Public Health
Docs often fall short when prescribing new drugs
|
|
Physicians frequently fail to provide patients with all the information they should have when they’re prescribed new medication, investigators in California report.
To evaluate the counseling provided by doctors, Dr. Derjung M. Tarn from the David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, and associates analyzed data from the Physician Patient Communication Project conducted at two health care systems in Sacramento in 1999.
Patients and physicians were surveyed, and the visits were audiotaped. Altogether, 44 physicians prescribed 244 new medications to 185 patients.
Number of older workers at record high in US
|
|
The number of older workers in the United States is growing faster than any other age group, making it harder for younger job seekers, a study reported on Wednesday.
U.S. workers over age 55 now number 24.6 million, a record high, according to the study of U.S. government labor data by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an outplacement consultancy. About a quarter of those are 65 or older.
“Employers are learning through experience that most if not all of the long-held common perceptions about older workers simply are not true,” Chief Executive John Challenger said in a statement, adding that older workers’ health, productivity and ability to learn are as good as their younger counterparts.
Alteon research collaborator receives funding for diabetic complications study
|
|
Alteon, Inc., (ALT) announced that one of its collaborators, Mark Cooper, MD, PhD, professor, the Baker Heart Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia, has been awarded a grant from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) to help fund a multinational phase II clinical study of the effect of Alteon’s lead compound alagebrium on renal function in patients with type 1 diabetes and microalbuminuria.
An A.G.E. Crosslink Breaker, alagebrium will be tested for its ability to reverse kidney damage caused by diabetes, and to reverse the protein excretion which is characteristic of diabetic nephropathy.
School involvement may lower kids’ health risks
|
|
Getting teenagers more active in school life may lower the odds that they will smoke, drink, use drugs or have sex, a new study suggests.
Australian researchers found that students at schools that started programs of “social inclusion” were 25 percent less likely than their peers at other schools to report that they got into fights, abused drugs or alcohol, or were sexually active.
The programs were designed to help teenagers feel more connected to their schools by encouraging them to get involved in and out of the classroom. Students also received lessons on managing their emotions and communicating with other people.
Majority of Medical Interns Exceed Work Hour Limits
|
|
Nearly 84 percent of medical interns reported that they are continuing to work hours that exceeded the limits of a 2003 national standard implemented by the medical profession, a new study finds. A related study concludes that interns are much more likely to injure themselves mistakenly with a needle or another sharp instrument when working in a hospital more than 20 consecutive hours, or at night.
The studies appear in the September 6, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association and were funded by HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. These findings build on previous research and the growing awareness that sleep-deprived first-year doctors in training (interns) working traditional 24-hour shifts make many more serious medical errors and crash their cars more often than those whose work is limited to 16 consecutive hours.
“These studies raise troubling questions about compliance with standards that were developed to reduce medical errors due to work-hour-related fatigue,” said AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, MD. “Residency programs that don’t comply with these standards could be jeopardizing the safety of both their patients and their interns,” she added.
Researchers Discover Breakthrough in Major Third World Scourge
|
|
Researchers at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), The New Jersey Medical School (NJMS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have discovered a mechanism that provides natural protection against intestinal roundworm infections, which affect more than 1.4 billion people throughout the world, and which may lead to more effective therapies against nematode parasites.
The breakthrough research in host protection against nematode parasites was published in the August 2006 issue of the prestigious journal, Nature Medicine. The National Institutes of Health funded research was conducted at USU and NJMS by Robert M. Anthony, while a Ph.D. graduate student in USU’s Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB) program, under the supervision of the principal investigator, Dr. William Gause. Dr. Joseph Urban, USDA, also collaborated on this project.
Until now, scientists have been unable to determine how the immune system mounts an effective response against tissue dwelling helminthic parasites. The findings of Drs. Anthony, Gause, and co-workers suggest a new model of resistance, involving macrophages. Macrophages have previously been associated primarily with protection against microbes, including bacteria and viruses. The studies reported in Nature Medicine indicate that during helminth infection, macrophages differentiate along an alternative activation pathway that mediates clearance of these relatively large, multicellular parasites.
More companies opening in-house clinics for employees to help reduce health costs
|
|
A “combination of both definable and intangible savings are driving more companies to open medical clinics to cope with ever-rising health care costs,” the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.
According to the AP/Chronicle, savings for companies come from lower doctor fees in addition to improved worker health because the “clinic’s proximity encourages employees to visit doctors and fosters better care of conditions that can be especially expensive to treat when ignored.”
David Beech, a health care consultant at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, said companies with clinics find that their employees make one-third fewer visits to specialists and one-quarter fewer trips to urgent care centers.
World leaders must to do more to address the needs of migrant women
|
|
World leaders must to do more to address the needs of migrant women and to protect them from human rights violations, such as human trafficking, according to this year’s State of the World Population report released Wednesday by the United Nations Population Fund, New Era/AllAfrica.com reports.
The report, titled “A Passage to Hope: Women and International Migration,” examines the “scope and breadth of female migration, the impact of the funds they send home to support families and communities and their disproportionate vulnerability to trafficking, exploitation and abuse,” AllAfrica.com reports (Sibeene, New Era/AllAfrica.com, 9/7).
According to UNFPA figures, nearly half of the 191 million people who migrate each year are women, primarily from countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe (Thomas, VOA News, 9/6).
Mexico’s health system reforms working
|
|
Julio Frenk, Minister of Health of Mexico, outlines the results of the country’s 6-year project of health system reform in a Public Health article in this week’s issue of The Lancet.
Mexico is a middle-income country with a population of more than 100 million. Like most developing countries, Mexico is simultaneously facing the double burden of chronic and infectious disease. Over the past 6 years the country has been a ‘global laboratory’ for health system reform, using the best available scientific evidence to address these complex challenges.
Special initiatives to address health threats such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and child mortality over the past 5 years are showing results: the number of cases of malaria have dropped by 60%, six times more people are receiving antiretroviral therapy, TB mortality has fallen by 30%, and Mexico is only one of seven countries on track to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015-the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG4). The reforms have also led to a 17% reduction in the proportion of male teenagers who smoke, a 17% increase in the use of mammography, and a 32% increase in the number of pap smear tests over the past 5 years.
Hungary child hospitals warn funds to run out
|
|
Hungary’s paediatric hospitals will run out of money from October if government spending curbs, which will cut about 20 percent of their budget, are implemented, hospital directors said on Tuesday.
Hungary is under pressure to cut spending to rein in its budget deficit, the biggest in the European Union at 10.1 percent of gross domestic product, and has announced a raft of tax rises and spending cuts for this year and next.
The measures have slashed the popularity of the Socialist government, which won re-election in April, and changes to health are disliked by voters, 70 percent of whom believe the government lied to win the election, according to a recent poll.
Indian activists plan Coca-Cola, Pepsi blockades
|
|
An Indian environmental group said on Wednesday it would temporarily paralyse the supply of Coca-Cola and Pepsi products in the country after another group said it had found dangerous levels of pesticides in their drinks.
The New Delhi-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology said it would blockade trucks of the two drinks companies for five days starting on November 21 as part of its “Quit India” campaign targeting the global giants.
“We will blockade the movement of their trucks to remind these corporations that it’s not just the government they have to convince, but 1.2 billion Indians,” foundation director Vandana Shiva told a press conference.
WHO urges control over alcohol use, patient safety
|
|
Consumption of alcohol in Southeast Asia, including predominantly Muslim countries, has nearly doubled in the last decade, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
WHO ended a southeast Asian regional meeting in Dhaka on Friday with calls for control over use of alcohol and improving the safety of patients at health centres.
Doctor warns on Everest deaths
|
|
Climbers on Mount Everest need a better understanding of altitude sickness to halt an increase in deaths there, a doctor who climbed the world’s highest peak earlier this year said on Friday.
Andrew Sutherland of the Nuffield Department of Surgery in Oxford, England, said the unofficial death toll on Mount Everest had already reached 15 this year—the highest since 1996 when 16 people died, eight in one night after an unexpected storm.
Writing in the latest edition of the British Medical Journal, Sutherland said climbers often confused fitness with their ability to survive at high altitudes.
State Health Department Web Sites Remain Unavailable to Many
|
|
State health department Web sites have become more user-friendly over the past five years, but too many sites are still hard to read, only available in English and inaccessible to people with disabilities, a new report concludes.
“People in particular need of up-to-date and accurate health care information appear least able to share in the benefits of online government resources,” say researchers Darrell West, Ph.D., and Edward Alan Miller, Ph.D., of Brown University.
Their study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
China debates first anti-drug law
|
|
Chinese lawmakers on Tuesday began debating the country’s first bill specifically designed to crack down on drugs that flood across China’s borders.
“It is important to introduce such a law as China is now facing a grave situation in drug control,” Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Xinfeng, vice minister of public security, as telling the standing committee of China’s rubber stamp parliament.
The country was estimated to have more than 700,000 heroin addicts, Xinhua said, with most the drugs coming from the Golden Triangle area that includes Myanmar and Laos, and the Golden Crescent along the Pakistan and Afghan frontiers.
