The increasing number of tuberculosis cases detected annually in Thailand is an ongoing challenge for the government, the Nation reports. According to Somchai Pinyopornpaitch, deputy director-general of the Department of Disease Control, TB cases have increased for several years despite health officials’ efforts.
Outcomes following surgically implanted hearing aids that are anchored to bone appear comparable for children younger than five years and those older than five years, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced $3.7 million in new grants designed to enhance healthcare information in an effort to improve the detection and response to emerging public health threats. The new grants will fund studies at three new Centers of Excellence in Public Health Informatics located at New York City Department of Health and Hygiene; the University of Utah, Salt Lake City; and Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
In a new article, “Nanotechnology and Safety,” published by Cleanroom Technology, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies Chief Science Advisor Andrew Maynard urges the need for a strategic plan and more resources for risk research to ensure safe nano-workplaces today and in the future.
The New York City trans fat ban is a step in the right direction, but the regulation that requires some restaurants to display calories as prominently as price is just as important. Also missing in the discussion? Replacing trans fat will saturated fat would be problematic.
A different approach to treating urinary tract infections (UTIs) could defeat the bacteria that cause the infections without directly killing them, a strategy that could help slow the growth of antibiotic-resistant infections. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been working to create pharmaceuticals that essentially “defang” the bacteria by preventing them from assembling pili, microscopic hairs that enable the bacteria to invade host cells.
Surveys conducted in southern Sudan, after conflict there ended in 2004, found much higher levels of blindness than anticipated. The results, published in PLoS Medicine, have major implications for the provision of health services in the region.
The Government today said preliminary results of a survey showed that only 36.7 per cent of women in the age group of 15-49 years have heard of HIV/AIDS.
A University of Illinois at Chicago study has been stopped early due to dramatic preliminary results indicating that medical circumcision reduces the risk of acquiring HIV during heterosexual intercourse by 53 percent.
The International donor community today pledged $475 million to fight bird flu after a senior United Nations official warned them that the virus, with its possible mutation into a deadly human pandemic, remains a potent threat around the world.