Public Health
Malaria on the increase in the UK
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A huge rise in the numbers of UK residents travelling to malaria endemic areas, combined with a failure to use prevention measures, has significantly increased cases of imported falciparum malaria in the UK over the past 20 years, according to a study published on BMJ.com.
Between 1987 there were 5120 reported cases of the potentially fatal faliciparum malaria, increasing to 6753 in 2002ǰԃ. These findings highlight the urgent need for health messages and services targeted at travellers from migrant groups visiting friends and family abroad, say the authors.
Malaria acquired in one of the 150 countries where it is endemic and then imported into non-endemic countries accounts for a significant proportion of largely preventable disease and death in Europe every year.
On-the-Job Weight Loss: Worksite Programs Work
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Employer-sponsored programs for weight loss are at least partially effective at helping workers take off extra pounds, according to a new review of recent studies.
“For people who participate in them, worksite-based programs do tend to result in weight loss,” said co-author Michael Benedict, M.D. Intensity matters, he found. “The programs that incorporated face-to-face contact more than once a month appeared to be more effective than other programs.”
Since most employed adults spend nearly one-half of their waking hours at work, such programs could have enormous potential in making a dent in the obesity epidemic, according to Benedict, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Health, Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.
Teen “pregnancy pact” shocks Massachusetts city
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A Massachusetts city is investigating an apparent teenage “pregnancy pact” that has at least 17 high-school girls expecting babies, four times more than last year, including many aged 16 or younger.
A high school health clinic in the city of Gloucester became suspicious after seeing a surge in girls seeking pregnancy tests. Local officials said on Thursday nearly half of those who became pregnant appear to have entered into a pact to have their babies together over the year.
“Some girls seemed more upset when they weren’t pregnant than when they were,” Gloucester High School principal Joseph Sullivan told Time magazine, which broke news of the pact on its Web site.
Higher co-payments reduce use of antidepressants
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As they struggle to contain skyrocketing medication costs, health plans across the U.S. have responded by implementing multi-tiered formularies requiring higher copayments for ‘non-preferred’ medications. New research from Brandeis University published in the Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economics suggests that the prevalent multi-tiered formulary system does impact how patients fill anti-depressant prescriptions, even though antidepressants have certain characteristics that can make it difficult for patients to switch medications.
The study evaluated claims and eligibility files for a large nonprofit managed care organization that started introducing its three-tier formulary in 2000. The sample included 109,686 individuals. The study included a comparison group in the same health plan, consisting of members who did not yet have a three-tier formulary. Under the new formulary, certain brand drugs were classified as ‘non-preferred’ and started costing the patient $25 per prescription instead of $10.
Hidden deaths of the world’s newborn babies
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Improving newborn survival rates takes more than money, says Joy Lawn. But how do you get disparate partners, countries and donors working together effectively?
Q: You and your colleagues produced the Lancet neonatal series in 2005 helping to put 4 million annual newborn deaths on the global agenda. Why were these deaths previously invisible?
A: Despite the huge numbers, newborn deaths were and to some extent still are invisible at many levels. This starts in the homes of the poor where most of these deaths occur and goes right up to the corridors of power. More than two-thirds of these 4 million newborns die in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, often in the first days of life, without a name let alone a birth certificate. There have been initiatives such as the Safe Motherhood Initiative, which was most concerned for the mother, while the child survival campaign was primarily for the older child. The newborn has fallen between the cracks. However, if all partners worked together effectively, if roles were clear and services were integrated, this would not be the case.
Q: Neonatal mortality was a neglected issue until 2005. How has this changed and how do you respond to criticism of some of the initiatives?
Americans believe wounded Iraq war veterans are not receiving high quality medical care in US
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As part of the ongoing poll series, Debating Health: Election 2008, a recent survey by the Harvard Opinion Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harris Interactive® finds that a majority of Americans (62%) believe that wounded Iraq war veterans do not receive high quality care in military and Veteran’s Administration (VA) hospitals once they return to the U.S. Similar majorities feel that veterans requiring rehabilitation care and mental health care do not receive high quality care (62% and 65% respectively). This survey follows a number of recent news stories on the quality of health care provided to Iraq war veterans.
Americans who have a close family member who is serving or has served in the military are just as likely as Americans with no military connection to say that wounded Iraq veterans do not receive high quality care in military and VA hospitals (64% versus 59%). These Americans with a military connection are slightly more likely than other Americans to say Iraq veterans do not receive high quality rehabilitation (65% versus 57%) and mental health care (68% versus 61%).
The quality of medical care that wounded soldiers receive on the front lines in Iraq has gotten more favorable news coverage than the care that war veterans receive in the U.S. Many reports have noted that wounded soldiers who would not have survived their injuries in previous wars are surviving today due to the high quality medical care they receive in Iraq. Although more Americans feel that wounded soldiers get high quality care on the front lines in Iraq (47%) than they do in military hospitals once they return to the U.S. (31%), a nearly equal percentage (43%) feel they do not get high quality care on the front lines. Ten percent said they do not know.
U.S. reports 5 baby deaths from usually mild virus
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A virus that typically causes a mild infection killed at least five babies in the United States last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.
The virus was involved in an unusually high number of severe infections in newborns last year, but the CDC said it was not certain of the reason.
Coxsackievirus B1, or CVB1, is part of a group of viruses called enteroviruses. It usually does not cause serious infections but can cause more severe and potentially life-threatening illness in newborns.
Byrne, Feist join ‘Red Hot’ AIDS compilation
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David Byrne will join indie rockers including Feist, Sufjan Stevens and the Decemberists on the new “Red Hot” charity album for AIDS research.
The former Talking Heads frontman will collaborate on two tracks with the Dirty Projectors, a combo headed by prolific singer/songwriter Dave Longstreth.
“I’d been told more than once that we should all work together, and it seems the suggestion was fated to be realized,” Byrne wrote on his blog (http://journal.davidbyrne.com), adding that he revived lyrics he wrote in “maybe ‘75 or ‘76” for the project.
Lonely hearts with disease, STDs, find love online
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With scores of dating Web sites catering for the bold and the beautiful, a growing number of niche sites are emerging for less fortunate lonely hearts, those struggling with mental or physical problems.
Australian matchmaker Sara Fantauzzo came up with http://www.SpecialSomeone.com.au to link up people with special needs after watching her autistic brother struggle to make friendships.
“I’ve grown up with a brother with a very mild disability and I’ve seen him very low and very depressed as a direct result of rejections,” Melbourne-based Fantauzzo, who set up the Web site with her husband Otis nearly a year ago, told Reuters.
Alcohol, inexperience factors in canoeing deaths
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Canoeists and kayakers who want to enjoy the water while staying safe should wear lifejackets, get some training, and stay away from alcohol, suggest health officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Among the 38 people who died while participating in paddle sports in Maine between 2000 and 2007, more than two-thirds weren’t wearing lifejackets and 5 (of 31 tested) had blood alcohol levels above the legal limit for boating and driving in the state, Dr. Jon Eric Tongren of the CDC and colleagues found.
In 2006, paddle sports were the fastest-growing part of the recreational boating market, the researchers note in the CDC publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Smokers quit in groups
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When smokers decide to kick the habit, odds are they are not alone in making that decision. New research shows that social ties play a key role in smoking behavior and if a close associate or relative, or even a distant one, stops smoking, a person’s odds of quitting increase.
“We’ve found that when you analyze large social networks, entire pockets of people who might not know each other all quit smoking at once,” Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, from Harvard Medical School in Boston, who was involved in the study, said in a statement.
There has been a marked drop in smoking prevalence in the US and “network phenomena” are likely to be involved in this trend, Christakis and co-investigator Dr. James H. Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, note a report in Thursday’s issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Medicare may broaden obesity surgery payment
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The U.S. Medicare program may expand reimbursement for bariatric surgery for the obese, in light of a study that found the treatment can help reverse diabetes, the agency said on Monday.
Recent research found the surgery can completely reverse type 2 diabetes, a metabolic condition spurred by weight gain and suffered by millions of Americans.
Medicare, the government health plan for the nation’s 44 million elderly, “will assess the nature of the scientific evidence supporting surgery for the treatment of diabetes,” the agency said on its Web site.
28 million women at risk of unwanted pregnancy
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Each year, half of American women who would rather not get pregnant will have an unplanned pregnancy, often because they failed to use their contraceptive properly or forgot to use it at all, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
As a result, 28 million women in the United States are at risk for an unintended pregnancy, according to the study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute in New York.
They found one in four women is very likely to become pregnant because of inconsistent contraception use.
Poor diet undermines health of northern Afghans
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Lunch at Gada Mohammed’s single-room mud-brick house in Afghanistan’s far north is the same as most other meals: dry bread washed down with tea.
“We make our living collecting and selling this herb,” said Mohammed, a 45-year-old father of four, pointing to a pile of roots on the floor of his smoke-blackened room.
Badakhshan, bordering Tajikistan to the north, is far from the fighting with Taliban insurgents in the south, but is still one of Afghanistan’s poorest provinces. Those that fare worst live in the mountains where they are snowed in for up to six months of the year.
Job characteristics may be linked to dementia risk
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High-complexity jobs that primarily involve work with people or things are associated with a reduced risk of developing dementia, a Canadian study suggests.
Dr. Edeltraut Kroger and colleagues found the risk of dementia may be 34 percent lower in occupations like teaching that require highly complex interactions with people, as opposed to jobs requiring lower levels of people interaction.
The investigators also observed about a 28 percent reduced risk for dementia among people with jobs that involve high levels of complex interactions with things, such as farming. However, this association was “less reliable, and the result we observed has not been confirmed by other studies,” Kroger told Reuters Health.
