The Briefing

An Independent Inquiry is now investigating the cause of the water-borne outbreak caused by Campylobacter in Havelock North. This blog challenges the inquiry to investigate 'up-stream', on the scale of water catchments, agricultural economies and climate systems.

A just published modelling study by the BODE3 Team has reported that “home safety assessment and modification” (e.g., adding hand rails and removing tripping hazards in homes) appears to be a very cost-effective health sector intervention. But even more cost-effective was targeting this intervention to older people with previous injurious falls.

To help explain the concept of ‘herd immunity’, The Guardian Newspaper has produced a clever online simulator of measles spread. We comment on why this simulator is informative and how it also demonstrates chance effects in the spread of infectious diseases.