Public Health
Lower Birth Rate and Fewer Girls Under China’s One Child Policy
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Family size, fertility preferences, and sex ratio in China in the era of the one child family policy: results from national family planning and reproductive health survey BMJ Volume 333, pp 371-3
Since the start of the one child family policy in China, the total birth rate and preferred family size have decreased, and a gross imbalance in the sex ratio has emerged, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
The one child family policy has been in force in China since 1979 and was intended as a short term measure. To examine the impact of this policy, researchers analysed data from the 2001 national family planning and reproductive health survey.
UK hospitals not prepared for terrorism
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UK hospitals are poorly prepared to cope with a “major incident,” such as an act of terrorism, say doctors in Emergency Medicine Journal.
Prompted by the events of July 7 2005, in which 52 people lost their lives following acts of terrorism on public transport in London, the authors set out to discover if emergency care departments across the country were any better prepared than in 1996, when they were last surveyed and found severely wanting.
For the current survey the authors telephoned 179 senior doctors working in anaesthesia, emergency care, general surgery, trauma, and orthopaedics in 34 UK hospitals, to ascertain their readiness to respond to a major incident.
Immunisation gaps linked to China polio outbreak
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A group of Chinese scientists has linked a 2004 outbreak of polio in an impoverished Chinese province to gaps in China’s immunisation program, according to a study to be published in September.
In the article, to be published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the scientists recommend more widespread immunisation of China’s population as well as an end to the use of vaccines containing live but weakened strains of the polio virus.
“The outbreak ... highlights the need to carefully reconsider the risks associated with OPV (oral polio vaccine with live virus) use when formulating future polio immunization policies for China,” the researchers wrote in the article.
Bill Gates says protecting against HIV/AIDS can’t be left to men
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Microsoft founder Bill Gates says all the money in the world will not conquer HIV/AIDS unless more progress is made in preventing new infections. Gates says women and other high-risk groups must be given the ability to protect themselves.
The World Health Organization estimates that half of the 39 million people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus today are women, and HIV is mostly transmitted through sexual intercourse between a man and a woman.
Sub-Saharan Africa has 64 percent of all HIV patients and more women are infected than men, while most of children who are infected contracted the virus from their mothers as newborns.
Feeling blue, say ‘I do’
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Lonely? Feeling low? Try taking a walk—down the aisle. Getting married enhances mental health, especially if you’re depressed, according to a new U.S. study.
The benefits of marriage for the depressed are particularly dramatic, a finding that surprised the professor-student team behind the study.
“We actually found the opposite of what we expected,” said Adrianne Frech, a PhD sociology student at Ohio State University who conducted the study with Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology.
Recently patented technology promotes early warning of pandemics
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Rapid analysis and response in the very early stages of a pandemic or bioterrorism event can sharply limit its deadly impact.
Surprisingly, a key early warning sensor for biologically- related illnesses may be the human body itself and Americans self-medicating with over the counter (OTC) treatments for “cold and flu” symptoms. Bracken Foster & Associates, LLC (d/b/a BioSentinel Solutions) has recently been granted a United States Patent for their groundbreaking efforts in the area of retail data biosurveillance. The company may now play a major role in America’s pandemic influenza and bioterrorism preparedness efforts.
Current public health monitoring efforts focus largely on analyzing admissions activity at local Emergency Rooms and doctor offices. While these efforts are important they may not provide adequate early warning. Research confirms that consumers self-medicate with OTC products long before seeing a doctor. By the time enough data is accumulated through traditional means, the pandemic or bioterrorism event may have already taken hold. This delay means that critical time for detection and intervention is thereby lost, threatening thousands of lives.
Helping young children cope with parent’s death
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Watching a parent die of a terminal disease is traumatic for any child, but families can take steps to help them through it, according to researchers.
Age, they say, makes a substantial difference in how children understand and react to a parent’s illness, and a 4-, 7- and 9-year-old all need very different types of support.
Writing in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Drs. Grace H. Christ and Adolph E. Christ describe what they learned in interviews with 87 families of children who’d lost a parent to cancer.
More than 3.8 million face hunger in Niger
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More than 3.8 million people in Niger, or nearly one in three inhabitants, risk running short of food before the next harvest comes in, the U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF said on Friday.
Millions of people face seasonal food shortages every year in West Africa’s arid Sahel region, but the problem has been exacerbated by successive crop failures and a plague of locusts.
Of the 3.8 million people facing shortages this year, some 700,000 are children below the age of 5, UNICEF said in a statement.
Physically active life good for the body and brain
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Exercise keeps the body, and mind, in tiptop shape, according to a review of published studies on the topic. Taken together, the data suggest that exercise and physical activity may slow age-related declines in cognitive function, the reviewers conclude.
Moreover, fitness training may improve some mental processes even more than moderate activity.
“Although we clearly still have much to learn about the relationship between physical activity and cognition, what we currently know suggests that physical activity can help keep us both healthy and mentally fit,” Dr. Arthur F. Kramer told Reuters Health.
‘Social norms’ programs curbs teen alcohol use
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An approach to reduce unsafe drinking and other harmful behaviors among college students may be similarly effective among high schoolers, according to research presented during the recent National Social Norms Conference, held in Denver, Colorado.
“The success social norms programs have had at reducing high-risk drinking and promoting healthy behaviors at the college level has been remarkable, and we’re seeing similar response for high-school settings,” Michael Haines, director of the National Social Norms Resource Center in DeKalb, Illinois, said in a statement.
The social norms approach is based on the idea that much of an individual’s behavior is influenced by his or her perception of what is normal among his or her social group. If that perception is incorrect, as is often the case, and an unhealthy behavior is perceived to be normal, more individuals may participate in that behavior to conform with their peers.
Lebanon hospitals cut off, running out of supplies
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Hospitals were running out of food, fuel and other supplies in southern Lebanon on Thursday and aid groups said fighting and a ban on movement meant they could not reach an estimated 100,000 people trapped in the area.
The U.N. World Food Programme urged a cessation of hostilities to allow aid supplies to reach the needy.
“Above all, we require a cessation of hostilities by both sides to allow humanitarian aid through,” Zlatan Milisic, WFP emergency coordinator in Lebanon, said in a statement. “Our aid operation is like a patient starved of oxygen, facing paralysis, verging on death, if we can’t open up our vital supply lines.”
Common tennis elbow treatments cost-effective
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For relieving painful tennis elbow, a new study has found no difference between the clinical or cost effectiveness of wearing a brace or participating in physical therapy—or a combination of the two.
So the question of which approach is best for treating this common ailment, which strikes 1 percent to 3 percent of the general population each year, remains unanswered, Dr. P.A.A. Struijs of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and colleagues conclude.
Several studies of different methods for treating tennis elbow, including corticosteroid injections and a “wait and see” approach as well as bracing or physical therapy, have been unable to show that any one approach is more effective or cheaper than any other, Struijs and his team note in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
NY police targeted with suspected anthrax letter
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Two police officers were taken to a hospital on Wednesday after opening an envelope that contained a suspicious white powder, the New York Police Department said.
The two police officers worked in the mail screening facility at police headquarters in downtown Manhattan and opened an envelope that contained an “undetermined white powder,” said police department spokesman Paul Browne.
They underwent decontamination at a hospital as a precautionary measure in case the powder turned out to be anthrax, Browne said.
S.Africa seeks to clamp down on sexual offences
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South Africa will introduce a new law to broaden the legal definition of rape in a bid to clamp down on widespread sexual offences President Thabo Mbeki said on Wednesday were a blight on 12 years of democratic gains.
The latest draft of the law comes as South Africa marked the 50th anniversary of a historic anti-apartheid protest by thousands of women, held up as a pivotal moment in the democracy and women’s liberation movements.
The year’s event has put the spotlight on domestic violence and rape in a country that has one of the world’s highest instances of sexual violence.
Portable heart defibrillators prone to recalls
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Portable defibrillators that have jolted thousands of hearts back to life in airports, malls and homes are often subject to product recalls, a decade-long study of the complex devices said on Tuesday.
“The chances that your (automated external defibrillator) would be recalled in any given year was 1 in 20. The chances that your (device) would be recalled during the entire 10-year study period was 1 in 5,” said Dr. William Maisel of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, who reviewed Food and Drug Administration advisories on the devices.
Just because a brand of defibrillator was recalled by the agency does not mean a particular version did not work, Maisel said, adding the agency’s approach appeared to have been “better safe than sorry.”
