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Queensland University of Technology (QUT) researchers have found the habit of Googling for an online diagnosis before visiting the doctor can be a powerful predictor of infectious diseases outbreaks. Now studies by the same Brisbane-based researchers show combining information from monitoring internet search metrics such as Baidu (China's equivalent of Google), with a web-based infectious disease alert system from reported cases and environmental factors hold the key to improving early warning systems and reducing the deadly effects of dengue fever in China.

Ambulance chasing is a discouraged practice in the U.S. – but in Liberia it’s exactly what Neil, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disease detective in the Center for Global Health, had to do as part of his efforts to stop the spread of Ebola at its source.

By all accounts, Ebola-the disease that has long struck fear in us as images of suffering in sub-Sahara Africa fill our TV screens and movies depict uncontrolled outbreaks-has now become a very real pandemic that is wiping out villages and rapidly crossing borders. As I write this article, the virus has killed nearly 5,000 people with thousands more infected. The United Nations estimates that it will need more than $1 billion to fight the epidemic and President Obama has already begun sending an estimated 4,000 U.S. military personnel and many more military medical staff to train the thousands of healthcare providers who will be needed to care for patients and prevent transmission of the disease.

Two approaches to infection prevention that are being used in hospitals today bear continued scrutiny as multidrug-resistant organisms proliferate, emphasize experts writing in a recent commentary in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. Edward Septimus, MD, of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and of Hospital Corporation of America in Nashville, Tenn. and his co-authors urge clinicians to carefully consider the clinical advantages and cost-related disadvantages to each strategy.

The topic of antimicrobial stewardship is gaining momentum, both in and outside the healthcare field. Experts are looking at antimicrobial stewardship programs in hospitals and other care facilities as the next step in combatting the development of multidrug-resistant infections.