The Best Defense Against Influenza Is Vaccination

The Best Defense Against Influenza Is Vaccination.
The 2013 flu mature is living up to its lend billing as one of the worst in years. In Boston, where four flu-related deaths have been reported, Mayor Thomas Menino declared a federal of emergency on Wednesday, and officials are working to set up natural flu-vaccine initiatives. The city has already recorded 700 confirmed cases of flu, compared to 70 cases for all of in the end year, according to Boston dot com. At Lehigh Valley Hospital in Salisbury Township, PA, a tent has been set up faint the crisis department because the medical center is struggling with a burgeoning number of flu cases, lehighvalleylive jot com reported.

And in Chicago, Northwestern Memorial Hospital has recorded a 20 percent expand in flu patients every day, ABC News reported. The 2012-2013 flu period got off to an early start, and it's only getting worse as peak flu season nears. "As we moved into the end of December and January, endeavour has really picked up in a lot more states," Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told HealthDay.

According to the example CDC statistics, which stream through Dec 29, 2013 a total of 41 states were reporting widespread flu activity. There have been 18 flu-related deaths of children so far. The prevailing strain so far this year is H3N2. "In years sometime when we have seen an H3N2 dominate, we tend to see more severe ailment in young kids and the elderly".

Flu Season This Year Began At Christmas

Flu Season This Year Began At Christmas.
In Chicago, a dispensary staff member describes the emergency department as "knee-deep in flu and pneumonia cases". In Richmond, VA, Dr Kenneth Lucas of the Patient First clinic says he's seen a 30 percent hillock in flu cases, which "hit the booster around Christmastime" and "really rolled in with the holidays". And in Rhode Island, where almost 10 percent of danger room visits in the olden times week were due to flu-like symptoms, state Health Department Director Michael Fine predicts this could be the worst flu ripen in years. This year's influenza season got off to an early start, and according to these and other published accounts it's ramping up as apogee flu season nears.

And "as we have moved into the end of December and January, venture has really picked up in a lot more states," said Tom Skinner, spokesman for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Flu period usually peaks in recently January or early February but by November the flu was already severe and widespread in some parts of the South and Southeast.

Farther north, occupation has escalated in the Mid-Atlantic states, including Virginia, in addition to Illinois and Rhode Island. "We did get off to an earlier start-up than we usually see". According to the most recent CDC statistics, aftermost updated Dec 22, 2012 16 states and New York City were reporting on a trip levels of flu activity. The states include Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.

US Doctors Concerned About The Emerging Diseases Measles

US Doctors Concerned About The Emerging Diseases Measles.
Although measles has been nearly eliminated in the United States, outbreaks still chance here. And they're mostly triggered by people infected abroad, in countries where widespread vaccination doesn't exist, federal salubrity officials said Thursday. And while it's been 50 years since the introduction of the measles vaccine, the approvingly infectious and potentially fatal respiratory disease still poses a international threat. Every day some 430 children around the world die of measles.

In 2011, there were an estimated 158000 deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Measles is quite the unique most infectious of all infectious diseases," CDC director Dr Thomas Frieden said during an afternoon scuttlebutt conference. Dramatic progress has been made in eliminating measles, but much more needs to be done. "We are not anywhere near the wrap up line.

In a new study in the Dec 5, 2013 issue of the roll JAMA Pediatrics, CDC researcher Dr Mark Papania and colleagues found that the elimination of measles in the United States that was announced in 2000 had been continued through 2011. Elimination means no continuous disease transmitting for more than 12 months. "But elimination is not eradication. As long as there is measles anywhere in the men there is a threat of measles anywhere else in the world".

And "We have seen an increasing number of cases in recent years coming from a ample variety of countries. Over this year, we have had 52 separate, known importations, with about half of them coming from Europe". Before the US vaccination program started in 1963, an estimated 450 to 500 settle died in the United States from measles each year; 48000 were hospitalized; 7000 had seizures; and some 1000 rank and file suffered unending brain damage or deafness. Since widespread vaccination, there has been an unexceptional of 60 cases a year, Dr Alan Hinman, head for programs at the Center for Vaccine Equity of the Task Force for Global Health, said at the story conference.

Doctors Told About The New Flu

Doctors Told About The New Flu.
This year's flu mellow may be off to a somnolent start nationwide, but infection rates are spiking in the south-central United States, where five deaths have already been reported in Texas. And the controlling strain of flu so far has been H1N1 "swine" flu, which triggered the pandemic flu in 2009, federal salubriousness officials said. "That may change, but uprightness now most of the flu is H1N1," said Dr Michael Young, a medical catchpole with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's influenza division. "It's the same H1N1 we have been light of the past couple of years and that we really started to see in 2009 during the pandemic".

States reporting increasing levels of flu movement include Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Young eminent that H1N1 flu is different from other types of flu because it tends to strike younger adults harder than older adults. Flu is typically a bigger portent to people 65 and older and very junior children and people with chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease and diabetes. This year, because it's an H1N1 mature so far, we are seeing more infections in younger adults".

So "And some of these folks have underlying conditions that put them at peril for hospitalization or death. This may be surprising to some folks, because they forget the citizens that H1N1 hits". The good news is that this year's flu vaccine protects against the H1N1 flu. "For citizenry who aren't vaccinated yet, there's still time - they should go out and get their vaccine," he advised.

The Consequences Of Head Injuries Of Young Riders

The Consequences Of Head Injuries Of Young Riders.
As more unfledged colonize ride motorcycles without wearing helmets in the United States, more serious nut injuries and long-term disabilities from crashes are creating huge medical costs, two strange companion studies show. In 2006, about 25 percent of all traumatic brain injuries unceasing in motorcycle crashes involving 12- to 20-year-olds resulted in long-term disabilities, said writing-room author Harold Weiss. And patients with serious head injuries were at least 10 times more undoubtedly to die in the hospital than patients without serious head injuries.

One swatting looked at the number of head injuries among young motorcyclists and the medical costs; the other looked at the crash of laws requiring helmet use for motorcycle riders, which vary from state to state. Age-specific helmet use laws were instituted in many states after requisite laws for all ages were abandoned years ago. "We conscious from several previous studies that there is a substantial decrease in youth wearing helmets when all-embracing helmet laws are changed to youth-only laws," said Weiss, director of the injury anticipation research unit at the Dunedin School of Medicine, New Zealand. He was at the University of Pittsburgh when he conducted the research.

Using dispensary discharge data from 38 states from 2005 to 2007, the inquiry found that motorcycle crashes were the reason for 3 percent of all injuries requiring hospitalization among 12- to 20-year-olds in the United States in 2006. One-third of the 5662 motorcycle run victims under lifetime 21 who were hospitalized that year sustained traumatic head injuries, and 91 died.

About half of those injured or killed were between the ages of 18 and 20 and 90 percent were boys, the retreat found. The findings, published online Nov 15, 2010 in Pediatrics, also showed that van injuries led to longer nursing home stays and higher medical costs than other types of motorcycle accident-related injuries.

For instance, motorcycle crash-related infirmary charges were estimated at almost $249 million dollars, with $58 million due to pate injuries in 2006, the study on injuries and costs found. More than a third of the costs were not covered by insurance. Citing other research, the studio noted that motorcycle injuries, deaths and medical costs are rising.

Deer Ticks Carry Lyme Disease Germs

Deer Ticks Carry Lyme Disease Germs.
People who go outdoors in several regions of the United States may have something else to misgiving about. Scientists detonation that there's another troublesome root hiding in the deer tick that already harbors the Lyme disease bacterium. There are indications that the basis infects a few thousand Americans a year, potentially causing flu-like symptoms such as fever. In one newly reported case, a baggage with existing medical problems appeared to have brain bump and dementia caused by an infection.

It is not clear, however, how serious of a threat may be posed by the germ. For the moment, Lyme malady appears to be much more prevalent. And four other germs that affect humans lie low in deer ticks. Still, scientists say the germ is cause for concern.

And "This would not be commonly picked up by any of the trendy tests for Lyme disease," said Victor Berardi, co-author of one of two reports about the beginning in the Jan 17, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The bacterium in distrust is Borrelia miyamotoi and is found on deer ticks (also known as blacklegged ticks) in parts of the rural area where Lyme disease is prevalent.

In 2011, Russian researchers reported that tribe there were infected by the bacterium, and the new reports have found that it has infected people in the United States as well. "We've known about this bacterium for a prolonged time - at least 10 years," said Sam Telford III, a professor of transmissible disease at Tufts University in Medford, Mass, who co-authored the on with Berardi.

The US Government Is Concerned About The Presence Of Contaminated Medicines In Pharmacies

The US Government Is Concerned About The Presence Of Contaminated Medicines In Pharmacies.
The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday began the modify of regulating compounding pharmacies, which originate creative drug combinations or revise drugs to suit individual patient needs. Under the Drug Quality and Security Act, signed into rule Nov 27, 2013 by President Barack Obama, these pharmacies are being encouraged to manifest with the FDA. The agency will then classify them as outsourcing pharmacies, enabling them to sell enlargement drugs to hospitals and other health-care facilities. The law was prompted by the deaths last year of 64 the crowd who received fungus-contaminated steroid medications that were given in injections to treat back and joint pain.

An additional 750 kinfolk in 20 states were sickened by the contaminated drug. The medication was made by the now-shuttered New England Compounding Center, in Framingham, Mass., according to federal robustness officials. "The or on of the law related to compounding is a step forward by creating a unusual pathway in which compounders register with FDA as an outsourcing facility," FDA commissioner Dr Margaret Hamburg said during a Monday afternoon cleave to briefing.

If a compounding pharmacy registers with the agency, hospitals and other health-care providers will be able to swallow products compounded by companies that are subject to FDA oversight. The error includes inspections and adherence to "good manufacturing practices".

People Living In The United States Die Earlier Than In Japan And Australia

People Living In The United States Die Earlier Than In Japan And Australia.
The United States is falling behind 16 other affluent nations in terms of the condition and security of its populace, and even younger Americans are not spared this sobering fact. According to a untrodden report, citizenry living in the United States die sooner, get sicker and carry more injuries than those in other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia. Even younger Americans with haleness insurance are prone to injuries and ill health, according to the report, released Wednesday by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

So "The salubrity of Americans is far worse than those of people in other countries, regard for the fact that we spend more on health care ," said Dr Steven Woolf, a professor of forebears medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that wrote the report. Compared to 16 other well-off nations in Europe and elsewhere, the United States occupies the bottom or near-bottom rung of the ladder in a copy of well-being areas, including infant mortality and low nativity rate, injury and homicide rates, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections including HIV, drug-related deaths, chubbiness and its complement conditions diabetes and heart disease, long-standing lung disease and disability.

Americans are seven times more likely to die of homicides and 20 times more disposed to to die from shootings than their peers in comparable countries. The disadvantages extend across the benevolent life span, from babies (premature birth rates in the United States are on a standing with that of sub-Saharan Africa) to the age of 75.

They also extend beyond the poor and minorities. "Even Americans who are white, insured, have college indoctrination or high income or are engaged in healthy behaviors seem to be in poorer constitution than people with similar characteristics in other nations," said Woolf, who spoke at a Wednesday news conference.

The United States Ranks Last Compared With The Six Other Industrialized Countries

The United States Ranks Last Compared With The Six Other Industrialized Countries.
Compared with six other industrialized nations, the United States ranks wear when it comes to many measures of blue blood salubrity care, a new report concludes. Despite having the costliest vigour care system in the world, the United States is last or next-to-last in quality, efficiency, access to care, high-mindedness and the ability of its citizens to lead long, healthy, dynamic lives, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund, a Washington, DC-based private cellar focused on improving health care. "On many measures of health system performance, the US has a hanker way to go to perform as well as other countries that spend far less than we do on healthcare, yet cover everyone," the Commonwealth Fund's president, Karen Davis, said during a Tuesday matutinal teleconference.

And "It is disappointing, but not surprising, that regardless of our significant investment in health care, the US continues to lag behind other countries". However, Davis believes rejuvenated health care reform legislation - when fully enacted in 2014 - will go a elongate way to improving the current system. "Our hope and expectation is that when the measure is fully enacted, we will match and even exceed the performance of other countries".

The report compares the performance of the American vigorousness care system with those of Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. According to 2007 facts included in the report, the US spends the most on health care, at $7,290 per capita per year. That's almost twice the bulk spent in Canada and nearly three times the compute of New Zealand, which spends the least.

The Netherlands, which has the highest-ranked robustness care system on the Commonwealth Fund list, spends only $3,837 per capita. Despite higher spending, the US ranks most recent or next to last in all categories and scored "particularly inexpertly on measures of access, efficiency, equity and long, healthy and productive lives".

The US ranks in the mid-point of the pack in measures of effective and patient-centered care. Overall, the Netherlands came in first on the list, followed by the United Kingdom and Australia. Canada and the United States ranked sixth and seventh.

Speaking at the teleconference, Cathy Schoen, major failing president at the Commonwealth Fund, pointed out that in 2008, 14 percent of US patients with hardened conditions had been given the wrong medication or the wrong dose. That's twice the indiscretion rate observed in Germany and the Netherlands.

Raccoon Bite Can Kill Three More People

Raccoon Bite Can Kill Three More People.
Rabies caused the dying of an instrument transplant recipient in Maryland, and three other patients who received organs from the same giver are getting anti-rabies shots, government health officials announced Friday. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the operation and Maryland health officials have confirmed that the patient who died in old March contracted rabies from the donated organ. The transplant was done more than a year ago.

The stretch of time the patient took to develop rabies symptoms was much longer than the typical rabies incubation years of one to three months, but is consistent with previous reports of long incubation periods, officials said in a statement. Both the element donor and the recipient had a raccoon-type rabies virus, according to the CDC's overture analysis of tissue samples. This type of rabies infects not only raccoons, but also other strange and domestic animals.

In the United States, only one other person is reported to have died from raccoon-type rabies virus. In 2011, the device donor became ill, was admitted to a hospital in Florida and then died. The donor's organs, including the kidneys, feeling and liver, were transplanted into recipients in Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Maryland.

People Consume More Alcohol

People Consume More Alcohol.
Strong maintain alcohol control policies record a difference in efforts to help prevent binge drinking, a new study finds. Binge drinking - non-specifically defined as having more than four to five alcoholic drinks in a two-hour span - is responsible for more than half of the 80000 alcohol-related deaths in the United States each year. "If demon rum policies were a newly discovered gene, pill or vaccine, we'd be investing billions of dollars to occasion them to market," study senior author Dr Tim Naimi, an fellow professor of medicine at Boston University Schools of Medicine and attending doctor at Boston Medical Center (BMC), said in a BMC news release.

Naimi and his colleagues gave scores to states based on their implementation of 29 booze control policies. States with higher method scores were one-fourth as likely as those with lower scores to have binge drinking rates in the top 25 percent of states. This was stable even after the researchers accounted for a variety of factors associated with hard stuff consumption, such as age, sex, race, income, geographic region, urban-rural differences, and levels of monitor and alcohol enforcement personnel.

New Incidence Of STDs In The United States

New Incidence Of STDs In The United States.
The approximately 19 million recent sexually transmitted infirmity (STD) infections that occur each year in the United States payment the health care system about $16,4 billion annually, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in its annual STD broadcast released Monday. The statistics for 2009 shows a continued high burden of STDs but there are some signs of progress, according to the report, which focuses on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis. The resident rate of reported gonorrhea cases stands at 99 cases per 100000 people, its lowest smooth since set down keeping started in 1941, and cases are declining among all racial/ethnic groups (down 17 percent since 2006).

Since 2006, chlamydia infections have increased 19 percent to about 409 per 100000 people. However, the blast suggests that this indicates more settle than ever are being screened for chlamydia, which is one of the most conventional STDs in the United States.

Americans Often Refuse Medical Care Because Of Its Cost

Americans Often Refuse Medical Care Because Of Its Cost.
Patients in the United States are more able to omit medical care because of cost than residents of other developed countries, a altered international survey finds. Compared with 10 other industrialized countries, the United States also has the highest out-of-pocket costs and the most complex salubrity insurance, the authors say. "The 2010 over findings point to glaring gaps in the US health care system, where we drop dead far behind other countries on many measures of access, quality, efficiency and health outcomes," Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, which created the report, said during a Wednesday forenoon press conference.

The publicize - How Health Insurance Design Affects Access to Care and Costs, By Income, in Eleven Countries - is published online Nov 18, 2010 in Health Affairs. "The US depleted far more than $7500 per capita in 2008, more than twice what other countries expend that hide-out everyone, and is on a continued upward trend that is unsustainable," Davis said. "We are indubitably not getting good value for the substantial resources we allot to health care".

The recently approved Affordable Care Act will employee close these gaps, Davis said. "The untrodden law will assure access to affordable health care coverage to 32 million Americans who are currently uninsured, and upgrade benefits and financial protection for those who have coverage," she said. In the United States, 33 percent of adults went without recommended pains or drugs because of the expense, compared with 5 percent in the Netherlands and 6 percent in the United Kingdom, according to the report.

Actions To Reduce The Risk Of Penetration Of Deadly Hospital Infections Through Catheter

Actions To Reduce The Risk Of Penetration Of Deadly Hospital Infections Through Catheter.
Hospitals across the United States are in a curtail of serious, often dangerous infections from catheters placed in patients' necks, called central stroke catheters, a new report finds. "Health care-associated infections are a significant medical and public strength problem in the United States," Dr Don Wright, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Healthcare Quality in the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said during a noontime teleconference Thursday.

Bloodstream infections take place when bacteria from the patient's skin or from the environment get into the blood. "These are severe infections that can cause death," said Dr Arjun Srinivasan, the associate director for Healthcare-Associated Infection Prevention Programs in CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.

Central lines can be powerful conduits for these infections, he said. These lines are typically withdrawn for the sickest patients and are usually inserted into the eleemosynary blood vessels of the neck. Once in place, they are used to provide medications and ease monitor patients. "It has been estimated that there are approximately 1,7 million health care-associated infections in hospitals unescorted each and every year, resulting in 100000 lives lost and an additional $30 billion in fettle care costs," Wright said.

In 2009, HHS started a program aimed at eliminating trim care-related infections, the experts said. One goal: to cut central speciality infections by 50 percent by 2013. To this end, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday released its example update on the progress so far.

Experts Recommend Spending The Holidays At Home

Experts Recommend Spending The Holidays At Home.
The sabbatical mellow is one of the most dangerous times of the year on US roads. Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, as many as 900 nation nationwide could die in crashes caused by drunk driving, safeness officials report. "We've made tremendous strides in changing the social norms associated with drinking and driving, but the tough nut to crack is far from solved," Jonathan Adkins, deputy executive director for the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) said in an joining news release.

And "Alcohol-impaired driving claimed 10,322 lives end year, an increase of 4,6 percent compared with 2011. That's an alarming statistic and one we're committed to address". The GHSA and its members - which subsume all 50 delineate highway safety offices - are joining federal and stage police to launch the annual Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over program. The dynamism combines high-visibility law enforcement with advertising and grassroots efforts to detect and intimidate drunk driving.