In 1994, after a measles epidemic killed 136 people and sickened around 55,000 others, the US government launched a national vaccination campaign to ensure that all Americans had access to preventative vaccines. The initiative served the country over the next decade and a half through outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and other diseases. But now, with cases of infectious diseases once again on the rise, health officials have rolled out a new National Vaccine Plan, the first such update to the strategy in 17 years.

“Many issues in preventive health and the nation’s vaccine program have changed since 1994 when the original plan was issued,” Bruce Gellin, director of the National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, told Nature Medicine. “The updated plan reflects these changes and provides a roadmap to vaccine priorities for the next decade.”

The 10-year effort aims to modernize vaccination rollouts and information distribution through an online portal, called vaccines.gov, and by using electronic medical records and barcodes to help doctors and public health officials better monitor vaccine coverage. The plan also sets new benchmarks for vaccine safety and surveillance, and begins to look beyond the US border by including measures to support international immunization campaigns.

Guthrie Birkhead, an epidemiologist with the New York State Department of Health, says that the strategic revamp was long overdue. “Going forward, this is the kind of thing that needs to be updated more regularly and stay a living document,” Birkhead, who chairs the NVPO’s advisory committee, told Nature Medicine. “Plans are only as good as you make use of them.”

Image: El Alvi, Flickr.

Posted for Laura Starr

What do tough Viking warriors and small furry mice have in common? Not much, I can sense you thinking. Not so. A study from the University of York has shown that where the Vikings travelled, their house mice followed. These little creatures’ descendants might hold the key to revealing the Viking’s movements around the world, a discovery which has attracted eager attention in the British press (Scotsman, Telegraph, York Press)

The study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, revealed that mice on the British mainland shared a common British heritage. Conversely, mice on the Orkney Isles, off the coast of Scotland, had a different genetic make-up. Those mice could be traced back to mice in Norway of the Viking lineage, suggesting that these mice crossed the North Sea hand-in-hand (foot-in-hand?) with the Viking explorers (BBC).

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