Kim’s public health blog

A new study has found that “survivors of severe cases of food-borne illnesses can suffer lifelong health problems.” Tanya Roberts, a board chairwoman of the Center for Foodborne Illness Research and Prevention tracked five major pathogens which “can cause paralysis, kidney failure, heart infections, neurological problems, and, in children, mental retardation, according to a white paper co-authored by Roberts that the center released Thursday.” The group “is a member of the Make Our Food Safe coalition, which is pressing Congress to pass legislation by the end of this year that would strengthen the Food and Drug Administration’s power to police domestic and imported food.”

The World Health Organization has discovered that the “AIDS virus is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.” Indeed, “women enjoy a biological advantage because they tend to live six to eight years longer than men,” WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan pointed out. “But in many parts of the world they suffer serious disadvantages because of poverty [and] poorer access to healthcare:. The 91-page report by the organization “lays out the hurdles women face in getting the healthcare they need at various stages of life.”  The report said that “accidental injuries take a toll on girls and younger women,” while “chronic diseases account for almost half of the deaths among older women.” Dr. Chan noted, however, that the “obstacles that stand in the way of better health for women are not primarily technical or medical in nature.” Rather, “they are social and political, and the two go together.” Thus, the world “will not see significant progress as long as women are regarded as second-class citizens,” Dr. Chan argued.

This so-called research gets the fickle finger of fate award  Published in Archives of Internal Medicine.  This needed research to validate it?  And there are those who say we need to spend more on researc!!

 Drawing on years of experience in cancer research and patient care, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center released today the most comprehensive, risk-based screening guidelines publicly available to date for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers (also see the MDAC Screening Guides). The new recommendations represent the first wave of an effort by M. D. Anderson to improve the effectiveness of efforts to prevent and detect cancer at its earliest, most treatable stage by reconstructing and expanding its screening, risk reduction and diagnostic guidelines across eight disease sites. According to the American Cancer Society

• New cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in 192,370 women and 40,170 will die from breast cancer
• 11,270 new cases of cervical cancer will be diagnosed in women and 4,070 women will die from cervical cancer
• New cases of colorectal cancer will be diagnosed in 106,100 men and women and 49,920 men and women will die from colorectal cancer

A study released today in Pediatrics by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia offers updated evidence that children ages 4 to 8 who are restrained in the rear seat of a car in a belt-positioning booster seat are 45 percent less likely to be injured in a crash compared with children using a seat belt alone. Furthermore, the study showed there was no difference in the level of protection offered by backless versus high back booster seats. Of those riding in booster seats, children involved in side-impact crashes saw the greatest reduction in injury risk. Comment: Both stories suggest that far more education on proper use of children’s car seats is needed, both for infants and children.

More than 8,700 infants end up in the emergency room each year because their car seats are used improperly outside the car, according to study presented Monday at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual meeting in Washington. Babies are spending more time in car seats, which have saved nearly 9,000 lives in the past three decades, both in and out of the car, says author Shital Parikh, a pediatric orthopedist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

A new report from the Guttmacher Institute identifies how improved access to family planning services has reduced the use of abortion services worldwide although problems if access to either opportunities varies widely among different countries, particularly in the developing  countries..

In a report issued by the  Institute of Medicine “It’s clear that smoking bans work,” said Lynn Goldman, professor of environmental health sciences, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and chair of the committee of experts that wrote the report.  “Bans reduce the risks of heart attack in nonsmokers as well as smokers.  Further research could explain in greater detail how great the effect is for each of these groups and how secondhand smoke produces its toxic effects.  However, there is no question that smoking bans have a positive health effect.” The full report is available on line and clearly supports the new legislative ban in smoking in restaurants in Virginia. .

In a new study, Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that if vaccine coverage and efficacy are high in girls, a universal recommendation to vaccinate young boys is unlikely to provide comparatively good value for resources, compared with vaccinating girls only. The study was reported in the BMJ  October 9..

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2009) — A person, usually a child, dies of rabies every 20 minutes. However, only one inoculation may be all it takes for rabies vaccination, according to new research published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases by researchers at the Jefferson Vaccine Center.