Slide Show: Ebola: Determining the Cause of Death
The World Health Organization (WHO) helps train burial teams in Liberia to collect samples from dead bodies to determine cause of death. Dead bodies can be very contagious when it comes to Ebola, but that doesn’t mean that every deceased person has died due to the disease. In order to speed up the process to know the cause of death of each patient, WHO is working closely with the Liberia Institute for Biomedical Research to train burial teams on how to collect an oral swab from deceased patients safely. Since the last week of October, the safe burial teams of the Liberian Red Cross and Global Communities in Montserrado county, including Monrovia, have been safely collecting oral swab samples from people who have died. The collected swab samples are taken to the Liberia Institute for Biomedical Research for further analysis to find out if the deceased patient had Ebola.
CDC Urges Vigilance: New Recommendations for Monitoring and Testing H5N1 Exposures
July 11th 2025With avian influenza A(H5N1) infections surfacing in both animals and humans, the CDC has issued updated guidance calling for aggressive monitoring and targeted testing to contain the virus and protect public health.
IP LifeLine: Layoffs and the Evolving Job Market Landscape for Infection Preventionists
July 11th 2025Infection preventionists, once hailed as indispensable during the pandemic, now face a sobering reality: budget pressures, hiring freezes, and layoffs are reshaping the field, leaving many IPs worried about their future and questioning their value within health care organizations.
A Helping Hand: Innovative Approaches to Expanding Hand Hygiene Programs in Acute Care Settings
July 9th 2025Who knew candy, UV lights, and a college kid in scrubs could double hand hygiene adherence? A Pennsylvania hospital’s creative shake-up of its infection prevention program shows that sometimes it takes more than soap to get hands clean—and keep them that way.
