School Notes: School of Public Health
May/June 2016

Cholera epidemic was preventable at low cost

United Nations peacekeeping troops arriving in Haiti in the aftermath of the massive 2010 earthquake inadvertently introduced a cholera epidemic that claimed thousands of lives and sickened many more. New research by the Yale School of Public Health, in partnership with Yale Law School, found that simple and inexpensive interventions—which the United Nations has yet to implement—would be effective in preventing future outbreaks of the bacterial infection. The findings are reported in the journal PLOS Medicine.

With the use of a mathematical model, the Yale team found that an antibiotic prophylaxis starting a week before peacekeepers left their homes was an effective strategy, reducing the probability of an epidemic by more than 90 percent, at a cost well below $1 a person. Screening for cholera infection reduced the probability by more than 80 percent, at about $2.50 a person. 

Country’s poor are hit hardest by flu

People in poorer American neighborhoods face higher rates of hospitalization from influenza, a YSPH study has found. According to study results, residents of neighborhoods with a high number of people living below the poverty line are twice as likely to be hospitalized for influenza as their wealthier peers. This trend spans all ages, races, and ethnic groups, said James Hadler, clinical professor of epidemiology. “We have data by age, by sex, by race, and by ethnicity, but we didn’t have data on socioeconomic status for any of the problems that we were working on,” he said, adding that three factors contributed to the team’s findings: low rates of influenza vaccination in underserved communities; high rates of household crowding; and high rates of underlying medical conditions, such as asthma.

YSPH researcher will serve on Zika task force

Yale School of Public Health professor Albert Ko will serve on an international panel that will address the emerging threat posed by the Zika virus. The Zika Task Force, launched by the Global Virus Network, has been charged with accelerating research, testing, treatment, and developing prevention tools. Since the virus was identified in Brazil in early 2015, Ko has been working with local colleagues to determine if the virus is responsible for a hike in the number of cases of microcephaly (a birth defect marked by an abnormally small head).