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Global malaria R&D funding has received sustained growth, report says

"Annual funding for research and development (R&D) in the fight against malaria has quadrupled over 16 years, generating the strongest pipeline of potential treatments in history, according to a report on Tuesday," Reuters reports.

30 Jun 2011

Federal appeals court in Cincinnati upholds health law

"A federal appeals court in Cincinnati on Wednesday upheld the health-care law passed by Congress last year, saying the law's requirement for most Americans to carry insurance or pay a penalty is constitutional. The vote was 2-1 on the three-judge panel on the key question of whether the insurance requirement exceeded Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The majority concluded that it did not".

30 Jun 2011

Obama health insurance plans upheld at the Appeals court

President Obama's healthcare make over plans sailed through its first hurdle at the federal appellate court, as the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati concluded that the law's insurance requirement is constitutional.

30 Jun 2011

Deworm the World updates website

Deworm the World on Tuesday unveiled a new website, which "is now more interactive and more suited to feature deworming programs around the world," according to End The Neglect blog.

30 Jun 2011

Energy density, portion size and eating occasions contribute to obesity epidemic in the U.S.

Over the past 30 years U.S. adults have been eating larger portions and eating more often, according to a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers.

30 Jun 2011

Christie signs law to cut health benefits; Conn.'s Malloy also seeks trims

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has approved broad cuts to health benefits for the state's 750,000 government workers. The new law requires state and local employees and retirees to pay a much bigger share of their health insurance costs and eliminates their right to collective bargaining on health issues.

30 Jun 2011

100 million Americans suffer pain - many in silence

According to a report released by the Institute of Medicine Wednesday, nearly a third of Americans experience long-lasting pain and too often feel stigma rather than relief from a health care system poorly prepared to treat them. Chronic pain is costing the nation at least $558 billion a year in medical bills, sick days and lost productivity, the report found. That's more than the cost of heart disease, the top killer.

30 Jun 2011

White House backs away from 'secret shopper' survey of doctors

The Obama administration said Tuesday that it had shelved plans for a survey in which "mystery shoppers" posing as patients would call doctors' offices to see how difficult it was to get appointments.

30 Jun 2011

Providers and privacy groups confused over tentative security definition

Doctors, hospitals and insurance companies using electronic health records are required by law to report security breaches to patients and the government — but only after they have done their own risk assessment to determine whether the breaches posed "significant harm" to patients.

30 Jun 2011

Swaziland's supply of antiretroviral drugs running low

"Cash-strapped Swaziland's state hospitals have only two months' supplies of AIDS drugs, the country's health minister has told parliament in an assessment that AIDS patients and activists took as a death sentence," the Associated Press/Seattle Times reports. More than 60,000 Swazis receive antiretroviral medicine at no cost from state-run hospitals.

30 Jun 2011

Goosby discusses global AIDS fight at CSIS event

Ambassador Eric Goosby, the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, said that a recent $75 million pledge from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chevron and Johnson & Johnson could help "eliminate new HIV-infected children by 2015 and keep mothers alive," McClatchy/News & Observer reports.

30 Jun 2011

GlobalPost examines GHI's work to address chronic malnutrition in Guatemala

Guatemala's "vast inequality" helped it land "on the list of eight 'plus' countries in the Global Health Initiative (GHI) that President Barack Obama is focusing on as part of his expansion and revision of how the U.S. is funding and rethinking global aid," GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog reports in an article examining malnutrition in Guatemala, the wealthiest of nations in the first round of GHI plus countries.

30 Jun 2011

NLST: CT screening reduces lung cancer specific mortality by 20%

Current and former heavy smokers can now be screened more effectively for lung cancer. Results from the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) revealed that detecting small lung cancers with computed tomography (CT) reduces lung cancer specific mortality by 20 percent.

30 Jun 2011

Drug companies collaborate with DNDi support to develop drug for African sleeping sickness

Researchers from Scynexis Inc. of Research Triangle Park, N.C., and Anacor Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto, Calif., sponsored by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, on Tuesday reported in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases that a new experimental drug kills the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness in mice and will enter human clinical trials this year, ScienceNOW reports.

30 Jun 2011

N.C. Gov. Vetoes abortion bill; 2 Kansas doctors file suit against Kansas law; R.I. exchange bill caught in dispute

Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed a bill Monday that would require women seeking abortions to wait 24 hours after state-prescribed counseling, leaving the bill's House supporters looking for override votes. The bill would have made significant changes in state abortion policy, changes supporters said would give pregnant women important information about fetal development and abortion alternatives.

30 Jun 2011

One-third of immigrant children, many foreign-born adults in N.J. lack health coverage

One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds.

30 Jun 2011

New technology reduces stress of scheduling chemotherapy treatments

The stress of scheduling chemotherapy treatments has been substantially reduced by a new technology created and implemented by a team of researchers from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia and the BC Cancer Agency.

30 Jun 2011

Global Fund reports mid-year results

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Tuesday announced that programs it supports have distributed 190 million insecticide-treated bed nets to protect families from malaria since 2003, according to mid-year results, a Global Fund press release notes.

30 Jun 2011

Conference examines lagging ethical guidelines in face of expanding clinical trials in developing countries

SciDev.Net reports on the 7th World Conference of Science Journalists, taking place this week in Qatar, where participants discussed how the number of clinical trials in developing countries is surging despite legal and ethical frameworks often not being in place.

30 Jun 2011

S. aureus pneumonia rates in children have doubled over past decade

The rate of pneumonia in children caused by infection with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria has doubled over the past decade, according to a paper in the July issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

30 Jun 2011