On Sunday’s airing of the Outbreak News This Week Radio Show, I had the opportunity to talk to two State Public Health Veterinarians about the zoonotic infections hantavirus and tularemia.
During the first segment, host Robert Herriman talked to the New Mexico Department of Health’s Public Health Veterinarian, Dr. Paul Ettestad. Dr. Ettestad gave a thorough overview of the virus, discussed some of the history of the virus in the US, why hantavirus is more prevalent out west, times of the year when hantavirus peaks and prevention methods.
About ten days ago, New Mexico reported two hantavirus cases, one being a fatal case.
At the bottom of the hour, I was joined by the Colorado Department of Health Public Health Veterinarian, Dr. Jennifer House. Colorado has seen a spike in both human and animal tularemia in 2014 and Dr. House came on the show to give an overview of tularemia, discuss the spike and the history of tularemia in Colorado and prevention methods for avoiding tularemia.
Other topics Herriman looked at on the show included a look at the CBC News video, Vaccines: Shot of Confusion. In the video, they look at anti-vaccine movement in Canada and look at what homeopaths say about vaccines when parents took their children to see them.
He talked about TIME magazine’s Person of the Year–The Ebola Fighters, the newly approved Gardasil 9 vaccine, the latest World Malaria Report 2014, and the NHL mumps outbreak.
Listen to the complete podcast here:
The Outbreak News This Week Radio Show airs every Sunday at 5 pm ET in the Tampa Bay area on 860 AM WGUL and online at HERE
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