24th March 2017
Short weekly update from the CEO of Public Health England (PHE), including:
- Professor David Heymann, Chair of PHE, convened his final board meeting this week as he comes to the end of his term of office
- Today is World TB Day – in England we have seen tuberculosis (TB) cases drop by a third over the past four years
- The use of whole genome sequencing (WGS) to identify different strains of TB faster and more accurately
- The launch of a new interactive Facebook messenger ChatBot, Breastfeeding Friend (BFF), offering personal support at any time of the day or night – to support mums to breastfeed for longer
- PHE and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) are piloting a new national system to help record and monitor the harmful effects of NPS (new psychoactive substances), allowing experts to analyse the information and identify patterns of symptoms and harms
- The Government Science and Engineering profession strategy.
