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The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has found another person suspected of having rabies. Doctors found symptoms of rabies in a 50-year-old woman, just two days after a confirmed rabies case was found in Britain.

The woman is reported to have contracted the deadly disease after she was bitten by a puppy in India, according to a report in The Sun.

When she returned to London she sought medical treatment, but doctors at the Darent Valley Hospital in Dartford failed to detect the disease and she was sent back twice. The HPA and the hospital have launched an investigation into why doctors failed to detect the case earlier.

The woman is being treated in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London. Hospital officials said the patient poses no risk to the general public.

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"We would like to reassure our patients, visitors and staff that there is no risk to them as a result of this case," a hospital spokesperson told the Guardian.

HPA officials have taken several precautions, including requesting that family members and healthcare staff who had close contact with the patient be assessed and vaccinated against rabies.

Rabies is a viral disease that affects the central nervous system. The rabies virus travels to the brain by following theperipheral nerves. Once the virus reaches the central nervous system, a patient will begin to show initial symptoms, such as headaches and fever, before the disease intensifies and becomes fatal.

Rabies is usually transmitted through saliva from the bite of infected dogs. Every year more than 55,000 people across the world are affected by rabies and almost all of them die from it. The death rates are high in most developing countries, particularly South and Southeast Asia.

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Rabies: Fear Second Briton Bitten by Puppy Contracted Killer Disease in India

Raleigh, N.C. The man facing a potential death sentence in the fatal attack of North Carolina state school board member Kathy Taft comes from a family with a history of depression, alcoholism and other mental disorders, his mother told jurors in his first-degree murder trial Wednesday.

Jason Williford trial (Day 6)

Testifying for nearly three hours, Pam Williford recounted years of her son Jason Williford's struggles with addiction, anger issues, sexual deviancy and his never-ending cycle of failing to succeed in life.

Williford, who has sat stoic with his head down for most of his trial, became emotional twice during the testimony.

Once was when his mother detailed a family mental health history that included bipolar disorder, electroshock therapy, drug overdoses and suicide.

Full coverage: Kathy Taft murder case

He wiped tears from his eyes a second time as she talked about how, despite all the problems she had with him, there were still times that he brought joy to her life.

"He's my son," Pam Williford said. "I brought him into this world, and I do love him."

Prosecutors, meanwhile, wrapped up their case earlier Wednesday after calling 23 witnesses to testify about how, they say, Williford intentionally broke into the Raleigh home where Taft had been sleeping on the morning of March 6, 2010, beat her in the head multiple times and raped her.

She died from her injuries three days later.

Read more here:
Defense portrays Taft's accused killer as mentally damaged

Article posted: 5/23/2012 6:29 PM

With only three Kane County deaths from West Nile in the past decade, the virus has slipped into the realm of being a seldom and mostly silent summer killer. Public health officials would like to keep it that way as monitoring infected mosquitoes is under way.

The year 2010 was the last time a human resident of Kane County died from West Nile. Last year, there was only one confirmed human case of the virus in Kane County. That person survived, and only three other Illinois residents outside of Kane County died from West Nile. Indeed, only 20 percent of people infected with the virus will even show symptoms, health officials said. Symptoms include high fever, headache, stiff neck, stupor, tremors, vision loss and numbness. If these symptoms last several weeks they can cause permanent impacts to a persons nerve system or lead to death.

The Culex mosquito spreads the virus to humans through its bite. Unlike the more common mosquito, the smaller Culex needs long periods of dry, hot weather to breed, officials said.

Despite a relatively wet month, the Kane County Health Departments Environmental Health staff established 10 mosquito trap sites throughout the county to begin monitoring for West Nile. The traps are located in Burlington, Campton Hills, Carpentersville, the west sides of Sleepy Hollow and Elgin, Big Rock, Elburn, Montgomery and the east sides of Batavia and Aurora.

The traps contain a substance that acts almost like a catnip for mosquitoes. Health department staff members collect the traps twice a week to test the batches for West Nile. Four mosquito batches tested positive for West Nile in Kane County last year. Thats a significant drop from the 26 batches that tested positive in 2010.

Some birds, such as crows, blue jays and robins are also potential West Nile victims. No birds were found to have West Nile in Kane County last year.

Residents should still report dead birds to the health department for possible West Nile testing. Department staff members are also available to answer any West Nile questions residents may have at (630) 444-3040.

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West Nile season begins in Kane County

Has your Internet Explorer browser ever crashed while you were cruising the Web? Of course it has. And you've probably then seen a box informing you that an error message was being sent to Microsoft.

Pretty impressive that Microsoft would want to fix the problem by having one of its tech people call you at home.

"We do not send unsolicited email messages or make unsolicited phone calls to request personal or financial information or fix your computer," Microsoft says. "If you receive an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be from Microsoft tech support, hang up. We do not make these kinds of calls."

Ken Slater, 68, of Long Beach, has been getting these calls about once a week for the last few months.

In each case, the caller claims to be with the Windows Maintenance Department and says an unusually high number of error messages have been coming from Slater's computer.

Slater, a former computer engineer at Hughes Aircraft, told me he knew from the get-go that something was up.

"Microsoft doesn't look at all those error messages it gets," he said. "Maybe they use them to improve their products, but they don't respond individually. It was obvious the callers were up to no good."

Slater's suspicions were confirmed when one of the callers provided instructions for accessing his computer's events log. This is a listing of all alerts and warnings generated by the system. They're all real and they're fairly routine.

It was at this point that Slater hung up. But according to various accounts of the scam available online, the caller will then try to dupe the unwary into believing the events log is evidence of a serious problem, probably a virus infection.

The caller then offers an easy fix. You're instructed to go to a specific website Fixonclick123.com crops up frequently where software can be downloaded that will kill the virus and save your computer.

See more here:
Microsoft making house calls? No, it's a scam

Dr. Dave Hnida (credit: CBS)

Actually, its not a new blood test, but the recommendation that every baby boomer have it is new.

That blood test is a simple blood draw for Hepatitis C. And now, the CDC says everyone born between 1945 and 1965 have this test done at least once.

Hepatitis C is one of the liver disease alphabets youveprobably heard of, but dont quite know what it is.

Hep C is a viral infection of the liver that is the No. 1 cause of liver failure and liver transplants. Yet most people who have Hep C dont even know they carry the virus until its too late.

Thats because it can take decades for the virus to damage the liver, and most people feel pretty well as those years roll by.

But if you can diagnose Hep C before it destroys the liver, you can be treated with medication that we didnt have in the past that works pretty well at killing off the virus, or at least keeping it at bay.

We also have Hep C carriers avoid alcohol since it can beat up the liver at an accelerated rate when the virus is in the system.

Which brings us to the big question how do you get Hep C, and why the fuss over baby boomers?

We think people who used IV drugs in the 60s and 70s may have been infected with the virus, even though at the time we didnt even knowC existed.

Link:
The New Blood Test Every Baby Boomer Should Have