Public Health
Eritea wants US help despite asking USAID to go
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Eritrea voiced hope on Wednesday that its request for the US government’s overseas development agency to leave the poor Red Sea state would not bring the end of aid from its biggest food donor.
In July, Eritrea asked the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to stop working in the drought-stricken country, one of the most food aid dependent nations in the world, saying it was uncomfortable with the agency’s activities.
British doctors’ performances beat expectations
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Britain’s family doctors are delivering a high quality service that beats expectations, health experts said after the launch on Wednesday of a new database providing details of how GP surgeries are performing.
The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) measures general practitioners (GPs) performances on a range of issues such as appointment times and tackling common chronic diseases like Diabetes Mellitus or coronary Heart Disease.
Dutchwoman, “world’s oldest person”, dies aged 115
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The world’s oldest person on record, a Dutchwoman who swore by a daily helping of herring for a healthy life, died on Tuesday aged 115.
Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a former needlework teacher born on June 29, 1890, died in her sleep at a nursing home in the northern Dutch town of Hoogeveen.
Trafficking of women, children on rise worldwide-UN
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Human trafficking is on the rise worldwide, with millions of women and children ending up as sex slaves, beggars and mine laborers each year, U.N. officials said on Tuesday.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, speaking at an Asia-Pacific human rights conference in Beijing, called trafficking in humans horrendous.
California files suit on french fry health warning
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California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has filed a lawsuit to force top makers of potato chips and french fries to warn consumers about a potential cancer-causing chemical found in the popular snacks.
In a complaint filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Lockyer sought an injunction to stop restaurant chains such as McDonald’s Corp. and Wendy’s International Inc. from selling french fries without some form of warning.
US retirees still wary of Medicare drug plan
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Most older Americans say they still do not understand how Medicare’s new prescription drug coverage will work and they are split over whether it will be worthwhile, a study released on Thursday found.
In a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of people aged 65 and up, 60 percent said they did not understand the new benefit, which opens for enrollment in November and is scheduled to start in January.
World health leaders tackle hospital errors
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A global initiative to stop hospital errors will focus on the old dictum “first, do no harm” by encouraging health care workers to clean up their acts, health officials said on Tuesday.
They said hospital employees all over the world should heed the advice attributed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, and the best way to do that is improve hygiene habits.
Studies find racial differences in US health care
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Racial disparities still exist in U.S. medical care despite years of attempts to reduce them, with black women typically being the least likely to get the care they need, research published on Wednesday shows.
“For most of the areas studied, disparities between white patients and black patients have not substantially improved during the past decade or so,” said Nicole Lurie in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, where the findings appear.
U.S. abortion rights group pulls anti-Roberts ad
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A leading U.S. abortion rights advocacy group pulled a controversial television advertisement on Thursday that accuses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of supporting an abortion clinic bomber and excusing violence.
NARAL Pro-Choice America withdrew the advertisement after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter complained in a letter that it was a blatantly unfair attack on Roberts for his participation, as deputy solicitor general, in an abortion clinic case.
China premier under fire over rising medical costs
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, under fire from political rivals over the disintegration of medical welfare, has pledged to expand a pilot programme that provides subsidised care to rural residents, sources and state media said.
The vow came days after a 42-year-old farmer with terminal lung cancer set off a home-made bomb aboard a bus in the southeastern province of Fujian in a suicide attack one political source said was linked to his inability to afford treatment.
Canada boosts crystal meth penalty to life in jail
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Struggling to head off a growing threat of crystal meth use, the Canadian government announced on Thursday that traffickers in the easily made illegal drug could now face life in prison.
The use of methamphetamine—known as crystal meth, crank, speed, glass or ice—has mushroomed in Western Canada, as well as in the U.S. Midwest and West. It is also spreading in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Deaths fuel fears of post-flood epidemic in Bombay
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Hospitals in Bombay had admitted hundreds of people with fever and reported 26 deaths by Thursday, an official said, rekindling fears of an epidemic in India’s financial capital weeks after the worst floods in history.
More than 1,000 people were killed in the western Indian state of Maharasthra two weeks ago after record rain in the region triggered landslides and floods that brought Bombay, its capital, to a halt for a few days.
A municipal spokesman said 250 people had been admitted to hospitals, but played down concerns about an epidemic in and around India’s largest city, which is home to more than 15 million people.
Britain’s health inequality gap widening
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Health inequalities are widening in Britain despite government efforts to narrow the gap, a group of independent experts said on Thursday.
Life expectancy in the wealthiest areas is seven to eight years longer than in the poorest areas despite improvements in the health of the population as a whole, the Scientific Reference Group on health inequalities said in a study.
“This report gives no grounds for complacency that enough has yet been done,” the group’s chairman, Professor Sir Michael Marmot, said.
Mystery illness kills 21 miners in Congo diamond town
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A mysterious illness sweeping through a remote town at the centre of a diamond rush in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 20 miners and infected nearly 1,000, a U.N. aid worker said on Wednesday.
U.N. agencies, aid workers and government health officials are making their way to Libayakuyasuka, some 84 km (52 miles) northeast of Punia, a town in the north of Maniema province, where 10,000 miners are digging in a new mine.
Medicare drug benefit to cost less, official says
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Medicare’s controversial new drug benefit for seniors may end up costing less than projected because bids from insurers and others who will provide it have been very competitive, federal officials said on Tuesday.
Some seniors who sign up for the program may not even pay any premiums at all, and it will cost both beneficiaries and the government less than expected, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mark McClellan said.
