Mental illness, fears stalk Aceh tsunami survivors
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Mental illness, access to health services and the threat of disease remain daily challenges for residents of Indonesia’s Aceh province nearly eight months after it was hit by Asia’s devastating tsunami.
But huge progress has also been made in caring for the more than half a million Acehnese left grieving and homeless by the disaster, says David Nabarro, head of crisis operations for the U.N.‘s World Health Organisation (WHO).
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.
Alcoholism may be in the genes, for flies
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Fruit flies carry a gene - aptly named ‘hangover’ - that appears to help them become tolerant to alcohol. Tolerance is thought to promote dependence, so if a similar gene is found in humans, it might lead to drugs to treat or prevent Alcoholism.
In the journal Nature, researchers report that only fruit flies that carry a functioning ‘hangover’ gene develop a tolerance for alcohol.
Could be that dad is not real father, report shows
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Perhaps one out of every 25 dads could unknowingly be raising another man’s child, a finding that has “huge” health and social implications, according to report released Wednesday.
Exposing so-called paternal discrepancy—when a child is identified as being biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is the father—could lead to family violence and the breakup of many families. On the other hand, leaving paternal discrepancy hidden means having the wrong genetic information, which could have health consequences.
A UK-based research team reviewed scientific research dealing with paternity published between 1950 and 2004 and reports that rates of paternal discrepancy range from less than 1 percent to as much as 30 percent.
Sleep researchers study pilots flying east-west route
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Sleep researchers at the University of South Australia are studying the effects that late-night flights from Perth to the east coast have on the performance of commercial pilots.
Pilots taking part in the study will be asked to wear activity monitors for a week, either side of a late night or “back of clock” flight.
They will also use computers to test their reaction times during the flights.
Monkeys Adapt Robot Arm as Their Own
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Monkeys that learn to use their brain signals to control a robotic arm are not just learning to manipulate an external device, Duke University Medical Center neurobiologists have found. Rather, their brain structures are adapting to treat the arm as if it were their own appendage.
The finding has profound implications both for understanding the extraordinary adaptability of the primate brain and for the potential clinical success of brain-operated devices to give the handicapped the ability to control their environment, said the researchers.
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.
Bone strength may play a role in ‘growing pains’
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Weaker-than-average bones may contribute to the “growing pains” some children experience in their legs, a small study suggests.
Israeli researchers found that some children who complained of such aches had less dense shinbones compared with the norm for their age. The finding, according to the study authors, suggests that relatively weaker bones may make some kids more vulnerable to pain from exercise.
That does not mean, however, that parents should stop their children from being active; the reduced bone strength seen in some children, say the researchers, is probably innocuous. Moreover, exercise helps build bone during childhood.
Russian bird flu advances, Kazakhs say virus deadly
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A bird flu outbreak extended its reach in Russian Siberia and spread to Mongolia on Wednesday, and neighboring Kazakhstan confirmed a fowl virus found in the Central Asian state could kill humans.
Officials said no people had been infected so far, but the highly potent H5N1 strain has killed over 50 people in Asia since 2003. Outbreaks in the ex-Soviet bloc raised fears the virus could infect humans and trigger a global epidemic.
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.
Imported spices give seven children lead poisoning
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Two families who frequently cooked with spices purchased in the Republic of Georgia and India inadvertently gave their children lead poisoning, according to a new report.
When the children’s doctors found the kids had high levels of lead in their bodies, authorities inspected the children’s homes but found no obvious sources of lead. “It was a head-scratcher,” study author Dr. Alan D. Woolf of Children’s Hospital in Boston told Reuters Health.
Bird flu found in Tibet - OIE
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The deadly bird flu virus has been found in the Chinese region of Tibet, the director general of the world animal health body OIE said on Wednesday.
“We just received the information that bird flu has been detected in Tibet,” OIE director-general Bernard Vallat told Reuters.
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.
Religion can trump medical advice, docs say
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Many US doctors believe that the religious convictions of their patients should outweigh their own professional advice when it comes to making certain medical decisions.
When the patient is a child, however, a large majority of doctors say that they, and not the child’s guardian, should have the final say, regardless of the guardian’s religious beliefs.
These findings and others come from a survey of 794 physicians nationwide who answered various questions about religion and its effect on healthcare in the United States in an August poll.
