The number of 13- to 17-year-old boys and girls getting the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine increased slightly for the second year in a row, according to data from CDC’s 2014 National Immunization Survey-Teen (NIS-Teen), published in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Despite these...

The Ebola epidemic that began in West Africa in early 2014 continues today. With more than 27,000 reported Ebola cases and more than 11,000 deaths, the scope has been unprecedented. Equally extraordinary is the scale and duration of the response by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and partners....

[HHS] – Three out of 4 American adults — including 7 in 10 cigarette smokers — favor raising the minimum age of sale for all tobacco products to 21, according to an article by CDC published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. While an overwhelming majority of adults favored the...

Simple tips can help swimmers stay safe in various swimming venues. When most people think of norovirus, they think of people marooned on a cruise ship with raging stomach and intestinal illness, unable to leave their cabins. However, an outbreak at an Oregon lake underscores that swimming can also put...

[CDC] – Current e-cigarette use among middle and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products in Thursdays’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly...

Although local surveillance indicators-such as visits to emergency departments for respiratory illness and percent positive respiratory viral tests from sentinel sites-show influenza is slowing down, influenza continues to cause illness in Los Angeles County. To date, 36 influenza-associated deaths (1...

Flu is more likely to cause severe illness in pregnant women than in women who are not pregnant. Changes in the immune system, heart, and lungs during pregnancy make pregnant women (and women up to two weeks post partum) more prone to severe illness from flu as well as hospitalizations and even death....

[CDC ] – After more than a year of Ebola transmission in Guinea and more than 7 months of transmission in Liberia and Sierra Leone, there is still much to be done to stop the world’s first Ebola epidemic, CDC director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H reported from his second visit to the three affected...

Early data suggest the current 2014-2015 flu season could be severe. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges immediate vaccination for anyone still unvaccinated this season and recommends prompt treatment with antiviral drugs for people at high risk of complications who develop flu. So far...

The cigarette smoking rate among adults in the U.S. dropped from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 17.8 percent in 2013, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. That is the lowest prevalence of adult smoking since the...