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India to open orphanages for female infants to reduce sex-selective abortion

The Indian government plans to set up orphanages in each regional district for female infants in an effort to curb sex-selective abortions, Renuka Chowdhury, minister of women and child development, said, the PTI/Hindustan Times reports.

22 Feb 2007

$70 milion pledged to help Zimbabwe address growing number of AIDS orphans

Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and the United Kingdom on Thursday pledged $70 million to Zimbabwe to help the country address the growing number of children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS-related illnesses, Reuters South Africa reports.

22 Feb 2007

South Africa to revise AIDS control program to address extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis

South Africa is taking steps to revise its HIV/AIDS control program in an effort to combat the spread of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, TB that is resistant to first- and second-line drugs, Nomonde Xundu, the Department of Health's chief director for HIV and TB, said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

22 Feb 2007

Women in the UK to trade eggs for IVF treatment

According to the fertility regulator in the UK women there will soon be able to donate their eggs for medical research.

21 Feb 2007

Organic baby food in latest food scare

Authorities in Singapore have ordered the recall of a baby food product by Earth's Best on the grounds that it may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, which can cause botulism.

21 Feb 2007

Pregnancy hormone prolactin gives hope to MS victims

Canadian scientists believe they may be some way to solving the mystery of why women suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) go into remission while they are pregnant.

21 Feb 2007

Gates Foundation, Canadian Government announce initiative to develop HIV/AIDS vaccine

Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Tuesday announced a joint $139 million initiative to establish a research institute for the development of an HIV/AIDS vaccine, Toronto's Globe and Mail reports.

21 Feb 2007

Merck to register, lower cost of antiretroviral Atripla in developing countries

Pharmaceutical company Merck on Friday said that it will begin registering the antiretroviral drug Atripla in developing countries and that it will lower the cost of the drug in countries with high HIV prevalence, the Bergen Record reports.

21 Feb 2007

U.S. should establish initiative to mobilize health workers to countries affected by HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS is "essentially the black death of the 21st century, killing on a massive scale and threatening to cripple economies and topple governments," Fitzhugh Mullan of George Washington University's Department of Health Policy writes in a commentary in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

21 Feb 2007

Indonesia facing increasing number of HIV/AIDS cases

Indonesia is facing an increasing number of HIV/AIDS cases, particularly among commercial sex workers and injection drug users, and the country's Papua region is facing a generalized epidemic, according to a report released recently by the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and other international agencies and local nongovernmental organizations, Reuters reports.

21 Feb 2007

Merck conducts trial of experimental HIV vaccine among sex workers in the Dominican Republic

The pharmaceutical company Merck is conducting Phase II clinical trials of its experimental HIV vaccine among 175 commercial sex workers in the Dominican Republic, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports.

21 Feb 2007

Lawsuit filed against federal government over medical cannabis misinformation

The patients advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California demanding that the federal government cease issuing misinformation on medical cannabis and correct the information it has released.

21 Feb 2007

Lawmakers announces proposal to extend health insurance to more children

A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) and Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) on Friday announced a proposal that would extend health insurance to an additional nine million U.S. children, the Chicago Tribune reports

21 Feb 2007

Bush Administration has no overall strategy to protect patient privacy in electronic health records

The Bush administration has no overall strategy to ensure patient privacy as it promotes expanded use of electronic health records among insurers, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the New York Times reports.

21 Feb 2007

Maryland universal coverage plan estimated to cost $2.5 billion

The Maryland Health Care Commission on Thursday said its proposal to provide health coverage to nearly all of the state's uninsured residents would cost $2.5 billion annually, the Baltimore Sun reports.

21 Feb 2007

White House orders investigation of military hospitals

The White House on Tuesday ordered an investigation into the treatment provided at U.S. military hospitals to veterans who return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Reuters/Los Angeles Times reports.

21 Feb 2007

Intel, Motion Computing develop tablet computer to reduce medical errors

California-based Intel and Texas-based Motion Computing on Tuesday unveiled a jointly developed tablet computer designed to help health care workers update medical records as they care for patients, Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times reports.

21 Feb 2007

Health Corps response to hurricanes inadequate

The more than 2,100 officers in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who were deployed to the Gulf Coast to respond to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in August and September 2005 lacked adequate training, and the federal response to the hurricanes did not include an adequate number of nurses, dentists and mental health professionals, according to a report recently compiled by the HHS Office of Inspector General, the AP/Houston Chronicle reports.

21 Feb 2007

Experimental vector vaccine reduces stillbirths from cytomegalovirus

Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed an experimental vaccine that reduces stillbirths among rodents born to mothers infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV) - a common virus that can also cause mental retardation and hearing loss in newborn children who were infected in early fetal life.

21 Feb 2007

Reduced brain growth in alcoholics with family drinking history

The brains of alcohol-dependent individuals are affected not only by their own heavy drinking, but also by genetic or environmental factors associated with their parents- drinking, according to a new study by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).

21 Feb 2007