Government wasting your taxpayer money on ineffective drug cure
March 15, 2005 - The government is funding a supplement medication, Levo-carnitine (L-carnitine), used for dialysis patients, even though there is no adequate scientific proof that the drug is effective, according to an article published in ....... Theodore I. Steinman, MD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, writes in his editorial that although studies have been conducted on the d...Drug companies and governments must act on fake drug problem
The production of fake drugs is a vast international problem with deadly consequences, yet many drug companies and governments are reluctant to publicize the problem, say Robert Cockburn and colleagues in an investigative report in the open-access global health journal ... ...The authors suggest that the reluctance is "apparently motivated by the belief that the publicity will harm the sales of...Government approach to cutting hospital stays may be misleading
Government plans to use community matrons to help keep older people out of hospital may be based on misleading data, warn researchers in this week's ....... The new plans aim to cut hospital stays by tracking admission rates among older patients and then using specially trained nurses to care for them at home. But Martin Roland and colleagues show that this approach could be seriously misleading...NHS Trusts meeting government target on stroke units 'in name only'
A large proportion of eligible NHS hospital trusts seem to be meeting the UK government target for setting up stroke units, but in name only, suggests a national audit, published in ....... And only just over one in three stroke patients admitted to hospital actually spends any time on a specialist stroke unit, the audit shows....... The findings are based on returns on inpatient stroke care to...Women In Government report on eliminating cervical cancer
Washington, D.C., Jan. 13, 2005 - Women In Government today presented the findings from its first report on states' progress to eliminate cervical cancer - a disease that is almost always preventable with the most-advanced screening technologies. The report titled, "A Call to Action: The "State" of Cervical Cancer in America," finds that none of the states are where they should be, based on cervi...Business/gov't address health care costs and prevention
Helen Darling, President, National Business Group on Health (Business Group), and Carolyn Clancy, M.D., Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), will address the importance of preventive services to help companies control rising health care costs in a teleconference hosted by the Business Group and AHRQ. The Business Group is releasing the Employer's Guide to Health Improveme...Government solutions won't cure kids' obesity, survey says
Most Americans endorse public efforts to reduce childhood obesity but don't want to do so through taxes or regulation, a new survey reveals. ... ...Almost 91 percent of those surveyed thought parents "have a lot of responsibility" for childhood obesity, with only 16 percent saying the government holds a significant amount of responsibility, according to the report in the American Journal of Preve...Government psoriasis research funding down over last decade while NIH budget up 148%
Portland, Ore., May 17, 2004 Armed with statistics showing psoriasis research funding languished as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) enjoyed record budget increases, the National Psoriasis Foundation released its 2004 legislative agenda today as its members gathered in Washington, DC to meet with Congressional offices. The top policy goal of the Psoriasis Foundation will be to secure addi...Drugs experts call for government backing to stop the spread of hepatitis C
A team of drugs researchers from Imperial College London want prevention campaigns supported by stronger government public health policies to help stop the continuing spread of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) among injecting drug users. ... ...In a study, published in this month's Addiction, researchers conducted qualitative interviews with 59 injecting drug users, and found many were ignorant of the...Doctor attacks South African government for failing women while spending billions on arms deals
Hamburg, Germany: A leading South African cancer doctor has attacked his country's government for wasting money on "luxuries" such as defence while failing to implement a basic breast screening policy that could prevent many women dying from cancer....... Professor Justus Apffelstaedt told the 4th European Breast Cancer Conference that, while billions of rand are being spent by the government's D...UK Teenage Cancer Trust demands government action to aid young cancer patients
London, UK: Teenagers and young adults have been neglected, ignored and 'defined out of existence' by the government and the NHS, the head of a UK cancer charity said today (1 March)....... They suffer from late diagnosis, they are denied the chance to take part in clinical trials and they get shuttled between the vastly different specialities of child and adult oncology. Improvements in survival...Healthcare watchdog calls for government rethink on public role in NHS decision-making
Independent healthcare charity the King's Fund has called on the Government to rethink its policy on public involvement in health care strategy, in a paper in this week's BMJ....... Dr Dominique Florin, GP and health service researcher, and Professor Jennifer Dixon, Director of Health Policy, say that although the Government aims to increase public involvement in health care policy making, there...American Lung Association calls on governors and legislatures to stand up for public health
January 6, 2004 New York While there were bright spots in 2003, the American Lung Association State of Tobacco Control 2003 report card clearly shows that most states are not taking the necessary measures to protect children and adults from the deadly effects of tobacco smoke. The American Lung Association looked at laws on smoking in the workplace, cigarette taxes, youth access to tobacco and...Emory's Jeffrey Koplan joins Hong Kong SARS expert committee in report to government
Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, vice president for academic...health affairs at Emory University, is one of 11 international public...health experts who reported today to the Hong Kong government on...lessons learned from that country's SARS outbreak. The SARS Expert...Committee was commissioned last May to review the management and...control of the epidemic and to identify lessons to be learned to....9/11 boosted trust in government, temporary distress, research shows
(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL -- Analyses of responses given by thousands of young U.S. adults interviewed shortly after the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, showed surges both in sadness and in trust in government when compared with responses to interviews conducted shortly before the disasters. As expected, the closer respondents were to the crash sites, the more powerfully they were affected.... ....Government regulations contribute to medical debt of uninsured and underinsured
New York City, June 4, 2003--According to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, some patients face unmanageable medical bills that can result in long-term debt because of unclear federal laws and regulations. These rules may encourage health care providers to bill the uninsured more than those with insurance for the same service....... Federal fraud and abuse laws and Medicare rules designed...Duke and federal government partner to create innovative health care model
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University Medical Center and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have launched a new initiative that has the potential to help transform how health care in America is delivered. ...... The initiative aims to create prospective health care for patients -- or customized health planning. Included in this initiative is the launch of a government-funded one-year pilot...Is government health policy based on evidence or assumption?
The overinterpretation of a few small scale studies, carried out up to 10 years ago, could end up being used to determine health policy because the findings fit in with the government's broader policy objectives, argue researchers in this week's BMJ.... ...Steven Cummins and Sally Macintyre examine the phenomena of "factoids" assumptions or speculations reported and repeated so often that they a...Study finds Medicare overbilling may be caused by government's faulty reimbursement
Washington, DC--In the midst of an ongoing crackdown on health care providers for allegedly overbilling federal health care programs, a study in the September 2002 Annals of Emergency Medicine finds the government's coding system used to determine physicians' Medicare payments is an unvalidated process prone to errors. (Reliability of Assigning Correct Current Procedural Terminology--4 E/M Codes)...Governments committing 'public health malpractice' over flour fortification
The failure of European governments, including the United Kingdom, to fortify flour with folic acid has allowed a continuing epidemic of preventable human illness, according to an editorial in this week's BMJ....... Fortification could save as many lives as are lost each year in vehicle crashes, writes Professor Godfrey Oakley of Emory University in the United States. Yet in Europe, fortification...South African government urged to take action in preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission
Leading South African scientists, writing in a Commentary in this weeks issue of THE LANCET, are calling on their government to implement antiretroviral drug programmes without delay to reduce the vertical transmission of HIV-1 infection from pregnant women to their children. ......Around 75,000 South African children were born with HIV-1 infection in 2000; half these infections could have been...Government asks UNC to develop school program about alcohol and birth defects
. CHAPEL HILL -- The Center for Alcohol Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is developing an educational program for middle-school students about alcohol-related birth defects. . The project is supported through a contract from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health and medical alumni donations. . "The impetus behin...Government needs to support 'e-medicine' to improve medical care
. The failure to commit money and imagination to "e-medicine" has undercut the potential of using electronic technology to deliver health-care services to the elderly and poor, a University of Illinois law researcher says.. . "We have the technology; what is needed is government financial commitment," Kristen R. Jakobsen writes in the upcoming issue of the Elder Law Journal, a publication of th.... . .PITTSBURGH, June 26 -- More than five million children who are eligible for Medicaid -- the federal/state health insurance program for certain low-income and needy people -- are not on the program's rolls, and a University of Pittsburgh study suggests that parents' unfamiliarity with the English language could be a major factor. The results of the study of more than 12,000 families with ch...British Adolescents Need Government Support To Help Clean Up Their Act
. . . British teenagers have the worst sexual health in western Europe find researchers in this week's BMJ. In addition they have the highest pregnancy rate and are more likely to have used illicit drugs says Professor Martin McKee in a linked editorial. These factors, he says are symptomatic of a wider malaise in British adolescents and he calls upon health professionals to welcome the gover....New evidence suggests that the chemical which prompts a hangover after a night.of heavy drinking may also cause cancer, according to an international team of.scientists. Acetaldehyde is produced by the human body as it processes the.ethanol in alcoholic beverages and, in addition to the "morning after" effects,.has been shown to damage certain genetic building blocks. Now scientists have.sho...