Epidemic | featured news

With the nation in the grip of a severe influenza outbreak that has seen deaths reach epidemic levels, New York State declared a public health emergency on Saturday, making access to vaccines more easily available.

Influenza has officially reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with 7.3 percent of deaths last week caused by pneumonia and the flu, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. That is just above the epidemic threshold of 7.2 percent. Nine of the 10 U.S. regions had "elevated" flu activity, confirming that seasonal flu has spread across the country and reached high levels several weeks before the usual time of late January or February. The other region, the Southwest and California, had "normal" flu activity last week.

An AIDS-free generation: It seems an audacious goal, considering how the HIV epidemic still is raging around the world. Yet more than 20,000 international HIV researchers and activists will gather in the nation's capital later this month with a sense of optimism not seen in many years - hope that it finally may be possible to dramatically stem the spread of the AIDS virus.

Washington state's worst outbreak of whooping cough in decades has prompted health officials to declare an epidemic, seek help from federal experts ...

Sales of the nation's two most popular prescription painkillers have exploded in new parts of the country, an Associated Press analysis shows, worrying experts who say the push to relieve patients' suffering is spawning an addiction epidemic....

Haiti's government and its aid partners fought on Friday to contain a cholera epidemic that has killed at least 138 people in the nation's worst medical emergency since the January 12 earthquake.

Many low-income urban areas across the United States have epidemics of HIV, with 2.1 percent of heterosexuals in poverty-stricken urban areas infected with the incurable AIDS virus, U.S. scientists said on Monday.

Phil Plait comments on a recent California Department of Public Health statement that whooping cough "is now officially an epidemic in California." Phil is clear in his criticisms of anti-vax celebrities and other opponents of sound medical science.

Is the U.S. swine flu epidemic over? Federal health officials won't go so far as to say that, but on Friday they reported for ...

For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N.