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WHO, PAHO release new guidelines on mosquito-borne chikungunya virus

The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), on Tuesday "unveiled new guidelines to help countries throughout the Americas detect and prevent transmission of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus -- a disease which has already infected more than two million people around the world," the U.N. News Centre reports.

2 Mar 2012

GOP presidential candidates look to health policies to highlight differences

Mr. Romney and Mr. Santorum both support the repeal of President Obama's national health care law. Mr. Santorum has criticized Mr. Romney for creating the Massachusetts plan that served as the federal model.

2 Mar 2012

Europe conference to discuss on new HIV indicator diseases

Today, heterosexuals in Europe are at particular risk of carrying HIV for so long that they remain undiagnosed until their immune system starts to fail and they become ill. An international study under the leadership of the HIV in Europe initiative has now revealed that a number of diseases, including herpes zoster and certain forms of cancer, should be on the list of indicators for having HIV - and thus serve to prompt health care professionals to suggest an HIV-test to their patients.

2 Mar 2012

CDC official speaks about HIV, TB work in Africa, Haiti

As part of its series of interviews with CDC staff working on global HIV and tuberculosis (TB) research and development, the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog spoke with Jordan Tappero, "who is currently serving as director for the Health Systems Reconstruction Office in the Center for Global Health, an office opened in response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti."

2 Mar 2012

Longer looks: Romney's evolution on abortion; The birth of the HIV epidemic

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney began his political career as a pro-choicer. In the story he tells, he had an epiphany, a flash of insight, and committed himself thereafter to protecting life. But that isn't what happened. The real story of Romney's conversion - a series of tentative, equivocal, and confused shifts, accompanied by a constant rewriting of his past - paints a more accurate picture of who he is.

2 Mar 2012

Sanders: Dental care crisis is 'next health problem' that needs attention

A report released Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted that more than 47 million people live in places where it is difficult to access dental care.

2 Mar 2012

Bob Kerrey jumps into Nebraska Senate race

Bob Kerrey, the former Nebraska governor and U.S. senator, said on Wednesday he will run for his old Senate seat, raising the hopes of Democrats that they can keep control of the chamber this election year. ... Kerrey is the Democrat's best hope of keeping the Nebraska Senate seat because he is well known and can raise money, Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor at nonpartisan Cook Political Report, told Reuters earlier in the week. But Duffy predicted that some of Kerrey's positions, including his belief "that health care reform didn't go far enough, will not be popular in Nebraska."

2 Mar 2012

Ten physicians indicted in alleged $250 million fraud scheme

As has been the trend in some recent health care fraud cases, the physicians were not the ringmasters. Instead, the indictments allege that they were fronts for others - primarily immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

2 Mar 2012

Ga. House passes bill restricting abortion to limit fetal pain

The legislation would cut six weeks from the time women can have an elective abortion, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

2 Mar 2012

$DXA scan should be done at shorter intervals for women at high risk for fracture$

DXA scan should be done at shorter intervals for women at high risk for fracture

Although a recent study suggests that women with normal results on dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans at ages 67 and older may wait up to 15 years for a second test, a Viewpoint article published today in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research (JBMR) cautions that such a lengthy interval is inappropriate for many adults.

2 Mar 2012

March issue of WHO Bulletin available online

The March issue of the WHO Bulletin features an editorial on global shortages of medicines; a public health round-up; an article on breast cancer awareness; a research paper on interventions for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa; and a paper on the global burden of cholera.

2 Mar 2012

Senate set for showdown on Obama birth control rule

An amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., which is scheduled for a Senate vote today, would allow employers and insurers to opt out of provisions in Obama's health care law to which they object on religious or moral grounds.

2 Mar 2012

Snowe's departure from the Senate highlights ever-shrinking political center

Her surprise retirement also underscores what some say is a rift within the GOP between conservatives who demand allegiance to bedrock principles and those concerned with courting swing voters.

2 Mar 2012

The health law and the states

Stateline reports that some GOP governors are moving very slowly on health insurance exchanges. Also in the news, a bill in the Georgia House would restore child-only plans.

2 Mar 2012

Unpaid caregivers provided an estimated $202 billion in dementia care in 2010

NPR reports unpaid caregiver costs for those with dementia was an estimated $202 billion in 2010 alone. In other news, the income of Massachusetts' elderly covers only 60 percent of living expenses, and at the Mayo Clinic, researchers are trying to learn more about the effects of old age.

2 Mar 2012

Global Fistula Care Map aims to connect women in need with health facilities

"In an effort to coordinate prevention and treatment of fistula across the globe, targeting outside help where it can do the most good," the non-profit Direct Relief International has developed an interactive Global Fistula Care Map, "displaying more than 150 health facilities that provide fistula repair in 40 countries across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East," Miller-McCune reports.

2 Mar 2012

Inexpensive test, treatment for syphilis could save nearly 1M infants annually

An inexpensive test and single-dose treatment could help save the lives of nearly one million infants annually if pregnant women in low-income countries were offered rapid tests for syphilis, experts from the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

2 Mar 2012

Poor neighborhoods linked with worse chronic pain for young adults

Living in a poor neighborhood was linked with worse chronic pain for young adults, according to a study by the University of Michigan Health System, but young black patients faced difficulties with pain management no matter where they lived.

2 Mar 2012

Women need more contraception options that protect against pregnancy, HIV

In this Huffington Post "Black Voices" opinion piece, Vanessa Cullins, vice president for external medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, responds to an announcement by the WHO in February that the agency would not revise its contraception guidelines for women living with and at risk of HIV infection based on a "study suggesting that hormonal contraception increases women's risk of acquiring and transmitting HIV to their partners."

2 Mar 2012

House Subcommittee OKs IPAB repeal

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee voted 17 to 5 to do away with a Medicare cost-cutting panel derided by Republicans as a "rationing board."

2 Mar 2012