A Japanese doomsday cult releases a deadly virus and former CIA op Beck Casey races to find a vaccine—in this high-octane thrill ride . . . The first case appears in Miami, initially diagnosed as a common cold—perhaps a mild flu. Then patients start dying. Dr. Carol Mayer begins to suspect a strain she hasn’t seen before, one that has the potential to rapidly escalate to epidemic proportions. As more cases arise, the state of Florida is quarantined, followed by New York, where there is another lethal outbreak. International travel is halted. At the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Dr. Beck Casey, a former CIA agent and expert on the horror that is biological warfare, is drafted for a secret mission. A Japanese doomsday cult has committed mass suicide after unleashing a devastating virus. Casey will need to work with his old enemies—the Russians—to find a cure before it’s too late for everyone, including his own daughter, who’s now trapped in the quarantined city of Miami . . .

A Japanese doomsday cult commits mass suicide after unleashing a horrific epidemic on the world, and physician Carol Mayer joins forces with Beck Casey, a former CIA expert on biological warfare, to find a vaccine before it is too late for all humankind. Original.

Annotation This volume discusses health system policies (including financing global health, quality of care, and strengthening regulatory systems in low- and middle-income countries), as well as the methods and resources used throughout all DCP3 volumes.

This guidance is an update of WHO global influenza preparedness plan: the role of WHO and recommendations for national measures before and during pandemics, published March 2005 (WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.5).

As Eugene Wigner stressed, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in the physical sciences and their technological applications. The role of mathematics in the biological, medical and social sciences has been much more modest but has recently grown thanks to the simulation capacity offered by modern computers. This book traces the history of population dynamics---a theoretical subject closely connected to genetics, ecology, epidemiology and demography---where mathematics has brought significant insights. It presents an overview of the genesis of several important themes: exponential growth, from Euler and Malthus to the Chinese one-child policy; the development of stochastic models, from Mendel's laws and the question of extinction of family names to percolation theory for the spread of epidemics, and chaotic populations, where determinism and randomness intertwine. The reader of this book will see, from a different perspective, the problems that scientists face when governments ask for reliable predictions to help control epidemics (AIDS, SARS, swine flu), manage renewable resources (fishing quotas, spread of genetically modified organisms) or anticipate demographic evolutions such as aging.

Public health officials and organizations around the world remain on high alert because of increasing concerns about the prospect of an influenza pandemic, which many experts believe to be inevitable. Moreover, recent problems with the availability and strain-specificity of vaccine for annual flu epidemics in some countries and the rise of pandemic strains of avian flu in disparate geographic regions have alarmed experts about the world's ability to prevent or contain a human pandemic. The workshop summary, The Threat of Pandemic Influenza: Are We Ready? addresses these urgent concerns. The report describes what steps the United States and other countries have taken thus far to prepare for the next outbreak of "killer flu." It also looks at gaps in readiness, including hospitals' inability to absorb a surge of patients and many nations' incapacity to monitor and detect flu outbreaks. The report points to the need for international agreements to share flu vaccine and antiviral stockpiles to ensure that the 88 percent of nations that cannot manufacture or stockpile these products have access to them. It chronicles the toll of the H5N1 strain of avian flu currently circulating among poultry in many parts of Asia, which now accounts for the culling of millions of birds and the death of at least 50 persons. And it compares the costs of preparations with the costs of illness and death that could arise during an outbreak.

In 1918-1919 influenza raged around the globe in the worst pandemic in recorded history. Focusing on those closest to the crisis--patients, families, communities, public health officials, nurses and doctors--this book explores the epidemic in the United States.