(Tribune file photo) Syringes filled with the seasonal flu vaccine await clinics this fall. President Obama declared a H1N1 flu emergency Friday night, and local swine flu vaccine clinics have limited their supplies to the most vulnerable people.
President Barack Obama declared a national swine flu emergency Friday night, giving new powers to medical facilities to deal with a surge of people seeking vaccines or help.
The declaration comes at a time when Multnomah County was forced to limit its H1N1 vaccine availability to the most vulnerable people — pregnant women and children younger than 5 — because manufacturing and distribution problems have cut the amount of vaccine Oregon and its counties expected to receive this month.
Both the seasonal and swine flu vaccines are in short supply and in big demand. I do believe there will eventually be plenty for all who want it, but it seems we have a bottleneck in the production of huge amounts of any vaccine. Perhaps this pandemic will force a change in the way we make vaccines.
A child reacts as he receives the H1N1 swine flu vaccine in a nasal spray at Dodge Park Elementary School in Landover, Maryland, October 9, 2009. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Results of tens of thousands of flu tests indicate that the pandemic H1N1 virus is spreading from school-aged children to the rest of the U.S. population, makers of the tests say.
Quest Diagnostics, which makes a commercially available test that can confirm swine flu infection, said the findings suggest many more adults will be infected with the new H1N1 influenza.
"Based on tests performed since Quest Diagnostics began offering H1N1 testing in May 2009, children between the ages of five to 14 have experienced higher overall rates of H1N1 positivity than any other age group," the company said in its report.
I believe it, kids share everything in grade school, especially germs, so are the schools taking and special precautions right now?
HAYLEY GALE/The Nelson Mail
SOMETHING POSITIVE: Billy Kerrisk displays plaster casts of breasts in the exhibition, Put Your Best Breast Forward, at The White Room, Lollokiki, Takaka. More than 100 women volunteered to have their breasts plastered for the exhibition, designed to increase awareness of breast cancer.
More than 100 women have "celebrated their differences" by having plaster casts of their breasts made and displayed, anonymously, in an exhibition in Takaka designed to increase awareness of breast cancer.
Among the white casts on display at The White Room, Lollokiki Gallery are a few from breast cancer survivors, which show surgical scars resulting from single and double mastectomies.
It was losing a friend to breast cancer that motivated exhibition organiser Billy Kerrisk to think of a way to do something positive to increase awareness of the disease, which is the most common cancer in women, and the leading cause of cancer deaths in women.
I hope this month was a success for raising awareness of this disease which seems to eventually impact most families. Until there is a cure, we need to support efforts for early detection and treatment, and if it takes a plaster image to grab someone’s attention, so be it.
(AP photo) Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., center, flanked Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., left, and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., discuss "the urgent need for health insurance reform".
GRAND RAPIDS — Senior citizens will find it harder to find a doctor who accepts Medicare if Congress does not stop a 21.5 percent cut in payment rates, say physicians and hospitals.
“We might as well start building bigger emergency rooms, because that’s where people will be if they don’t have access to a regular physician,” said Micki Benz, vice president of development for Saint Mary’s Health Care. “In the end, people’s care will suffer, and we will all end up paying more.”
So much is put on the back of Medicare, we already have doctors avoiding those patients. Somehow, if the government is to have any impact on healthcare reform, doctors have to be with it, not against it. Are there any doctors who claim to have all the answers? Please sign in a tell us about it.
David G. Klein
AMERICANS seem to like the idea of broadening health insurance coverage, but they may not want to be forced to buy it. With health care costs high and rising, such government mandates would make many people worse off.
The proposals now before Congress would require just about everyone to buy health insurance or to get it through their employers — which would generally result in lower wages. In other words, millions of people would be compelled to spend lots of money on something they previously did not want, at least not at prevailing prices.
The key word here is “affordable”, if we can afford the premiums, why not buy the policy? Still, the very poor are scraping just to survive and will need to have the government pay the premiums. Are we not trying to increase the number of people with access to healthcare?
FILE -- In a Jan. 29, 2009 file photo reflections are seen in the sign on the global headquarters of AstraZeneca in London. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed drugs for cancer and other diseases to stay on the market even when follow-up studies showed they didn't extend patients' lives, say congressional investigators. The FDA approved AstraZeneca's lung cancer drug Iressa in 2003 based on early results showing it reduced the size of tumors. But later studies showed the drug did not significantly extend patient lives. (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP Photo)
WASHINGTON -- The Food and Drug Administration has allowed drugs for cancer and other diseases to stay on the market even when follow-up studies showed they didn't extend patients' lives, say congressional investigators.
A report due out Monday from the Government Accountability Office also shows that the FDA has never pulled a drug off the market due to a lack of required follow-up about its actual benefits - even when such information is more than a decade overdue.
When pressed about that policy, agency officials said they have no plans to get more aggressive.
Like all aspects of medicine, the FDA has a never-ending job that is proving too big for any one organization. Perhaps we need bigger government in this one department, so big is the job we put on the FDA.
Posted
Oct 26 2009, 12:56 AM
by
Robert Gleeman