HARVARD ProMED

Dear Friends,
There is a cartoon in Sunday’s New York Times that depicts a mother telling her children NOT to eat their vegetables.  The broad reach of the E.coli outbreak that started in the Hamburg, Germany region has captured the attention of us all.  And it serves to show that vigilance is the best defense against outbreaks.
I am writing to ask you to give now during our Spring Internet-athon to keep ProMED at the forefront of this disease surveillance.
Veteran ProMED bacterial disease moderator Larry Lutwick and ProMED co-founder  Jack Woodall took the lead on our behalf as these cases caught the attention of the international news media.  With their public comments in places like USA Today, and frequent ProMED postings, Larry and Jack kept the global public health community and the general public informed throughout the crisis.
Thankfully, the declining number of new cases being reported suggests that this outbreak has peaked – but not before it traveled across Europe and, in the process, brought the  subject of food security to the forefront of issues we as a global community must address.
Food-borne disease presents unique challenges to epidemiologists. There is significant lag time between harvesting a contaminated crop and diagnosing an illness caused by that crop.  Foods may travel around the world and mix with foods from many other geographic areas. Then there is the lag time between those individual diagnoses and the discovery of the diseases’s source.
During that time, both illness and fear spread. And, while it seems now that bean sprouts from a specific farm in northern Germany were the cause of the outbreak, a number of vegetables from a broader area were under suspicion.  Farmers and food vendors from a wide number of countries suffered financial losses as a result.
We believe ProMED can help speed the process of “connecting the dots” when a fast-moving infectious disease strikes. We have done it before, most notably when we “connected the dots” between an outbreak of illness in Asia and what came to be known as SARS first appeared in Toronto. 
With our expert moderators and our network of over 50,000 public health officials, scientists, journalists and others who receive ProMED each day in five different languages in 187 countries, we have the best chance to improve responses at all levels.
But we need your support to do that.  More than a third of the annual operating budget for ProMED is funded with voluntary contributions from subscribers.  Please make a contribution to this appeal by going to our online donation page now.
We also encourage you to ask your friends on Facebook to donate as well.  Simply SHARE a message about ProMED with your Facebook friends.
As a small token of our appreciation, each donor of US $250 will receive a ProMED memory stick. Donors of US $100 receive a ProMED mini-multi tool (for which you will find dozens of uses), and donations of US $50 are eligible to receive a newly designed ProMED-mail mouse pad.
Sincerely,
Larry Madoff
Editor, ProMED mail
P.S. We welcome contributions to support our work from organizations that benefit from the service we provide.  To learn more about institutional giving, contact Amy Galblum at amy.galblum@isid.org