Outbreak is a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and written by Laurence Dworet and Robert Roy Pool. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo, Morgan Freeman and Donald Sutherland, and co-stars Cuba Gooding Jr., Kevin Spacey and Patrick Dempsey.
The West Nile virus quickly spread across the United States after the first reported cases in Queens, New York, in 1999. The virus is believed to have entered in an infected bird or mosquito, although there is no clear evidence. The disease spread quickly through infected birds. Mosquitoes spread the disease to mammals. It was mainly noted in horses but also appeared in a number of other species. The first human cases usually followed within three months of the first appearance of infected birds in the area except where cold weather interrupted the mosquito vectors. Since the virus has become widely established in the U.S., an average of 130 deaths a year have occurred.
Kimberly Ann Bergalis was an American woman who was one of six patients purportedly infected with HIV by dentist David J. Acer, who was infected with HIV and died of AIDS on September 3, 1990.
The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story is a best-selling 1994 nonfiction thriller by Richard Preston about the origins and incidents involving viral hemorrhagic fevers, particularly ebolaviruses and marburgviruses. The basis of the book was Preston's 1992 New Yorker article "Crisis in the Hot Zone".
Donald Pinkston Francis is an American physician and epidemiologist who worked on the Ebola outbreak in Africa in the late 1970s, and as an HIV/AIDS researcher. He retired from the U.S. Public Health Service in 1992, after 21 years of service. He lives in San Francisco, California.
The index case or patient zero is the first documented patient in a disease epidemic within a population, or the first documented patient included in an epidemiological study. It can also refer to the first case of a condition or syndrome to be described in the medical literature, whether or not the patient is thought to be the first person affected. An index case can achieve the status of a "classic" case study in the literature, as did Phineas Gage, the first known person to exhibit a definitive personality change as a result of a brain injury.
Vital Signs is a novel by Robin Cook. Like most of Cook's other work, it is a medical thriller. It's about a successful epidemiologist and married woman Marissa Blumenthal. When she discovers that she cannot conceive, her obsession with getting pregnant leads her to investigate the fertility market.
Matthew Lukwiya was a Ugandan physician and the supervisor of St. Mary's Hospital Lacor, outside of Gulu. He was at the forefront of the 2000 Ebola virus disease outbreak in Uganda until he died from the disease.
And the Band Played On is a 1993 American television film docudrama directed by Roger Spottiswoode. The teleplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts, and is noteworthy for featuring both a vast historical scope, as well as an exceptionally sprawling cast.
Virus is a 1995 television film starring Nicollette Sheridan, William Devane, Stephen Caffrey, Dakin Matthews, Kurt Fuller, Barry Corbin and William Atherton. It was directed by Armand Mastroianni and written by Robin Cook and Roger Young, based on Cook's 1987 novel Outbreak. The film was also released on DVD under the title Formula for Death.
HONOReform – is a patient advocacy organization that seeks to promote adherence to injection safety guidelines and increase governmental oversight of outpatient medical facilities. In addition to promoting lessons learned from outbreaks of hepatitis C, the organization advocates for a more compassionate response to large scale medical disasters.
Walter Ian Lipkin is the John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and a professor of Neurology and Pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He is also director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, an academic laboratory for microbe hunting in acute and chronic diseases. Lipkin is internationally recognized for his work with West Nile virus, SARS and COVID-19.
The 2009 swine flu pandemic, caused by the H1N1/swine flu/influenza virus and declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) from June 2009 to August 2010, was the third recent flu pandemic involving the H1N1 virus. The first identified human case was in La Gloria, Mexico, a rural town in Veracruz. The virus appeared to be a new strain of H1N1 that resulted from a previous triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses which further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu".
Selma Kaderman Dritz was an American physician and epidemiologist who worked in San Francisco, California, where she began tracking the first known cases of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in the early 1980s.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a 1987 book by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts. The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease. Shilts's premise is that AIDS was allowed to happen: while the disease is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those initially affected allowed its spread to become much worse.
Mary Elizabeth Guinan is an American doctor specializing in public health, virology, and epidemiology. She is the dean at the School of Community Health Sciences at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Guinan is known for her work in the initial investigation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The book and subsequent film And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts documented her efforts regarding these issues; she was played by Glenne Headly. Later on, she became the first female State Health Officer appointed to the Nevada government. Guinan also became president of the American Medical Woman's Association, after 40 years of membership.
The 1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreak was an outbreak of hantavirus that caused the first known human cases of hantavirus disease in the United States. It occurred within the Four Corners region – the geographic intersection of the U.S. states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – of the Southwestern United States in mid-1993. This region is largely occupied by Native American tribal lands, including the Hopi, Ute, Zuni, and Navajo reservations, from which many of the cases were reported.
Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease occurred in the United States in 2014. Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries. The first was reported in September 2014. Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.
Deborah Susan Asnis was an American infectious disease specialist and H.I.V. clinical researcher, who is credited with reporting the first human cases of West Nile virus in the United States.
Syra Madad is an American pathogen preparedness expert and infectious disease epidemiologist. Madad is the Senior Director of the System-wide Special Pathogens Program at NYC Health + Hospitals where she is part of the executive leadership team which oversees New York City's response to the Coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in the city's 11 public hospitals. She was featured in the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak and the Discovery Channel documentary The Vaccine: Conquering COVID.
