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In Brief
Dr Gillian Morgan has beenappointed Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation. A senior NHS manager, Morgan qualified as a doctor in 1976 before training as a GP, and later moving into public health medicine. Inhalation anthrax has surprised US scientists by not being as deadly as was once believed. Popular wisdom held that inhalation anthrax was always incurable. But an article in Scientific American reports that six out of the 11 people infected with anthrax through this mode of transmission actually survived. The crucial factor appears to be that, in all six cases, the person was treated with antibiotics before they even knew that they were ill. Anthrax is particularly lethal because the early stages of the disease share common symptoms associated with infections such as the flu. Scientists in the US now believe that the way forward to cope with such bio-terrorist attacks is to develop a bio-detection machine that can detect the spores in the workplace. Once alerted, those exposed could then immediately be issued with antibiotics - such as ciprofloxacin ("Cipro") and doxycycline - followed-up with aggressive supportive care where necessary. Reported cases of chlamydia - a sexually transmitted infection that has no symptoms and can lead to ecotopic pregnancy and infertility - have risen from 30,877 in 1995 to 64,000 cases in 2000: around nine per cent of sexually active women under 25.
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