But public-health officials estimate that between 500 and 700 patients who received blood in the region between 1979 and 1985 may have been infected with the virus.

Still, though the season's flu outbreaks are certainly debilitating to victims and costly to businesses, they are not especially alarming to public-health officials.

The case also highlights a challenge that increasingly worries public-health officials: screening and treating foreign-born health-care workers for tuberculosis.

The choice being posed has set off a quiet revolt among public-health officials across the state.

Many public-health officials argue that such a vaccine should become a basic goal, like finding vaccines for aids, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Some public-health officials from Louisiana are coming to see me, it was set up last week and I'm not sure what it's about or how long it's going to take.

This got many public-health officials into gear, hoping to use modern technology, namely vaccination, to head off a disaster of the magnitude of 1918.

Stark as it is, his assessment reflects the prevailing view among public-health officials.

But when people plagued by cholera are also dying of hunger, a thoughtful public-health official must make Solomonic decisions, he said.

The future of the epidemic, medical experts say, depends in part on how effectively public-health officials use the demographic material.