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May 16, 2013 Most public swimming pools are contaminated with germs carried by poop, federal researchers found. We swimmers are to blame. Showering before swimming and taking kids to the bathroom often would help.

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May 9, 2013 Infecting mosquitoes with a specific type of bacteria makes the insects resistant to malaria. Now scientists have figured out how to get the mosquitoes to pass the infections on to their offspring. If it can done reliably, it might help interrupt transmission of malaria to humans.

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May 7, 2013 With the new H7N9 virus spreading through China and H5N1 popping up every now and then in Southeast Asia, it's tough to keep track of all the flu viruses. Here's a quick guide to what those H's and N's mean, and why viruses with these letters cause the most concern.

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April 30, 2013 Teenagers and adults as old as 65 should get screened for HIV, new guidelines say. People at higher risk of infection, including men who have sex with men and people who use IV drugs, should get retested at least once a year.

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April 12, 2013 Infections with a new flu strain have increased, with three to five cases reported daily. The virus, carried by birds, doesn't appear to spread between people. Still, health officials in the U.S. are preparing to screen travelers and develop a vaccine.

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April 5, 2013 Sixteen cases of a new flu in China have touched off a major effort to determine what kind of threat it might be. Flu experts want to know where the H7N9 virus is coming from and how it gets around.

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On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

April 2, 2013 Last year there were just over 200 cases of polio in remote parts of Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now, a new $5.5 billion plan aims to eliminate the disease for good by 2018.

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On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

March 21, 2013 After making a comeback in the late 1980s, tuberculosis has steadily declined in the U.S. Last year alone, TB cases dropped 6 percent compared to 2011, making it the first time, the number of annual infections was below 10,000.

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March 8, 2013 Why do people in Boston get the flu when it's cold, while people in Senegal get sick when it's hot? Humidity is a big part of the explanation. But how flu spreads in the tropics and more temperate climates appears to be different.

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March 8, 2013 Texas health officials have quarantined a Nepalese man, who illegally entered the U.S. while infected with a particularly dangerous type of tuberculosis. He traveled through 13 countries, potentially exposing hundreds of people around the world to the pathogen.

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March 5, 2013 Federal health officials warned that a dangerous group of superbugs has become increasingly common in hospitals throughout the past decade. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the bacteria are resistant to virtually all antibiotics, including the ones doctors use as a last-ditch option.

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On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

February 27, 2013 So far, there have been only a few cases of illness tied to a new kind of coronavirus. But the urgency to learn more about the virus was heightened recently when the first instances of person-to-person infection were seen.

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February 22, 2013 In early 2012, experiments that made H5N1 bird flu more contagious caused an uproar. People feared that mutant viruses could escape the lab and kill people. To prevent a repeat, the government has unveiled a policy describing how scientists should study dangerous pathogens and toxins.

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On Morning EditionPlaylist

February 19, 2013 A new virus, which causes severe pneumonia, has killed a British man with a suppressed immune system. This is the sixth death from the coronavirus and the first outside the Middle East, where it emerged last year. Officials say the risk to the general population is low.

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February 13, 2013 Until now, a new SARS-like virus showed little signs of being contagious. Only 10 cases have been reported, and all appeared to originate in the Middle East. Health officials now say a British resident likely caught the virus from a family member in the U.K., indicating that the virus can spread between people.

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