A public health lesson from 9 / 11: To curb the flu, limit flights Library
The detailed analysis of patterns of influence indicates that the strong dip in air traffic after September 11, 2001 slowed flu spread and delayed the start of the 2001-2002 season, the influence of the United States, the researchers report in the Childrens Hospital Boston. Their findings, published in the September 2006 edition of the 12th online journal PLoS Medicine, suggests that limiting the volume of air could be the critical time during an influenza pandemic to buy. Most previous studies on the impact of air transport to spread the influence of other simulations of activity data are used for influenza.The ban after the Sept. 11 flight was a natural experiment on the effects of flight restrictions on the spread of the disease, said John Brownstein, PhD, lead author
of the study and a faculty member in the program, Computer Science Hospital for children (CHIP ) at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology. For the first time we have demonstrated with real data, spreads, affecting aviation, which suggests that the reduction in the number of passengers could be a flu pandemic to improve. The spread of avian influenza (H5N1) in Asia and Europe, including some probable cases of human transmission is the debate over whether flight restrictions should include the new pandemic flu have intensified.Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. government are considering such restrictions.Using data on influenza mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Brownstein and investigator, Kenneth Mandl, MD,
MPH, a faculty member of CHIP and an attending physician at Childrens Department of Emergency Medicine, measured the rate of propagation of the United States during nine flu seasons, from 1996-97 to 2004-05. During the first five flu seasons, flu mortality consistently peaked on or around February 17. However, the flu season on September 11, 2001, the peak was delayed until March 2, almost two weeks after midnight.In subsequent Pages: [1] 2 3