Latest Health News

UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe "said Thursday that global contributions to fighting [HIV/AIDS] are dropping off for the first time in 15 years amid tough economic times," Agence France-Presse reports. "The world economic recession is pushing countries ... to enforce austerity," Sidibe said during a press conference in Tokyo during which he called upon Japan to maintain its support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. "Governments and donors are second-guessing in terms of their budget and priorities," he added...

Regional Director of WHO for Africa Luis Sambo discussed during the 60th session of the Africa Committee of the WHO how the global economic situation could impact funding for health programs in Africa and the ability for countries to reach U.N. Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets, PANA/Afrique en ligne reports. In a report to the meeting taking place in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, "Sambo indicated that between 2008 and 2009, Africa's real average GDP growth rate declined from about 5% in 2008 to 2...

A group of more than 350 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concluded a U.N. forum in Melbourne, Australia, on Wednesday with a call for world leaders to step up their commitments to achieving the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the Australian Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald reports (Rose, 9/1). "In a wide-ranging declaration adopted at the end of the three-day meeting ... participants stressed that achieving the MDGs, which world leaders have pledged to do by 2015, 'is a moral imperative,'" U.N. News Centre writes...

Inter Press Service examines how some African countries are benefiting from the global agriculture fund the G8 pledged $22 billion to in July 2009. According to the article, the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which seeks to increase African spending on agriculture to foster more growth, "has received a major boost as several countries have begun drawing" on the G8 money. "The World Bank is administering the funds...

U.S., Other Countries Must Develop Strategy To Ensure Honest, Transparent Pakistani Rebuilding A Washington Post editorial encouraging the U.S. to generously support Pakistan as it recovers from major flooding, states: the "humanitarian interest is heightened by Pakistan's centrality to America's national security interests. The Obama administration must seize this chance to deepen and broaden what is already a large commitment, lest Pakistan become even more of a breeding ground for terrorism...

Congolese Community Leaders Warned U.N. About Security; 240 Rape Victims Now Identified "Congolese community leaders say they begged local U.N. officials and army commanders to protect villagers days before rebels gang-raped scores of people, from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother," the Associated Press reports. The Walikale Civil Association "first sounded the alarm on July 25," in a meeting with the Congolese army and local authorities and first warned the U.N. on July 29, according to the association's Charles Masudi Kisa...

From catastrophic floods in Pakistan that have left millions homeless and hungry to the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake, relief efforts are under way in many parts of the world where disasters have brought food crises along with destruction. In Africa's Sahel region, severe drought has been followed by floods that are now threatening the food security of millions of people among the world's poorest. More than half of Niger's population - some 7 million people - as well as millions more in neighbouring Chad, Mali and Mauritania face hunger and malnutrition...

Using two of the planet's largest, creative online communities -- World of Warcraft gamers and Etsy artists -- as their laboratory, two Indiana University Bloomington researchers hope to understand how the inner workings of such massive, networked collaborations could benefit scientists, corporations and the very IT designers who facilitated the success of the two online communities...

The National Institutes of Health has announced that it has awarded the first new grants under the Biomedical Research on the International Space Station (BioMed-ISS) initiative, a collaborative effort between NIH and NASA. Using a special microgravity environment that Earth-based laboratories cannot replicate, researchers will explore fundamental questions about important health issues, such as how bones and the immune system get weak. "Through this initiative, the NIH is proud to continue its longstanding partnership with NASA," said NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D...

Award presentation at the 23rd Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology in Amsterdam, The Netherlands The European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) is pleased to announce Moussa B. H. Youdim as the recipient of the 2010 ECNP Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his innovative and lasting contribution to the area of neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric drug development. The ECNP Lifetime Achievement Award is presented biennially and recognises significant and lasting impact on the field of neuropsychopharmacology...

Under a recently signed agreement, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and the Ukraine's International Radioecology Laboratory (IRL) will collaborate on radiation ecology research, including projects in the region impacted by the catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant 24 years ago. Researchers at IRL use the area around Chernobyl as an extensive laboratory for studying the effects of radioactive contamination and methods of decontamination...

New research based on a study at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, shows that hospital inpatients are, on average, likely to miss out on almost 10% of their medication doses. The study, will be presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's annual conference 5-6th September. Overall, 9.7% of prescribed medicines were omitted. However, this could be explained by a variety of reasons, including 'nil by mouth' policies after surgery, specific advice from a health professional to withhold doses and very often, patients themselves refusing to take medication...

New models, reinforced by in vivo experimentation, show why 5-10% of bone fractures don't heal properly, and how these cases may be treated to restart the healing process. Results of the model, published September 2 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, may benefit the ageing population in which the occurrence of bone fractures is expected to rise substantially in the near future. In 5 to 10% of bone fracture cases, the healing process does not succeed in repairing the bone, which leads to the formation of delayed unions or even non-unions - fractures that fail to heal...

A new study suggests that patients can play an important part in reducing medicines wastage by ensuring unused medicines are removed from their repeat prescriptions. Unwanted medicines returned to community pharmacies by patients are estimated to cost the NHS at least £100 million a year. The study, to be presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical annual conference on 5-6 September, examined the number of medicine packs returned after public education campaigns in Guernsey and Alderney...

A new study, to be presented at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's annual conference 5-6 September 2010, shows that treating minor ailments such as coughs, colds and indigestion in community pharmacies rather than GP surgeries is a very cost effective use of NHS resources. Around 57 million GP consultations take place every year for minor ailments at an estimated cost of £2 million1...

Installers, designers, maintenance firms and manufacturers of electric gates, are being urged to seriously consider new safety advice issued by the Health and Safety Executive today, following the recent deaths of two children involving these gates. The safety alert points out that limiting the closing forces of gates alone will not provide sufficient protection to meet the relevant standards, and installers must fit additional safeguards to gates in public areas...

Farmers across the East Midlands are being reminded to wear safety straps when driving their tractors, especially during the busy harvest period. Not wearing a lap strap or seat restraint puts farmers at greater risk of being thrown from the cab and crushed between the tractor and the ground. They are also putting themselves at risk of serious injury from being thrown around inside the cab. Over the past ten years almost one in four (24 per cent) fatal accidents in agriculture have involved workplace transport, some of these involving tractors overturning...

Mr John Moloney T.D., Minister for Disability and Mental Health noted the publication of the National Office for Suicide Prevention (NOSP) Annual Report for 2009. The Report details the initiatives by the NOSP, HSE staff and many community and voluntary groups around the country who are working in the area of suicide prevention and are bringing forward ideas and initiatives to tackle this very serious problem. The Annual Report also contains the latest data on suicide from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and data on self harm from the National Suicide Research Foundation...

Scientists are developing a new antimalarial drug with a novel mechanism of action which shows promise for clearing a Plasmodium (malaria parasite) infection after a single dose, according to an article published in the journal Science. Scientists say the antimalarial candidate, called spiroindolone NITD609 has a novel compound and will most likely be the next generation for drug resistant malaria. The authors write that spiroindolone NITD609 is effective against both Plasmodium (P.) falciparum and P. vivax - two malaria parasite strains...

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that it has signed a contract valued at up to $28.7 million with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for advanced development of the company's third generation anthrax vaccine candidate. The award of this contract increases to over $58 million the total potential development funding from NIAID for this product...