Health Care News and Research

RSS

Record morbidity in Africa from Borreliosis, or relapsing fever

Borreliosis, or relapsing fever, is a disease provoked by bacteria of the genus Borrelia. Two of these are encountered in tropical Africa: Borrelia crocidurae in the Sahara and Sahel, Borrelia duttoni in East Africa.

4 Sep 2006

Improvements needed in China heart care

Inequitable and cost-inefficient allocation of scarce resources has been found to be a key problem in the management of heart attack and severe angina patients in China, according to the results of a study announced today at the World Congress of Cardiology in Barcelona, Spain.

4 Sep 2006

Women have a greater risk of death from long-term oxygen therapy compared with the men

Among patients on long-term oxygen therapy for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), women are more likely to die from the disease than men.

4 Sep 2006

Eastern Europe, Middle East has highest rates of cardiovascular disease deaths

Eastern European and Middle Eastern patients with diseased blood vessels have the highest rates of heart attacks and strokes, and the highest rates of death from those conditions, compared with similar patients in other regions of the world.

4 Sep 2006

Sanofi pasteur begins shipping influenza vaccine

Sanofi pasteur, the vaccines business of the sanofi-aventis Group, began shipping influenza vaccine (Fluzone, Influenza Virus Vaccine) to the U.S. market for the 2006-2007 season.

4 Sep 2006

Debate over specialty hospitals will continue

"The battle over so-called specialty hospitals is set to make headlines again" because of a recent CMS decision, a Washington Times editorial states (Washington Times, 8/31).

4 Sep 2006

Palestinian Health Ministry facing growing financial and humanitarian crisis

The Palestinian Health Ministry is facing a growing financial crisis as well as a humanitarian crisis, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned ahead of the Stockholm donor conference on the humanitarian situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

4 Sep 2006

More fat people than starving in the world

At an International Congress on Obesity, in Sydney, Australia, chairman Professor Paul Zimmet has said that obesity is no longer a problem limited to America and other developed countries but has reached the scale of a global epidemic.

4 Sep 2006

Obstetric fistula: Guiding principles for clinical management and programme development

The World Health Organization (WHO) Goodwill Ambassador for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health and supermodel Liya Kebede has highlighted the plight of millions of women and girls living with obstetric fistula.

1 Sep 2006

Kansas AG Kline says request for late-term abortion records motivated by protecting children; opponent says it violated medical privacy

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline (R), who is running for re-election in November, on Friday said he not was trying to further a political agenda but to protect children when he sought access to the medical records of 90 women and girls who in 2003 underwent late-term abortions at two clinics, the Dodge City Daily Globe reports.

1 Sep 2006

U.S. health care system offers good value in terms of life expectancy gains despite rising costs

U.S. residents have benefited from increases in health care costs since 1960 through increased life expectancy, according to a study published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the AP/Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

1 Sep 2006

Next Massachusetts Governor will be responsible for implementing law requiring health insurance coverage

While Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has earned "widespread praise" for the state's "first-of-its-kind" law requiring all state residents to have health insurance by July 2007, the next governor will "shoulder much of the responsibility for whether the law succeeds," the Boston Globe reports.

1 Sep 2006

UNC Health Care announces new efforts to inform low-income patients about financial assistance

The UNC Health Care system in North Carolina on Tuesday announced plans to begin new efforts to inform low-income patients about financial assistance through a revised telephone message, signs and a financial aid hotline, the Raleigh News & Observer reports (Stancill, Raleigh News & Observer, 8/30).

1 Sep 2006

Md. Senatorial Candidate Mfume touts single-payer health care system

Former Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.), a candidate for Maryland's Democratic Senate nomination, on Wednesday touted universal health insurance during an event at the University of Maryland Medical Center, at which he gained endorsements from Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and Albert Wynn (D-Md.), the Baltimore Sun reports.

1 Sep 2006

MRSA - surveillance, rapid screening and hospital hygiene

The origins and future perspectives about meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are outlined in a Review in this week's issue of The Lancet.

31 Aug 2006

Pediatricians not doing enough to stop parental smoking

Parental smoking is a pediatrician's business, experts say, yet many are reluctant to tell parents to stop smoking and offer little support for efforts to quit, a new study suggests.

31 Aug 2006

NIH seeks input on proposed repository for genetic information

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking public input on a proposed new policy designed to facilitate the research community's access to data resulting from NIH-funded, genome-wide association studies.

30 Aug 2006

Report questions CMS Cancer Care Research Program

HHS inspector general Daniel Levinson in a report released on Wednesday questioned the legitimacy of a one-year research program conducted by CMS in which the federal government and Medicare beneficiaries paid oncologists a total of about $275 million to report information on chemotherapy side effects that might lead to improved care for cancer patients, the AP/South Florida Sun Sentinel reports.

30 Aug 2006

Summary of editorials on approval of nonprescription plan B sales to women over age 18

Some editorials respond to FDA's decision on Thursday to approve Barr Laboratories' application for nonprescription sales of its emergency contraceptive Plan B to women ages 18 and older.

30 Aug 2006

Primary care physicians should receive pay by the hour

"We must make primary care a more manageable business by changing the way we pay for it," with primary care physicians paid by the hour, Robin Cook, a physician and author of the novel "Crisis," writes in a New York Times opinion piece.

30 Aug 2006