Latest KFF Health News Stories
CDC Official Speaks About HIV, TB Work In Africa, Haiti
As part of its series of interviews with CDC staff working on global HIV and tuberculosis (TB) research and development, the Center for Global Health Policy’s “Science Speaks” blog spoke with Jordan Tappero, “who is currently serving as director for the Health Systems Reconstruction Office in the Center for Global Health, an office opened in response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.” In the interview, “Tappero describes his early research in HIV and TB, thoughts on why Uganda is the only sub-Saharan African country not enjoying a reduction in HIV incidence, and how quickly HIV services were restored to people living in Haiti after the January 2010 earthquake,” according to the blog (Mazzotta, 2/29).
Aid Agencies Must Implement Long-Term Solutions In Horn Of Africa To ‘Banish Hunger’
With each of the three droughts in the Horn of Africa over the last decade, “the international community agreed that long-term measures were needed to prevent another tragedy. But each time, when the rains finally came, the world’s good intentions melted away,” Jose Graziano de Silva, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) writes in a Project Syndicate opinion piece. “We must ensure that this does not happen again by joining forces now to banish hunger from the region once and for all,” he continues.
Campaign To Elicit Donations For Health Projects From Airline Travelers Winds Down Amid Funding Woes
The Switzerland-based Millennium Foundation, a Unitaid-funded campaign to solicit donations for health projects from airline travelers, “is being wound down after spending nearly $20 million to generate less than $300,000 over the past four years,” the Financial Times reports. “The lack of successful fundraising sparked concerns from health campaigners over the waste of scarce resources at a time when funding is declining and millions of people around the world are dying each year from HIV, tuberculosis and malaria,” the news service writes.
Kenya’s Ability To Diagnose, Treat MDR-TB Questioned After Mismanagement Of Patient’s Case
“The Kenyan government’s recent failure to adequately treat a patient with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) has some civil society organizations questioning whether the country’s TB program is equipped to diagnose and treat such patients,” PlusNews reports. “The government admits the TB program in Kenya has not been adequately funded despite the country’s big TB burden,” PlusNews writes, adding, “Kenya ranks 13th on the list of 22 high-burden TB countries in the world and has the fifth-highest burden in Africa.”
Unpaid Caregivers Provided An Estimated $202 Billion In Dementia Care In 2010
NPR reports unpaid caregiver costs for those with dementia was an estimated $202 billion in 2010 alone. In other news, the income of Massachusetts’ elderly covers only 60 percent of living expenses, and at the Mayo Clinic, researchers are trying to learn more about the effects of old age.
Ten Physicians Indicted In Alleged $250 Million Fraud Scheme
As has been the trend in some recent health care fraud cases, the physicians were not the ringmasters. Instead, the indictments allege that they were fronts for others – primarily immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
U.S. To Send Food Aid To North Korea After It Agrees To Suspend Nuclear Weapons Tests
“North Korea announced on Wednesday that it would suspend its nuclear weapons tests and uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors to monitor activities at its main nuclear complex,” a move “signal[ing] that North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-un, is at least willing to consider a return to negotiations and to engage with the United States, which pledged in exchange to ship tons of food aid to the isolated, impoverished nation,” the New York Times reports. Some “analysts said the agreement allowed Mr. Kim to demonstrate his command and to use his early months in power to improve people’s lives after years of food shortages and a devastating famine,” the newspaper writes (Myers/Choe, 2/29).
Ga. House Passes Bill Restricting Abortion To Limit Fetal Pain
The legislation would cut six weeks from the time women can have an elective abortion, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Federal Judge Says Govt. Can’t Require Grisly Images On Cigarette Packages
A federal judge has ruled that the government can’t require cigarette labels to carry graphic images to discourage smoking on constitutional free speech grounds. The case could ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court.
Sanders: Dental Care Crisis Is ‘Next Health Problem’ That Needs Attention
A report released Wednesday by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted that more than 47 million people live in places where it is difficult to access dental care.
Bob Kerrey Jumps Into Nebraska Senate Race
The former Nebraska governor and senator made his announcement Wednesday. Democrats view his candidacy as a hopeful development in their efforts to retake the upper chamber, but some pundits say his policy positions – such as his belief that that health law didn’t do enough – might not be popular within his state.
Some Medicaid Patients Denied Coverage If Final Diagnosis Doesn’t Merit ER Care
Some states are not considering the symptoms that brought the patients to the hospital, the doctors charge. In other Medicaid news, Texas is looking at several options for Medicaid reform, Pennsylvania looks at human service program cuts, Wisconsin Democrats seek to stop reductions there and Minnesota officials respond to criticism from Sen. Charles Grassley.
GOP Presidential Candidates Look To Health Policies To Highlight Differences
The New York Times reports that the Republican presidential field is scrambling to create differences among themselves.
Cities, States Balancing Health Costs Amid Continuing Economic Problems
A selection of health policy stories from around the country, including Colorado, California, Kansas and Arizona.
U.S. Panel May Re-Evaluate Bird Flu Research After Scientists Present New Data About Risks To Humans
Speaking at the American Society for Microbiology’s (ASM) Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research meeting in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Ron Fouchier, the leader of the team at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands that genetically altered the bird flu virus, making it transmissible between ferrets and “touching off public fears of a pandemic, said … that the virus he created was neither as contagious nor as dangerous as people had been led to believe …, prompt[ing] the United States government to ask that the experiments be re-evaluated by a government advisory panel that recommended in December that certain details of the work be kept secret and not published,” the New York Times reports (Grady, 2/29).
Romney: Blunting Confusion On Support Of Contraception Amendment
The campaign issued a clarification Wednesday after comments made by GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to an Ohio reporter about the contraception-related Senate amendment. Romney’s camp clarified his support for the amendment.
Millions At Risk Of Malnutrition As Horn Of Africa, Sahel Face Dry Seasons
Only weeks after the U.N. declared an end to the famine in Somalia, regional climate scientists meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, at the 30th Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum have said preventive measures should be taken to stem the effects of drought that likely will return to Somalia and other parts of the Horn of Africa over the next three months, IRIN reports. USAID’s “FEWS NET said people should expect erratic rain in southern Somalia and southeastern Kenya” and will “be releasing a detailed outlook in the coming weeks,” the news service notes. But “[o]ne of the problems highlighted was the lack of linkage between early warning and early action. ‘There is no framework that allows the trigger of funds when the early warning bell is sounded,’ said one aid worker,” IRIN writes (2/29).
Snowe’s Departure From The Senate Highlights Ever-Shrinking Political Center
Her surprise retirement also underscores what some say is a rift within the GOP between conservatives who demand allegience to bedrock principles and those concerned with courting swing voters.
Viewpoints: Ryan And Medicare; Va. Ultrasound Bill ‘Overreaches’?; NEJM On Patient-Centered Care
A selection of opinions and editorials from around the U.S.
Detailing Health Insurance Coverage Forms – A Health Law Requirement
The Associated Press reports on how consumers can navigate insurance choices while waiting for the more user-friendly summaries called for by the law.
