C M G Buttery

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its 2006 Kids Count Data-Book online. The broad array of data presented each year in the KIDS COUNT Data Book is intended to illuminate the status of America’s children and to assess trends in their well-being. By updating the assessment every year, KIDS COUNT provides ongoing benchmarks that [...]

This week’s editorial in the BMJ is worth reading. Despite all the problems with the NHS, at the BMA annual conference a few people spoke against funding through general taxation, pointing to the European social insurance model, which delivers higher quality care, though at higher cost. And a few spoke against care being free at [...]

From the Harvard School of Public Health today, this News Release: In the first national study of the effects of intimate partner violence on the health of women during pregnancy and the health of newborn children, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) demonstrated that violence from male partners, both in the year [...]

Immunization is among the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions. Immunization programs have led to eradication of smallpox, elimination of measles and poliomyelitis in regions of the world, and substantial reductions in the morbidity and mortality attributed to diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 2 million child deaths were [...]

From the Royal Society of Medicine in the UK we find that new research indicates that efforts to reduce antibiotic resistance led to a decrease in the prescribing of antibiotics by doctors yet an increase in hospitalizations for respiratory infections like pneumonia. In analyses of more than 15.5 million hospitalizations and 5.5 million outpatient visits [...]

Would you believe that thousands of patients in hospitals each year are at risk of potentially fatal infections because health care workers do not wash their hands on enough occasions, according to researchers from UNSW. “From a young age, we are taught that we wash our hands to protect ourselves from germs, but we really [...]

A news release from the HSPH describes how three variations of a human gene appear to impact human tuberculosis susceptibility, providing insight into why some patients infected with the Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogen develop the full-blown disease and others do not. A joint team between Harvard and Oxford Universities note that approximately one-third of the world’s [...]

A news release from the American Institute for Cancer Research today notes that The one thing on which all nutritionists seem to agree is that consumption of vegetables and fruit helps fight many chronic diseases. Researchers trying to discover just how these plant food bolster our immune systems have focused for sometime on phytochemicals. Experts [...]

A study reported in the Lancet this week shows how knowledge about Kuru, may be used as a template for vCJD. Between 1957 and 2004, the total number of cases of kuru exceeded 2700. The lower limit of incubation time may be as few as 5 years. Although the mean incubation time is 12 years, [...]

We have learned this year of the financial disasters of the NHS. Now we learn that the German Health System is in deep financial trouble although for some what different reasons. Too many hospitalizations, too many prescriptions, and too many people failing to pay their insurance. As we worry about our spiralling costs, which are [...]