs in rural China, according to a study today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy.
Texas researchers who analyzed data from 230 US hospitals discovered that patients with a urine culture taken on the day of hospital admission receive more days of antibiotics and have a longer hospital stay than do patients who do not have a urine culture, according to their study yesterday in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE).
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) reported five new cases of MERS-CoV in updated reports released over the weekend.
The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health (MOH) recorded two new cases of MERS-CoV in the past several days.
On Dec 30, a 55-year-old expatriate man from Khamis Mushait was diagnosed as having MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) after presenting with symptoms. He is in critical condition. The man's source of infection is listed as "primary," meaning it's unlikely he contracted the virus from another person.