Infectious diseases, epidemiology, and social networks at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS
Last week saw the publication of an open letter to Dr Margaret Chan, Director General of WHO, calling for the postponement of the Olympic Games, due to take place in Rio de Janeiro in August. To date, the letter has been signed by 209 academics and public health professionals. The signatories base their position on…
Following the publication of CDC’s paper evaluating the evidence for a causal link between Zika virus and microcephaly this week, twitter was alight with pronouncements that this link has been definitively established, at least based on the CDC authors’ interpretation of Shepard’s criteria for teratogenicity and Bradford Hill’s causal considerations. That a causal link has…
We’ve been tracking WHO’s prominence on twitter as a source of information on Zika virus and microcephaly. After a couple of weeks of relatively lower prominence, WHO was back at the centre last week, this time being the major source of retweets to dispel rumours that have been making the rounds regarding the possibility of…
This post comes from Dr Neisha Sundaram. Neisha is a cultural epidemiologist and Research Fellow at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Her research focuses on use of mixed methods to study vaccine acceptance. This Flavivirus is a current infectious disease and media favourite, with a lot being said about Zika in the…
We previously discussed the central role that WHO has played in disseminating information on zika virus through social media following its declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on February 1st. It’s been interesting to follow the media coverage on the issue since then. The first thing to note is that there…
There has been much interest in and varying opinion towards WHO’s recent declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern related to the unexpected cluster of microcephaly and its suspected association with the explosive Zika virus epidemic in Latin America. But how does this play out in terms of WHO’s role as an authoritative agent…