Results tagged “thehealthdepartment”

The Health Department revealed that cases of the flu have increased 19% since November. Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said urged New Yorkers who haven't gotten a flu shot yet to do so.

From rats ruling a West Village KFC/Taco Bell to Governor Spitzer's downward spiral, from a shock jock's questionable words to an up-and-down year for the MTA (and its riders), we bring up the biggest stories of 2007.

On Friday, dozens of birds fell out of the sky and died on a street in the Great Kills section of Staten Island. Residents grew concerned as, the Staten Island Advance reported, birds "flopped and twitched...as they breathed their last" (video here). One resident said the birds were flying "as if they were drunk" before falling to the ground.

Last week, the I.S. 211 in Canarsie told parents that 7th grader Omar Rivera had died from the antibiotic-resistant staph infection MRSA. Now his mother is suing the city and Kings County Hospital for $25 million over the mistreatment of the 12-year-old.

As more cases of staph infections are being reported (a Newark public school security guard has MRSA, leading the school to be disinfected), parents are growing increasingly concerned about how schools are responding to the epidemic. Yesterday, school officials held a meeting at IS 211 in Brooklyn, the school Omar Rivera Jr. attended before dying from MRSA two weeks ago, to explain how it is dealing with the potentially deadly disease.

After weeks of media attention about the rising incidence of people, especially students, being afflicted by an antibiotic-resistant strain of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, more commonly known as a staph infection, MRSA has struck NYC. The Health Department confirmed that Omar Rivera Jr., a 7th grader at I.S. 411 in Canarsie, Brooklyn, died of MRSA on October 14.

Far from just being unhealthy for you, eating a hamburger these days just might kill you. The Health Department is asking New Yorkers to toss any ground beef burgers manufactured by the Topps company because of possible contamination with a particularly dangerous strain of E.coli. A bacteria normally found populating the guts of cows and the humans that love them, the 0157:H7 variety of E. coli is associated with more than just the nuisance of vomiting and fever and can actually lead to severe diarrhea, kidney damage, and death.

The Health Department released preliminary data that shows HIV infections increasing among gay men under age 30.

The Health Department announced that a 41-year-old Brooklyn woman had tested positive for the West Nile virus. This is the first reported case of West Nile in the city this year. The woman was hospitalized on August 25th, after suffering symptoms like fever, headache, fatigue, weakness and muscle pain.

If you live in Washington Heights, you'll want to stay indoors tonight. The Health Department will be spraying pesticide as a preventive bid against the West Nile virus. The Post reports that the spraying (of Anvil 10+10) will be at Trinity Cemetery between 8PM and 6AM.

Better make sure you've got your insect repellent ready: The Department of Health has found mosquitoes with West Nile virus in Flushing.

amNewYork features State Senator Jeff Klein's letter grading idea for restaurants on its cover. In the wake of the media capturing rats running around a KFC-Taco Bell that had just passed a health inspection, the Health Department has been under fire.

- Going to provide "training specific to assessment of rodent infestation...to more than 100 DOHMH food service establishment inspectors within the next 8 weeks"Um, that last point? Why didn't the Health Department have that before? The Health Department also says it has "performed a series of rodent exterminations on the block of 6th Avenue in Manhattan where the restaurant is located," but we'll rely on people who live there to tell us if they worked.

You know what's awesome in high definition TV? Seeing images of huge, fat rats run around a fast food restaurant in the Village! WABC, WCBS, and WNBC descended on a Taco Bell-KFC location on Sixth Avenue at 4th Street. The restaurant had been open until 11PM last night, and someone called in a tip when they saw rats running around. While people have seen rats in restaurants, they probably haven't seen something that looked this close to the Rats of NIMH. This story also made the Today Show, in a broader piece about "Is food from your restaurant safe?" Which makes us wonder about the pros and cons of e. coli and rats.

Yesterday the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene held a public hearing about banning trans fats in city restaurants. Overall, most people said it was a good thing, with health and diet experts noting the "historic nature of these hearings" and that 22% of heart-related deaths are due to trans fats consumption.

There's a movement afoot to change the city's health code to better reflect dog and dog owner habits. The Health Department will have a public forum and comment period to discuss off-leash hours in parks. Right now, while the Parks Department allows dogs to go leash-less between 9PM and 9AM, the city's health code doesn't allow that, a strange happening that's gotten attention since Queens civic group, the Juniper Park Civic Association, to sue and get off-leash hours eliminated by enforcing the current health code.

Fast food may get a lot less tasty a little less unhealthy. Yesterday, our fair city's Health Department proposed measures to decrease the use of artificial trans fat at restaurants that can't seem to do it for themselves. The new law would limit restaurants to 0.5 gram of trans fat per serving. How much fat is that exactly? Well, a typical McDonald's hamburger contains 0.5 gm of TF and a yummy, yummy Big Mac contains 1.5 gm of the stuff, so its still quite a bit. This comes on the heels of a citywide yearlong campaign, which tried to reduce restaurant use of trans fats through education and awareness. Even though about 20,000 restaurants did actually did reduce or stop their usage (seems like a lot to us), the DOH feels that the program didn't do enough. So the government's stepping in to take care of you.

On last night's WPIX News At Ten, there was the most amazing lead story. The news team touted it as an "exclusive": The AMC Bay Plaza in the Bronx is infested with rats. When Julinda Lee took her children to see a movie, rats were all over them for their food. In fact, one rat crawled up her 6 year old son's leg and grabbed his snack cake! (The son super-adorably told the reporter, "I said, "Hey! No way!") Lee said one rat sat next to them, waiting for food. The Health Department had cited the theater in the past, though a visit two weeks ago showed no signs of rodents. What was hilarious, in the face of the disgusting aspect, is that WPIX 11 listed the citations and they almost looked like movie titles - "Evidence of Mice" - rated R! You can watch the clip here, if you have Windows Media Player - click on "Rodent Theater."

- If you have Tempo® , Tres Pasitos, Cockroach Chalk or any other pesticide that is improperly labeled, seal it in a plastic bag and discard it in a container away from children and pets.Just another reason to get some home repair 101 lessons! Do you have any good pest control tips? Gothamist noticed some bizarre non-cockroach bugs in the kitchen and bath areas, so we got some roach motels and that pretty much ended the problem - and we also try to vaccuum or DustBust whenever we can, because those suckers love hair (it's all protein). A friend mentioned that he returned from a trip and found a mouse that essentially spontaneously combusted on his kitchen floor.

The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygience and the Center for Disease Control says that a nurse with "infectious tuberculosis" exposed around 1,500 patients to the TB. And what's more, she was a maternity ward nurse, so babies were also at risk. According to the NY Times, four babies definitely got TB (they are now healthy), but 1,000 of the patients could not be found. The nurse worked at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital, was was contagious for a period in 2003; apparently the early symptoms sound a lot like a cold...and who really thinks they get TB anymore?

The Health Department is so worried that the Asian bird flu will hit New York that officials meet every two weeks to figure out a strategy on how to save the city. Basically, the fear is that the avian flu is "one crucial mutation away from turning into a monster malady," hyperbole courtesy the Daily News, and the dilemma is whether or not to stockpile the city with Tamiflu, the "only known treatment against bird flu." Well, if the city isn't going to stockpile the city full of Tamiflu, Gothamist will be contriving reasons why our doctors will have to prescribe it to us, since we visit the doctor for our severe hypochondria. And we're going to buy stock in Roche.

City health officials are wondering what's going on at Bronx Science High School, one of the city's coveted magnet schools: Hundreds of students were ill last week. The bathrooms and cafeteria are all being tested, as complaints of nausea, stomach aches, diarrhea, and vomiting have increased. (Hey, that sounds like Wednesday nights at Gothamist!) The Health Department thinks it's a viral illness: The medical director of the Office of School Health said, "It's unusual, and if this were June, I would have thought that this was a pre-planned ditch day. We haven't seen anything this concentrated in other parts of the city." Gothamist doubts that even ditch days would be worth rampant D.

The food vending racket is a big deal: There was a story in April about a Greek family that pays the city $3 million to vend in city parks - $536,100 for two carts outside the Metropolitan Museum fo Art alone. Granted, they are charging about $2 for a 12 oz. bottle of water, but that's still a lot of money. Gothamist on other dangers food carts.

The Department of Mental Health and Hygeine has fined 524 NYC restaurants for violating the new no-smoking laws between May 1 and August 29. The Post reports that 40 of those restaurants are three time violators, which means they could be shut down. Some establishments (like movie theaters) are being ticketed for not having proper signage. Which may be why, as the Daily News says, why Blue Hill was fined as it doesn't seem like a place one would have smoked in pre-smoking ban in our book. The Health Department points out the fact that only a small fraction of the city's restaurants were fined shows many restaurants are complying.