Latest KFF Health News Stories
Research Roundup: The Push For Hospital Quality And Concerns About Disparities
This week’s studies come from the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, The American Journal Of Managed Care, the Journal of Medical Internet Research, The Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Senate Rejects Blunt Amendment
In a mainly party-line vote, the Senate rejected this amendment, offered by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to an unrelated transportation bill. The amendment would have broadened religious exemptions to the Obama administration’s birth control rule. KHN offers a summary of news coverage since the vote.
Senate Set For Showdown On Obama Birth Control Rule
An amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., which is scheduled for a Senate vote today, would allow employers and insurers to opt out of provisions in Obama’s health care law to which they object on religious or moral grounds.
House Subcommittee OKs IPAB Repeal
The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee voted 17 to 5 to do away with a Medicare cost-cutting panel derided by Republicans as a “rationing board.”
Stateline reports that some GOP governors are moving very slowly on health insurance exchanges. Also in the news, a bill in the Georgia House would restore child-only plans.
WHO, PAHO Release New Guidelines On Mosquito-Borne Chikungunya Virus
The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), on Tuesday “unveiled new guidelines to help countries throughout the Americas detect and prevent transmission of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus — a disease which has already infected more than two million people around the world,” the U.N. News Centre reports. “The guidelines’ authors, PAHO adviser on viral diseases Otavio Oliva and PAHO adviser on dengue Jose Luis San Martin, warned that the fact that people in the Americas have not been exposed to chikungunya virus, placed the region at particular risk for the introduction and spread of the virus,” the news service adds (2/28).
Women Need More Contraception Options That Protect Against Pregnancy, HIV
In this Huffington Post “Black Voices” opinion piece, Vanessa Cullins, vice president for external medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, responds to an announcement by the WHO in February that the agency would not revise its contraception guidelines for women living with and at risk of HIV infection based on a “study suggesting that hormonal contraception increases women’s risk of [acquiring and] transmitting HIV to their partners.” A panel found “there was not enough evidence” to support women abandoning hormonal contraception and concluded there should be “no restrictions on hormonal contraception,” Cullins states.
Inexpensive Test, Treatment For Syphilis Could Save Nearly 1M Infants Annually
An inexpensive test and single-dose treatment could help save the lives of nearly one million infants annually if pregnant women in low-income countries were offered rapid tests for syphilis, experts from the Global Congenital Syphilis Partnership said on Thursday, Reuters reports. “A team of researchers led by Rosanna Peeling and David Mabey at the [London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)] found in a study due to be published soon that introducing rapid tests to increase access to syphilis screening was both feasible and cost effective,” the news agency writes.
March Issue Of WHO Bulletin Available Online
The March issue of the WHO Bulletin features an editorial on global shortages of medicines; a public health round-up; an article on breast cancer awareness; a research paper on interventions for the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa; and a paper on the global burden of cholera (March 2012).
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.
