Posts about the work of the Health Protection directorate
The National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) has published its annual report, but what is the NPIS, what does it do for public health and how does it work? Director of the service’s Newcastle Unit Professor Simon Thomas explains.
Last year, our Hepatitis C in the UK report, focusing on elimination, showed the first fall in deaths from severe hep C-related liver disease in over a decade. Our latest report suggests that this decline has been sustained for a second …
With the first ever National Clean Air Day taking place this week, we're encouraging people to take steps to reduce air pollution. Individually, it might seem that people’s actions will only make a small difference but if we all do our …
What comes to mind when we think about vaccination? It should be protection, wellbeing, health and achievement. The World Health Organisation states that only clean water (a human right) ranks as highly as vaccination in terms of the greatest impact …
Springtime sunshine is something many of us look forward to. But when the sun comes out in April we need to be careful if at the same time atmospheric ozone levels are low or we have ozone holes.
One of the key tools to help treat disease is having a fast and precise diagnostic method. In a world-first PHE is now using a technique that is set to change the face of diagnosing tuberculosis. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) …
Since new direct acting antiviral drugs have become available, the initial focus has understandably been on their role in averting severe hepatitis C-related liver disease and preventing the early death that can result from this.
From 18th November 2016 we mark the fourth annual European HIV & Hepatitis testing week, an initiative focused on “Becoming aware of your status”, with hepatitis added as a focus last year. In 2015, more than 400 organisations from across …
People are quite rightly increasingly concerned about antibiotic resistant bacteria and the search for new diagnostic tools and medicines, but we must never lose focus on simply preventing these infections from occurring in the first place. Anyone with an interest …
We heard welcome news from NICE recently that a new drug, which effectively treats more genotypes of hepatitis C, has been recommended for use in the NHS. NICE concluded that the once-daily tablet sofosbuvir-velpatasvir was both clinically and cost-effective, and …
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