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Efforts to eradicate polio need international financial support

Noting that polio is endemic in only Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria, and the WHO recently declared the disease a "programmatic emergency" to "galvanize work" in those three countries, a Washington Post editorial states, "A renewed campaign [against the disease] will be costly."

16 Jun 2012

Latest allergy research presented at EAACI Congress 2012

Ground-breaking research results about stress during pregnancy and changes in pollen potency across Europe will be presented - among other novel research - at the world's leading congress on allergy and immunology - the EAACI Congress 2012 - that will open tomorrow in Geneva, Switzerland.

16 Jun 2012

Governments, private sector partners come together at Child Survival Call to Action in Washington

The two-day Child Survival Call to Action, "a conference hosted by the government in collaboration with Ethiopia, India and UNICEF to recognize and promote efforts to curtail child mortality," began in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports, noting that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and actor Ben Affleck, founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, "were two of more than 80 governmental, civil society and business leaders slated to speak at the conference Thursday and Friday."

16 Jun 2012

Interventions aimed at preventing, treating pneumonia in children need to be expanded in developing world

"This month, USAID's flagship Maternal and Child Health Integrated Program (MCHIP) joins countries around the world in celebrating International Children's Day," Dyness Kasungami, a child health team leader for MCHIP, writes in the Huffington Post Blog, adding, "While great strides in child survival have been made in the past years, we also remember those children who do not live to see their fifth birthday -- the 7.6 million children who die of preventable causes each year."

16 Jun 2012

New model can eradicate childhood obesity in private sector

Sanofi US and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a non-profit organization founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, today announced a new model for the private sector to combat childhood obesity.

16 Jun 2012

Researchers identify three sets of genetic markers linked with CNS PNET

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have identified three sets of genetic markers that could potentially pave the way for new diagnostic tools for a deadly type of brain tumour that mainly targets children.

16 Jun 2012

Researchers outline strategy and benchmarks to curb childhood preventable deaths

Preventable childhood deaths caused by illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea can be nearly eliminated in 10 years according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health. In a new commentary featured in the June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers outline a strategy and benchmarks for curbing childhood preventable deaths and recommend a new common vision for a global commitment to end all preventable child deaths.

15 Jun 2012

USAID Administrator Shah speaks about Child Survival Call to Action

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah on Wednesday spoke with GlobalPost's John Donnelly about the Child Survival Call to Action, a two-day high-level meeting convened by the governments of Ethiopia, India, and the U.S., in collaboration with UNICEF, according to a post in GlobalPost's "Global Pulse" blog.

15 Jun 2012

Fewer mothers, children dying globally, but progress varies greatly among countries, report says

"Deaths of mothers giving birth in developing countries have dropped by nearly half since 1990, while deaths of children under five have fallen from 12 million to 7.6 million, according to a new report released Wednesday by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)," the Los Angeles Times reports.

15 Jun 2012

Drug safety warnings by FDA do not always lead to targeted changes

Drug safety warnings issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) don't always lead to targeted changes in the way medications are prescribed and used, reports a study in the June issue of Medical Care.

15 Jun 2012

Osiris receives consent from NZ to market Prochymal for GvHD

Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., announced today it has received consent from New Zealand to market its first-in-class stem cell therapy Prochymal (remestemcel-L), for the treatment of acute graft-vs-host disease (GvHD) in children.

15 Jun 2012

Opinion pieces, blog posts address Child Survival Call to Action

The governments of the United States, India, and Ethiopia, in collaboration with UNICEF, today are scheduled to launch the Child Survival Call to Action in Washington, D.C., a two-day event that brings together world leaders, public health experts, child health advocates and others in an effort to reduce child mortality to 20 per 1,000 by 2035 worldwide, with the ultimate goal of ending preventable child deaths.

15 Jun 2012

Antioxidant rhSOD reduces risk of blindness in extremely low gestational age newborns

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is the second most common cause of childhood blindness in the United States, occurring in half of premature infants born earlier than or at 28 weeks gestational age. The condition is caused by abnormal blood vessel development in the retina of the eye. ROP risk increases with decreasing gestational age.

15 Jun 2012

Folic acid taken during first month of pregnancy reduces risk of autism in children

A new study by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute suggests that women who consume the recommended daily dosage of folic acid, the synthetic form of folate or vitamin B-9, during the first month of pregnancy may have a reduced risk of having a child with autism.

15 Jun 2012

Study strengthens link between HHV-6B and mesial temporal lobe epilepsy

A ten-year NIH-funded study has determined that a third of infants with prolonged seizures and fever suffer from either a new or reactivated roseola virus infection. Roseola viruses are the cause of the common childhood rash, but can also cause limbic encephalitis, a condition that frequently progresses to epilepsy. Investigators discovered one of the roseola viruses, human herpesvirus-6B (HHV-6B) in the blood of 32% of 169 infants with prolonged seizures, a condition known as status epilepticus.

15 Jun 2012

Exposure to BPA during gestation has long-lasting, trans-generational effects

Exposure to low doses of Bisphenol A (BPA) during gestation had immediate and long-lasting, trans-generational effects on the brain and social behaviors in mice, according to a recent study accepted for publication in the journal Endocrinology, a publication of The Endocrine Society.

15 Jun 2012

Study examines link between soft drink intake and risk of obesity in Canadian children

Most children and youth who consume soft drinks and other sweetened beverages, such as fruit punch and lemonade, are not at any higher risk for obesity than their peers who drink healthy beverages, says a new study published in the October issue of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

15 Jun 2012

FDA approves GSK’s MenHibrix to treat meningococcal and Hib diseases

GlaxoSmithKline plc announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the vaccine MenHibrix [Meningococcal Groups C and Y and Haemophilus b Tetanus Toxoid Conjugate Vaccine].

15 Jun 2012

Breast milk protects against oral transmission of HIV

More than 15 percent of new HIV infections occur in children. Without treatment, only 65 percent of HIV-infected children will live until their first birthday, and fewer than half will make it to the age of two. Although breastfeeding is attributed to a significant number of these infections, most breastfed infants are not infected with HIV, despite prolonged and repeated exposure.

15 Jun 2012

FDA approves Menhibrix for vaccination against meningococcal and Hib diseases

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Menhibrix, a combination vaccine for infants and children ages 6 weeks through 18 months, for prevention of invasive disease caused by Neisseria meningitidis serogroups C and Yand Haemophilus influenzae type b.

15 Jun 2012