Public health news: December 2006

Restaurant hygiene scores to be published

26 December 2006

The Food Standards Agency in the UK is planning to make publicly available the results of hygiene inspections for all restaurants.  Although such inspections take place regularly at the moment, their findings are not usually published. The proposal - to be piloted in the New Year - aims to reduce the number of individuals who develop food-related gastroenteritis and other illness by using market forces to encourage hygienic practices.

Restaurants must show ratings for cleanliness (Times Online, December 2006)
Food Standards Agency (FSA, December 2006)
Health protection  (Internal link)

First hospital-associated transmission of PVL MRSA in UK

18 December 2006

The Health Protection Agency has reported a small outbreak of a hospital-acquired (nosocomial) variant of methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) in the West Midlands. The Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) positive strain was initially acquired in the community (CA-MRSA) but appears to have subsequently been passed on to other individuals in a hospital setting.  PVL-positive CA-MRSA has been reported in the UK before, but not through transmission in a hospital setting.  The PVL variant usually causes skin infections but can in rare circumstances cause severe complications including necrotising pneumonia in immunocompetent individuals.

Outbreak of PVL-positive community-associated MRSA (HPA, December 2006)
CDR Weekly 16(50)  (HPA, December 2006)
Interim guidance on diagnosis and management of PVL-associated Staphylococcal infections in the UK (CMO, April 2006)
MRSA strain kills two in hospital (BBC News, December 2006)
Health protection  (Internal link)

Malaria and HIV interaction modelled

8 December 2006

A report in this week's Science magazine suggests that the known interactions between malaria and HIV infections (either increasing the susceptibility of the individual to the other) may have had a significant impact on morbidity and mortality in Sub Saharan Africa since the start of the HIV epidemic.  The authors estimate disease interactions may have been responsible for 8,500 excess HIV infections and 980,000 excess malaria episodes since 1980 in a Kenyan population of 200,000.

Abu-Raddad et al, Science doi:10.1126/science.1132338 [?] (Science, Dec 2006)
Malaria 'speeds spread of Aids'  (BBC News, December 2006)
International and global public health (Internal link)

Efficient prion transmission by blood transfusion

8 December 2006

Following the death of a third patient from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) out of a cohort of 23 who received transfusion products sourced from individuals who later died from vCJD, the UK National Prion Clinic have estimated the risk of the remaining individuals developing vCJD as high.  The public health significance of this is that it appears that vCJD may be efficiently transmitted by blood transfusion; the disease is currently virtually impossible to diagnose during life (it is routinely diagnosed at post mortem) meaning that blood from individuals incubating the disease may unwittingly be used for transfusions.

Patients' vCJD risk 'substantial'  (BBC News, December 2006)
Collinge et al, Lancet (2006) 368:2061-7 (PubMed, December 2006)
CJD  (HPA, December 2006)
Health protection (Internal link)

Burden of malaria to be more accurately estimated

5 December 2006

Despite the large global burden of malaria, accurate estimates of local disease burden are sparse, and therefore allocation of funding for malaria control does not always relate directly to local need.  The Malaria Atlas Project (MAP) aims to collate information on the global malaria burden by combining parasite rates (PR) for countries and districts affected by malaria, with information on the local population and prevalence of the Anopheles vector. Writing this week in PLOS Medicine, Hay and Snow of KEMRI (Kenyan Medical Research Institute) and the University of Oxford, describe the project and their hope that MAP will contribute to a more needs-based approach to malaria resource allocation.

Hay SI and Snow RW, PLoS Medicine doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030473 [?] (PLoS, December 2006)
Malaria Atlas Project (University of Oxford, December 2006)
Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI, December 2006)
'Malaria atlas' project launched (BBC News, December 2006)
International and global public health (Internal link)
Academic public health (Internal link)