Geneva, May 19 (CNA) Taiwan's Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta arrived in Geneva Saturday to attend this year's World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making arm of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Chiu told reporters after his arrival that he will speak at 19 technical sessions during the 66th WHA, which is being held from May 20-28.

It will be the largest number of technical meetings Chiu has attended since Taiwan began to take part in the annual WHA as an observer in 2009, the minister said.

In addition, Chiu said he plans to hold private meetings with counterparts from 25 countries.

"Meetings with health ministers of 16 of those countries have been set and arrangements for talks with the remaining countries are still ongoing," Chiu said, noting that the number of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the forum will also be the highest ever.

Chiu will meet with China's new health minister, Li Bin, mainly to discuss the outbreak of the new H7N9 avian flu strain and China's restructuring of its health and family planning agencies.

It will mark the first time that health ministers from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have met since the two sides signed a bilateral health and medical cooperation agreement in 2010.

Chiu, who is heading a 20-member delegation to the WHA, said this year's WHA has received a lot of attention because 2013 has seen the emergence of the deadly H7N9 bird flu strain in China and it also marks the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Noting that Taiwan is the only place outside China to have reported an H7N9 case, Chiu said Taiwan has decoded and unveiled the virus's genetic sequence through a sample obtained from the infected patient, who has since made a steady recovery.

Chiu said Taiwan looks forward to making further contributions to the fight against the new bird flu variety.

In his report to the WHA, Chiu said he will outline Taiwan's health promotion achievements.

Among them, Taiwan has lowered the children's hepatitis B virus carrier rate from 10.6 percent to below 0.6 percent and made progress in liver transplant technology, with five-year survival rates reaching 76 percent, one of the world's highest, Chiu said.

Meanwhile, Hsu Ming-hui, director of the Department of Health's Bureau of International Cooperation, said Chiu has canceled a planned meeting with his Philippine counterpart on the WHA sidelines because of an ongoing diplomatic row between the two countries.

"The Philippines has hoped to learn from our national health insurance system and advanced medical expertise, but we have informed Manila that the ministerial level meeting has been dropped due to the dispute," said Hsu, who is a member of Taiwan's delegation to the WHA.

Relations between Taiwan and the Philippines have been strained since a Philippine government patrol boat sprayed bullets at an unarmed Taiwanese fishing boat operating in the overlapping exclusive economic zones of the two countries on May 9.

Taiwanese fisherman Hung Shih-cheng was killed in the attack, and the fishing boat was seriously damaged.

Manila's failure to satisfy Taiwan's demands for a formal apology, government compensation for the victim's family, an investigation into the case and punishment of those responsible, and the start of fishery talks prompted Taiwan to take retaliatory measures.

They included freezing the hiring of Filipino workers, recalling Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the Philippines, suspending bilateral technological cooperation and discouraging visits to the Southeast Asian country.

(source: focustaiwan.tw)

BMC International Health and Human Rights announces a call for submissions to a thematic series on health policy and systems in emerging economies. The "emerging economies" are fast growing and changing societies. They are the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) that make up over 40 percent of the world's population as well as other successful economies including Indonesia, Vietnam, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey and South Korea. Such countries face important questions about how best to promote equitable and inclusive development – domestically, regionally and globally. The aim of this thematic series is to explore the challenges of creating policies for health in these settings.

We welcome submissions regarding all aspects of health policy and systems in emerging economies that illuminate relationships between economic development and health and human rights, including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• social protection floors, universal healthcare and social guarantees
• the 'new middle classes' and health policy
• finance capital and commercial activity in healthcare
• environment and health
• preventive health policy
• law and governance challenges
• trade in health services and other transnational mobilities
• health-related aid
• policy innovations offering lessons for health policy in poorer nations and regions

Literature reviews, comparative studies and single case studies are welcomed. We encourage you to submit your original articles by August 31, 2013. To submit your manuscript, please use our online submission system and indicate in your cover letter that you would like the manuscript to be considered for the 'health policy and systems in emerging economies' thematic series.

A special 20% discount off the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be granted to all accepted manuscripts submitted by July 31, 2013 (please mention waiver code IHHRTHEM). All manuscripts will undergo peer review according to the journal's policy.

(source: blogs.biomedcentral.com)

NEW DELHI — The Indian government announced Tuesday the development of a new low-cost vaccine proven effective against a diarrhea-causing virus that is one of the leading causes of childhood deaths across the developing world.

The Indian manufacturer of the new rotavirus vaccine pledged to sell it for $1 a dose, a significant discount from the cost of the current vaccines on the market. That reduced price would make it far easier for poor countries to vaccinate their children against the deadly virus, health experts said.

Rotavirus, spread through contaminated hands and surfaces, kills about half a million children across the world each year, 100,000 of them in India.

At a conference Tuesday, the government announced that Phase III trials of Rotavac proved that it was safe as well as effective. The clinical trial of 6,799 infants at three sites in India showed the vaccine reduced severe cases of diarrhea caused by rotavirus by 56 percent during the first year of life.

''The clinical results indicate that the vaccine, if licensed, could save the lives of thousands of children each year in India," said Dr. K. Vijay Raghavan, the secretary of the Department of Biotechnology.

The vaccine still needs to be licensed before it can be distributed in India and would require further approval by the World Health Organization before it could be distributed globally.

Two other vaccines have proven effective against rotavirus, but they are significantly more expensive.

The GAVI Alliance, which works to deliver vaccines to the world's poor, negotiated a significant discount last year with GlaxoSmithKline and Merck, obtaining the rotavirus vaccines from those pharmaceutical companies for $2.50 a dose. The alliance has programs for delivering those vaccines in 14 countries and plans to expand them to 30 countries.

Dr. Seth Berkley, the GAVI Alliance's CEO, said the announcement Tuesday was ''a big deal."

''The cheaper the price the more children you can immunize," he said, adding that it will still take some time before the vaccine is approved for use.

In addition, having a third manufacturer for the vaccines would ease supply shortages and could drive down the costs charged by the other manufacturers, he said.

''That would make a big difference in terms of changing the marketplace," he said.

Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death among young children in the world after pneumonia. A study of 22,568 children at sites in seven African and south Asian countries that was published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet showed that rotavirus was the leading cause of moderate to severe diarrhea in children under the age of two.

The new vaccine was developed from a weakened strain of the virus taken from a child hospitalized in New Delhi more than a quarter century ago. It was the result of a broad global partnership that included the government, the Indian company Bharat Biotech, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among many others.

Those involved said the broad cooperation reduced research costs for the manufacturer and helped keep the vaccine inexpensive.

''This public-private partnership is an exemplary model of how to develop affordable technologies to save lives," Bill Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, said in a statement.

(source: www.macon.com)

I Wayan Teguh Wibawan, a researcher at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said at a seminar on Saturday that Indonesian farmers sometimes kept chickens and ducks in close quarters, a practice also carried out by their Chinese equivalents.

The Jakarta Globe reported that allowing animals to sleep, eat and defecate in the same space is a key factor in the spread of bird flu.

"This tends to facilitate the spread of the H7N9 virus," the researcher said, calling on farmers to take action to separate farm animals and limit the number kept in any one place, to avoid overcrowding.

"The government should also work to increase farmers' awareness and tighten monitoring," he added.

Although the Indonesian government has confirmed some cases of H7N9 infection in poultry, there have been no reports of human infections from the new strain in the country.

The H7N9 virus was first reported to have spread from chickens to humans in late March, with most cases confined to eastern China.

The World Health Organisation says there is no evidence to suggest that the new strain is easily transmitted between humans.

However, 40% of the 130 people infected did not appear to have had contact with poultry, so the WHO is investigating the possibility of human-to-human transmission.

The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the current strain of bird flu could not spark a pandemic in its current form, though there is the chance that it could mutate.

Earlier this month, immunologists expressed concern about the "dangerous" work of scientists in China who have created a hybrid bird flu virus by mixing genes from H5N1 "bird flu" and H1N1 "swine flu". The new virus, which can spread in the air between guinea pigs, is being kept in a lab freezer.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Vietnam, told Nature News that H5N1 continued to pose a very real threat but that research into the virus should be better regulated.

"I do believe such research is critical to our understanding of influenza. But such work, anywhere in the world, needs to be tightly regulated and conducted in the most secure facilities, which are registered and certified to a common international standard," he said.

The objective is part of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG), an initiative ratified in 2000 by all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations.

"There is an urgent need to ensure all the necessary pieces are in place - political commitment, funding, leadership - so the world can accelerate progress and reach the Millennium Development Goal sanitation target" said Dr Maria Neira, WHO Director for Public Health and Environment, in a press release.

From 1990 to 2011, access to improved sanitation - using bathrooms rather than open defecation - expanded dramatically. Almost 1.9 billion people have developed sanitation facilities over this 21-year span. The most progress was witnessed in Eastern Asia, where 626 million now relieve themselves indoors.

Despite these gains, there were nearly one billion people - mostly in rural areas - who still practiced open defecation by the end of 2011, according to the WHO report. Another 1.5 billion lived with insufficient sanitation facilities, and this level will remain in place without stronger efforts by participating states.

The root problem is a lack of a suitable water source. Regions with the worst sanitation, like sub-Saharan Africa, Afghanistan, and Papua New Guinea, also have the lowest drinking water coverage. Some nations, like India, have developed water technology for urban regions, but their rural areas are still living without both clean water and sanitation. As we reported last week, a group of scientists in India has created one innovative solution for its water crisis.

Piped drinking water supplies on premises are associated with the best health outcomes. Nearly 800 million people in 2011 lived without a modern outlet for drinking water, a quarter of which relied on surface water, such as rivers, lakes, and ponds, for nourishment.

"This is an emergency no less horrifying than a massive earthquake or tsunami," said Sanjay Wijesekera, global head of UNICEF's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme, in a press release. "Every day hundreds of children are dying; every day thousands of parents mourn their sons and daughters. We can and must act in the face of this colossal daily human tragedy."

(sourec; www.medicaldaily.com)

This past week marked the 15th anniversary of Minnesota's tobacco settlement. Those of us involved in the trial will never forget it.

In 1994, as Minnesota attorney general, I joined forces with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to bring an antitrust lawsuit against the tobacco companies. Mike Ciresi, Roberta Walburn and their stellar legal team agreed to partner with us. We had an active partnership, a dynamic team of assistant attorneys general working alongside a private legal team.

Efforts against Big Tobacco often are described as David-vs.-Goliath struggles, but I'll put it even more strongly. This time it was good vs. evil. The tobacco companies were considered invincible at that time. Our decision to take them on brought skepticism: Lake Wobegon against one of the most powerful industries in the world.

But we had the truth on our side. We focused on the most damning evidence possible: the words of the industry itself, contained in millions of pages of internal documents never before shown to the public.

What they exposed was shocking. They revealed an industry that knowingly produced products lethal to half the people who use them and that create injury to millions of others. Companies ignored their own research about tobacco's dangers and addictive properties; in fact, they were manipulating cigarette design to make them more addictive despite those dangers. Then they deliberately marketed them to every demographic group — even researching the best ways to get cigarettes into the hands of kids.

We fought to make sure those documents saw the light of day. It wasn't just about the trial. It was about the industry's deceptive business practices and the impact on the public's health. It was essential for people to understand who really was behind the problem of tobacco in this country. If companies create deadly products, engineer them to addict customers and use the best marketers in the world to sell them, what chance do any of us have?

During the trial, the industry used every trick in the book; but when it was over, industry leaders realized they could not win and delivered to Minnesota what was at the time the fourth-largest settlement in legal history.

After the trial, we were lucky to have giants of health advise us, including the late Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. With Dr. Koop, former FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler, Dr. Richard Hurt of Mayo Clinic and others, we created ClearWay Minnesota, an organization dedicated to reducing the harm tobacco causes Minnesotans.

Through ClearWay, the settlement still funds programs like QUITPLAN Services, which have helped nearly 20,000 Minnesotans quit tobacco. It's allowing for new research, helping pass policies that reduce smoking (like smoke-free laws and cigarette tax increases), funding educational media campaigns and cultivating health leaders in diverse communities. Blue Cross' settlement portion also is used for health purposes, funding the successful Prevention Minnesota programs.

Since the settlement, Minnesota's smoking prevalence has dropped from 22.1 percent to 16.1 percent. That decline is attributable to initiatives of the organizations and their partners, including tobacco price increases, smoke-free policies, mass-media campaigns and cessation treatment.

What we did in the 1990s created a cultural shift that is continuing today across the country. Many thousands of people have quit, and whole generations of kids are less drawn to tobacco because of what we started. Thirty states are now smoke-free. Many young people don't know what it's like to have smoke in their workplaces or to breathe it at a restaurant.

What we did here in Minnesota also resonated throughout the world. We helped influence the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global partnership of 344 nations to restrict tobacco advertising and adopt policies that decrease tobacco use.

It's true the tobacco industry is still with us, working to hook people. I am pleased Minnesota's health organizations are still taking them on, and I hope they always will. But when I see an ad directing smokers to QUITPLAN or to dine in a smoke-free restaurant, or when I hear about Minnesota's high health rankings, I remember how far we've come. And I can't help smiling and feeling proud that we helped make Minnesota — and the world — healthier.

Hubert H. "Skip" Humphrey III was Minnesota attorney general from 1983 to 1998. He currently works in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of the Office of Financial Protection for Older Americans. He wrote this for the News Tribune.

(source: www.duluthnewstribune.com)

The World Health Organization says it appears likely that the novel coronavirus (NCoV) can be passed between people in close contact.

This comes after the French health ministry confirmed a second man had contracted the virus in a possible case of human-to-human transmission.

Two more people in Saudi Arabia are also reported to have died from the virus, according to health officials.

NCoV is known to cause pneumonia and sometimes kidney failure.

World Health Organization (WHO) officials have expressed concern over the clusters of cases of the new coronavirus strain and the potential for it to spread.

Since 2012, there have been 34 confirmed cases across Europe and the Middle East, with 18 deaths, according to a recent WHO update.

Cases have been detected in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and have spread to Germany, the UK and France.

"Of most concern... is the fact that the different clusters seen in multiple countries increasingly support the hypothesis that when there is close contact this novel coronavirus can transmit from person to person," the World Health Organization said on Sunday.

"This pattern of person-to-person transmission has remained limited to some small clusters and so far, there is no evidence to suggest the virus has the capacity to sustain generalised transmission in communities," the statement adds.

France's second confirmed case was a 50-year-old man who had shared a hospital room in Valenciennes, northern France, with a 65-year-old who fell ill with the virus after returning from Dubai.

"Positive results [for the virus] have been confirmed for both patients," the French health ministry said, adding that both men were being treated in isolation wards.

Meanwhile, the Saudi deputy minister of health said on Sunday that two more people had died from the coronavirus, bringing the number of fatalities to nine in the most recent outbreak in al-Ahsa governorate in the east of Saudi Arabia, Reuters news agency reports.

The Saudi health ministry said that 15 people had died out of the 24 cases diagnosed since last summer.

WHO officials have not yet confirmed the latest deaths.

In February, a patient died in a hospital in Birmingham, England, after three members of the same family became infected.

It is thought a family member had picked up the virus while travelling to the Middle East and Pakistan.

Novel coronavirus is from the same family of viruses as the one that caused an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) that emerged in Asia in 2003.

However, NCoV and Sars are distinct from each other, the WHO said in its statement on Sunday.

Coronavirus is known to cause respiratory infections in both humans and animals.

But it is not yet clear whether it is a mutation of an existing virus or an infection in animals that has made the jump to humans.

(source: www.bbc.co.uk)

NEW DELHI — More women die from cervical cancer every year in India than anywhere else in the world, according to the Cervical Cancer-Free Coalition, an American research and advocacy group that released a "cervical cancer global crisis card" Friday.

The index, which ranked 50 countries, shows India in the top spot in terms of overall deaths, with nearly 73,000 a year. China came in a close second, followed by Brazil.

Using the most recent data published by multilateral agencies including the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the World Bank, the crisis card also ranks countries by mortality rate in cases of cervical cancer. African countries have the highest mortality rates, with women in Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania being most likely to die if affected by the disease.

The rankings were compiled using information from a 2010 report available on the World Health Organization Web site, which says an estimated 72,825 women die of cervical cancer every year in India. About 134,420 women are diagnosed annually with this disease, the most common form of cancer that is detected in women between the ages of 15 and 44.

"Despite the great burden of this disease there are encouraging opportunities for prevention with breakthroughs in cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings," Usha Rani Poli of the M.N.J. Institute of Oncology Regional Cancer Center in Hyderabad, said in a press release issued by the Cervical Cancer-Free Coalition.

"Community mobilization is critical to educate the public on the importance of screening and to break down cultural barriers about discussing sexual issues," Dr. Poli said.

India, China, Brazil, Bangladesh and Nigeria represent more than half of the "global burden of cervical cancer deaths," according to the release on global rankings.

An estimated 275,000 women die of cervical cancer every year and 500,000 new cases are reported annually worldwide, the release said.

Two companies that make vaccines against cervical cancer said Thursday that they would reduce prices to less than $5 per dose for the world's poorest countries, The New York Times reported. The vaccines that protect against the strains of the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, or HPV, that cause 70 percent of cervical cancers, cost almost $130 in the United States.

Experts believe that prices could further come down if millions of more doses were ordered and rival vaccine makers from India and China entered the field, The Times said. Merck's Gardasil and GlaxoSmithKline's Cervarix are currently the only two vaccines in the world approved by the World Health Organization, but companies such as Serum Institute of India, the world's largest vaccine maker, are also developing papillomavirus vaccines.

The "crisis card" release was timed ahead of Mother's Day, to draw attention to the disease, which authors say could cause half a million female deaths annually by 2030.

(source: india.blogs.nytimes.com)