A deadly new virus warning was issued by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, prompted by more than a dozen reported cases of the illness — eight of which resulted in death.

Known as a coronavirus, the deadly illness belongs to the family of viruses responsible for common colds and the dangerous Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Previously unseen in humans, the first confirmed case of the virus was reported in September 2012.

As of March 2013, the World Health Organization has confirmed 14 cases of coronavirus in patients from Britain and the Arabian Peninsula. The British cases were all spread within a single family following one member's visit to the Middle East, where he is believed to have contracted the illness.

"In the UK, an infected man likely spread the virus to two family members," the CDC states. "He had recently traveled to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and got sick before returning to the UK." The man's son, one of the family members who was infected, died last month.

On Thursday the CDC released its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report which states that cases of the deadly coronavirus have yet to surface in the United States.

However, the worldwide outbreak of the deadly new virus prompted a warning by the CDC to US health officials in an effort to prevent the contraction and spread of the illness.

As part of its warning, the CDC strongly urges individuals traveling to countries in or near the Arabian Peninsula to seek medical attention if they develop lower respiratory illness symptoms or fever within a 10 day period after their visit.

To date, eight fatalities associated with confirmed cases of the coronavirus have been reported worldwide. Five of the deaths were confirmed in Saudi Arabia, one in Britain, and two in Jordan, according to the World Health Organization.

While the origin of the deadly new virus is speculated to be of animal nature, the CDC warning states that the coronavirus is thought to be contracted through person-to-person contact.

Individuals infected with the new coronavirus were reportedly shown to develop severe acute respiratory illness with symptoms described as shortness of breath, cough, and fever.

For further details about the deadly new virus and the warning issued this week can be found at the official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

(source: www.inquisitr.com)

The Asia-Pacific Malaria Elimination Network (APMEN) has praised Indonesia's efforts to eliminate malaria, saying the country had made impressive progress in combatting the disease.

Last week, delegates from the 14 APMEN countries visited Sabang in Aceh to witness the elimination progress. The visit was part of the network's annual meeting held in Bali from March 2 to 7.

"Everyone was extremely impressed. It's dramatic progress. By 2015 or 2016, Aceh will be malaria free, and the rest of Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia will progressively eliminate malaria," the meeting co-chair Richard Feachem, who is also director of Global Health Group and a professor of global health at the University of California, San Francisco, said on the sidelines of the meeting in Jimbaran.

"Indonesia has been able to show us and teach us about rapid progress in malaria elimination. Many parts of Indonesia are already malaria free."

He said a country's success in eliminating malaria was dependent on malaria program capacity. Through training, workshops, research grants and fellowship programs facilitated by APMEN, each country can strengthen their technical skills to improve their national malaria programs.

Aiming at eliminating malaria in the Asia-Pacific region, the network brings together 14 countries in the region to harness collective knowledge and the voices of affected countries to share best practices, identify critical evidence gaps, and advocate for eliminating the serious, life-threatening disease.

The 14 countries are Indonesia, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, South Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, North Korea, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vanuatu and Vietnam.

"Indonesia has much to teach other countries in the region. We look forward to working together to achieve elimination in all APMEN countries," Feachem added.

Tjandra Yoga Aditama, director general for disease control and environmental health at the Health Ministry, said the success of malaria elimination was measured by the Annual Parasite Incidence (API), which is ideally below 1.

"Currently, the country's average API still stands at 1.69, but has been significantly decreased from 4.68 in 1990 to 1.96 in 2010, and down to 1.75 in 2011 and to 1.69 in 2012," he said, adding that most of the country's areas — where 75 percent of its population live, had demonstrated an API below 1.

The Health Ministry recorded some 300,000 cases of malaria each year. In 2011, the disease claimed 19 lives.

Similar data from the ministry, which includes a map of malaria disease intensity across the archipelago, showed that the prevalence was still high in the eastern part of the country, particularly in Papua and Nusa Tenggara.

The ministry is targeting eliminating malaria in Java, Aceh and Riau by 2015, in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and West Nusa Tenggara by 2020, and in Papua, West Papua, Maluku, North Maluku and East Nusa Tenggara by 2030.

In the Asia-Pacific, the number of cases has decreased significantly by 64 percent during the last decade, from 1,272,139 cases in 2000 to 455,479 cases in 2010, according to World Malaria Report 2011 issued by WHO.

However, the region is facing a growing crisis of antimalarial drug resistance, which has been detected in Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The growth in drug resistance is partly driven by the distribution of counterfeit antimalarial drugs and human movement related to increasing trade in the region.

Importation of malaria is another common issue faced by the region. The risk for malaria importation and new outbreaks greatly increases with migration.

To make greater impacts in malaria elimination, APMEN's priorities during the coming years are to reduce the spread and eliminate drug-resistant parasites, to increase the effectiveness of surveillance and response systems for malaria case detection and treatment, as well as ensuring financial and political support.

(source: www.thejakartapost.com)

Ten years ago, a new, unnamed disease was spreading out from China to various parts of the world, including Canada.

The emergence of SARS -- severe acute respiratory syndrome -- reminded countries that in a globalized world, diseases move as far and as fast as goods and people.

Dr. Margaret Chan was director of health for Hong Kong -- a nexus of SARS -- during the outbreak. Today, Chan is director general of the World Health Organization, a post she has held since late 2006.

She recently spoke with The Canadian Press about the impact SARS had on global health, whether she would use the tools employed by a predecessor in a similar situation and how she feels about a new virus that keeps pinging the world's radar.

Note: The International Health Regulations, a treaty aimed at enhancing global health security through outbreak preparedness and transparency, were strengthened after SARS. China's secrecy during the early stages of the outbreak meant the world was caught offguard when the outbreak emerged.

The following answers were edited and condensed.

CP: Is the world better prepared for a disease outbreak like SARS now than it was in 2003?

MC: "SARS was a very important event.... And many countries have learned from SARS.... The SARS event sort of gave them additional impetus and the sense of urgency for them to really revise the International Health Regulations."

"...All in all, and because of the impetus coming from the SARS outbreak in 2003, countries of this organization reviewed and also renewed and also updated the IHR and all these requirements actually paved the way for countries to build their capacity and also understand the need for transparency."

"And we have noticed that the time from event diagnosis to reporting to WHO has decreased tremendously. And the country capacity is much better than pre-SARS. It's a long way to tell you: Yes. Because of SARS, I think the world is in a much better position to detect events."

CP: But are some of those provisions better on paper than in reality? Indonesia wouldn't report new bird flu cases to WHO for several years because of a dispute over access to vaccines made from H5N1 viruses. And countries in the Middle East are clearly chafing at being identified as the source of the novel coronavirus.

MC: "In disease outbreaks, when you are doing well as a country or even as a city, you are vigilant, you are being responsible, you acted in accordance to IHR requirements, you do your global responsibility, you report ... you should deserve credit for having the capacity and the courage to tell the world."

"... (But) countries for different reasons -- political and otherwise -- will always ban travel, will always stop their products coming (in). And this is why I'm saying it's counterproductive, from the perspective of prompt and transparent reporting."

"When WHO joins hands with our brothers and sisters in OIE and FAO" -- the World Organization for Animal Health and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization -- "to say that it is safe, no need to ban travel, no need to ban products, I wish countries would listen to them. If they do, that will help countries to be much more forthcoming."

CP: Some people believe the response to the H1N1 pandemic was overblown. Has that hurt the agency's capacity to urge countries to maintain their emergency preparedness efforts?

MC: "According to the IHR, it is countries' responsibility to do emergency preparedness. Yes, of course, public opinion is important. But based on what I'm seeing, the IHR is still a live document."

CP: During SARS, the WHO issued advisories to warn travellers away from locales that were battling the disease. It was a controversial tool, at least in Toronto. Would you use issue travel advisories in a similar situation?

MC: "That tool is still open and available to WHO. But whether or not we will use it, we have to judge the situation, whether it merits that. I cannot say yes or no. ... When you're dealing with new and emerging diseases, you have no idea and you can't predict in advance what would happen."

"...In the absence of complete science and information, I think the organization would make the best decision in good faith."

CP: A new coronavirus, from the same family as SARS, emerged last year and has caused sporadic cases since. Does it give you a sense of deja vu?

MC: "I have a special interest in new and emerging infections because, perhaps, of my previous experience. I keep a very high level of vigilance."

"...We don't know enough now about the virus and about the disease to be able to say anything. Is it going to be having a mild phase that is not being detected early enough? It's just like a cough and cold? Or is it only in certain individuals where you have severe disease? ... This is the kind of situation that deserves a lot of humility and modesty but extremely high vigilance."

"When you say whether I get a sense of deja vu, well I have to say yes."

(source: www.ctvnews.ca)

Global health leaders gathered at Harvard University conclude

If the world's nations are going to prevent tobacco smoking from causing one projected billion deaths by the end of this century, they must: Make tobacco control part of the agendas of United Nation's and other development agencies worldwide; Assure every sector of a nation including health, trade and finance officials work collectively to protect not only health but the harm tobacco places on their economy by passing laws to reduce use; Place health as the centerpiece of any decision on a trade treaty that includes tobacco; Diligently work toward a goal of reducing the prevalence rate of smoking to less than five percent world-wide by 2048, basically ending its use.

Those were among the key recommendations to come out of an international gathering last week at Harvard University of public health officials, academics, and public health advocates from more 40 nations, and such international organizations as the European Union, the African Union, the World Trade Union, and the World Health Organization.

"The only entity in the world to benefit if tobacco use is passed down to the next generation of poor children of the world will be the tobacco industry," warned Gregory Connolly, chair of the meeting and director of the Center for Global Tobacco Control at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Harvard School of Public Health. "All other industries producing good products and services will suffer, not benefit, and the same is true for the economies of poor nations and their citizens," if smoking is not snuffed out. This meeting was an historic step to make global smoking history," said who two decades ago crafted Massachusetts's tobacco control efforts.

And Dr. Douglas Webb of United Nations Development Program warned that "tobacco use poses a major health and human development threat. Avoidable and unnecessary, tobacco-linked illnesses strike people in their prime, hit the poorest hardest, inhibit country productivity, burden already weak healthcare systems, and consume scarce national resources."

Sponsors of the unusual two-day conference on "Governance of Tobacco in the 21st Century," at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, included WHO, the Harvard Global Health Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the Institute of Global Tobacco Control, at Johns Hopkins University. Meeting attendees were warned by speaker after speaker that unless there is a concerted international effort now, the plague of tobacco smoking that has claimed 100 million lives in the Developed Nations, will claim a billion in the Developing Nations, where smoking has yet to take hold as it did during the last century in the U.S. and other Developed nations.

But though the situation was described as dire, many nations present showed unity in passing tough national laws based on the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and demonstrated clear evidence of the scientific effectiveness of the FCTC in reducing use.

• Dimitry Yanin of Russia announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin banned smoking in all public places beginning this past June 2013. The legislation will also restrict cigarette sales and ban advertising and sponsorship of events by tobacco companies;
• H.E. Nicola Roxon, MP, and Former Attorney General and Minister of Health of Australia, reminded delegates to the that the Australian Supreme Court recently upheld legislation requiring plain pack cigarette packaging;
• Dr. Eduardo Bianco of Uruguay presented data on the sharp decline in smoking through the adoption of comprehensive tobacco control measures recommended by the WHO. The decline in Uruguay is comparable to that seen a decade ago in Massachusetts, where smoking is now a rarity, said MIT professor Jeffry Harris, who has evaluated both programs;
• Dr. Debby Sy, of the Philippines presented data on that nation's recent successful efforts to greatly increase taxes on tobacco products, despite intense opposition from multi-national tobacco companies;
• And Dr. Bernard Merkel of the European Union described the EU's new proposed directive that would allow EU nations to adopt plain packaging, high taxation, smoke-free public places and proven measures.

###

Other sponsors of the meeting included the American Legacy Foundation, the World Health Organization, the International Development Research Centre, the Medical University of South Carolina, the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project, at the University of Waterloo, the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, at Georgetown University, the Framework Convention Alliance of Action on Smoking and Health, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and the Southeast Asia Tobacco Alliance.

(source: www.eurekalert.org)

As early as 10 years ago, basic medical insurance was virtually nonexistent for China's vast rural population. Back then, farmers had to pay every cent of their medical bills out of their own pockets.

According to a nationwide survey on medical services conducted by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in 2003, 45.8 percent of Chinese farmers refused to seek treatment and 30.3 percent refused hospitalization when necessary simply due to financial difficulty. The Chinese Government announced a plan to install the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme in October 2002.

The word "new" in this title of the reform indicates five characteristics that distinguish it from previous schemes: mainly financed by government subsidies; family-based voluntary participation; county-based fund pooling and management; mainly supporting treatment of critical illnesses; and supplemented by a medical aid system.

So far, 80 percent of the funds for the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme come from government investment. Last year, the annual premium paid by farmers was 60 yuan ($9.64) per person, which was subsidized by the government at 240 yuan ($38.54) per person. For the last three years, pilot programs on the coverage of critical illnesses, such as congenital heart diseases, childhood leukemia, end-stage renal diseases, severe mental illnesses, breast cancer and cervical cancer, have been carried out in many places and are still expanding. More than 70 percent of hospitalization expenses for the treatment of these diseases are refundable, compared with 48 percent in 2008.

More than 805 million people participated in the scheme in 2012, covering more than 98 percent of the total rural population and making it the largest basic medical insurance program in the world in terms of the number of participants.

"The Chinese Government has pooled a huge amount of money to ensure that more people, especially those in the countryside, have access to medical services. This is a remarkable achievement," World Health Organization Director General Margaret Chan told China Radio International in May 2012.

China's urbanization rate reached 51.27 percent in 2011, when China's urban population surpassed its rural population for the first time. The accelerating urbanization process entails innovative research and new policies so that social changes won't affect health care provisions and the whole population can benefit from coordinated disease prevention and control efforts.

"The New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme has become the original model for China's medical programs for people without stable employment, which has accumulated precious experience in promoting social reforms," said Jiang Zhongyi, a senior research fellow at the Research Center for Rural Economy under the Ministry of Agriculture. He said that this scheme inspired designers of other social security systems, such as urban resident medical scheme and rural pension plans, and laid a solid foundation for the building of an all-inclusive basic medical insurance system in China.

The Chinese Government in April 2009 unveiled an 850-billion-yuan ($136 billion) three-year program for health care reform. With the funds, the government promised universal access to basic health insurance, the introduction of an essential medicines system, improved community-level health care facilities, equitable access to basic public health services and pilot reforms of public hospitals.

According to a white paper on medical and health services in China issued by the Information Office of the State Council last December, the Chinese population's general health conditions have been ranked the best among developing countries. The report said that from 2002 to 2011 the country's maternal mortality rate went down from 51.3 to 26.1 per 100,000, the infant mortality rate dropped from 29.2 to 12.1 per 1,000, and the mortality rate of children under the age of 5 dropped from 34.9 to 15.6 per 1,000.

A pioneering reform

"At the beginning, I was driven more by determination and courage than confidence in pushing forward the health care reform," said Vice Premier Li Keqiang at a conference last April. At the beginning of his speech, he recalled his anxiety when presiding over the conference to kickstart the reform three years ago.

Li was entrusted with the daunting task of designing and promoting a health care reform program with the largest number of beneficiaries ever in 2008. On October 14 of the same year, a draft reform plan was publicized to solicit public opinions, which drew around 36,000 suggestions and comments from across the country within just one month.

"Health care reform is no easy task for any country, especially one with 1.3 billion people," said Minister of Health Chen Zhu.

Between 2009 and 2012, the Central Government issued 14 documents on health care reform and more than 50 supplementary documents were issued by various government departments, which have formed a policy framework. China's achievement of universal coverage of basic medical insurance has been spoken highly of by the international community.

"China's health reform process, solutions and lessons will provide evidence to inform debate and, ultimately, enhance global health care outcomes," wrote an editorial on China's health system published by renowned medical journal Lancet in March 2012.

(source: www.bjreview.com.cn)

Other countries have done better at dragging health care into the information revolution, report RAND analysts Art Kellermann and Spencer Jones

By Art Kellermann and Spencer Jones

Because information technology has so quickly transformed people's daily lives, we tend to forget how much things have changed from the not-so-distant past. Today, millions of people around the world regularly shop online; download entire movies, books and other media onto wireless devices; bank at ATMs wherever they choose; and self-book travel while checking themselves in at airports electronically.

But there is one sector of our lives where adoption of information technology has lagged conspicuously: health care.

Some parts of the world are doing better than others in this respect. Researchers from the Commonwealth Fund recently reported that some high-income countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, have made great strides in the use of electronic medical records among primary-care physicians. Indeed, in those countries, the practice is now nearly universal.

Yet some other high-income countries, such as the United States and Canada, are not keeping up. Usage of electronic medical records in America, the home of Apple and Google, stands at only 69 percent -- and most of them have little to do with patient care.

The situation in the United States is particularly glaring, given that health care accounts for a bigger share of GDP than manufacturing, retail, finance or insurance. Moreover, most health IT systems in America today are designed primarily to facilitate efficient billing, rather than efficient care, putting the business interests of hospitals and clinics ahead of the needs of doctors and patients. That is why many Americans can easily go online and check the health of their bank account but cannot check the results of their most recent lab work.

Another difference between IT in U.S. health care and other industries is "interoperability." A hospital's IT system, for instance, often cannot "talk" to others. Even hospitals that are part of the same system sometimes struggle to share patient information.

As a result, today's health IT systems act more like a frequent-flyer card designed to enforce customer loyalty to a particular hospital rather than an ATM-type card that could enable you and your doctor to access your health information whenever and wherever needed. Ordinarily, lack of interoperability is an irritating inconvenience. In a medical emergency, it can impose life-threatening delays in care.

A third way that health IT in America differs from consumer IT is usability. The design of most consumer websites is so obvious that one needs no instructions to use them. Within minutes, a 7-year-old can teach herself to play a complex game on an iPad.

But a newly hired neurosurgeon with 27 years of education may have to read a thick user manual, attend tedious classes and accept periodic tutoring from a "change champion" to master his hospital's IT system. Not surprisingly, despite its theoretical benefits, health IT has few fans among health care providers. In fact, many complain that it slows them down.

Does this mean that health IT is a waste of time and money?

Absolutely not. In 2005, colleagues of ours at the RAND Corp. projected that America could save more than $80 billion a year if health care could replicate the IT-driven productivity gains observed in other industries. The fact that the United States has not gotten there yet is not a problem of vision but of implementation.

Other industries, including banking and retail trade, struggled with IT until they got it right. The gap between what IT promised and what it delivered in the early days was so stark that experts called it the "IT productivity paradox." Once these industries figured out how to make their IT systems more efficient, interoperable and user-friendly, and then realigned their processes to leverage technology's capabilities, productivity soared.

In America, as in much of the world, health care is late to the IT game, and is experiencing these growing pains only now. But health care providers can shorten the transformation by learning from other industries.

The U.S. government is trying to help. In 2009, Congress passed the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act. HITECH has undeniably accelerated IT adoption, yet the problems of usability and interoperability persist.

Globally, the health IT industry should not wait to be forced by government regulators into doing a better job. Developers can boost the pace of adoption by creating more standardized systems that are easier to use, truly interoperable and that afford patients greater access to and control over their personal health data. Health care providers and hospital systems can dramatically boost the impact of health IT by re-engineering traditional practices to take full advantage of its capabilities.

The sky is the limit when it comes to potential gains from health IT. According to the Institute of Medicine, the United States wastes more than $750 billion per year on unnecessary or inefficient health care services, excessive administrative costs, high prices, medical fraud and missed opportunities for prevention. Health IT can improve health care in all of these dimensions.

The payoff will be worth it. Indeed, as with the adoption of IT elsewhere, we may soon wonder how health care could have been delivered any other way.

(source: www.post-gazette.com)

Local Health Authorities in collaboration with the World health Organization (WHO) are working closely on strategic plans to prevent any increase of dengue fever in the country.

The Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MHMS) earlier this week has recorded up to 223 suspected cases in Honiara alone.

The increase has forced health authorities to issue a dengue alert calling on members of the public to keep their homes and surroundings clean to destroy mosquito breeding sites.

World Health Organization (WHO) consultant entomologist Dr Chang Moh Seng said the public must alerted on this outbreak.

Dr Seng said the mosquito that carries dengue virus (Aedes) normally bites late afternoon and early in the mornings.

"The virus can only be controlled if communities agreed to working together to remove or clean up breeding sites and apply insecticides where they breed," Dr Seng said.

Meanwhile, the Head of Surveillance Unit in the Ministry of Health and Medical Services Alison Sio said they are working closely with WHO on strategic plans to curb the increase of dengue cases.

The Ministry is sending staff to Malaita and Western provinces this week to check on the situations there.

The cases recorded so far are only for Honiara where surveillance has been carried out.

(source: www.scoop.co.nz)

Lately, I've been disturbed and concerned with the news about a newborn baby who died due to respiratory problems after eight hospitals in Jakarta allegedly refused to treat the child.

According to Indonesia's Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi, the death of Dera Nur Anggraini was not caused by the lack of attention given by the hospital staff, but it was because the baby was born prematurely — she was even less than one kilogram in weight and her lungs hadn't been fully developed.

Causes of premature birth are still generally unknown, and only 25 percent of premature babies survive. To treat a premature born baby requires doctors' expertise, expensive medical machinery and a whole lot of money.

It is such a tragedy for the family to lose a newborn baby. Hospitals claim that they do not discriminate the patient's social status and treat all patients equally.

However, no matter how fairly they try to treat the patients, there is still a very limited number of specialist equipment for some serious medical conditions. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to use it. Ever since the Kartu Sehat Jakarta (Jakarta Health Card) were given out, the number of patients queuing for free health care has increased significantly.

Moreover, we haven't been implementing the right system for the patients. Many confused and desperate patients show up to hospitals which either don't have the right facilities — or not enough rooms —and they don't know where to go to find help.

Deputy Governor Basuki Tjahja Purnama suggested that there should be a system where hospitals should be able to contact each other regarding available facilities, expertise or rooms to serve the patients, so that they could transfer patients to a more suitable hospital. This could save so much time for patients who are in urgent need of medical care.

Perhaps both local and central government should investigate which diseases, medical conditions and hospital management issues that need to be handled urgently. After this process, scholarships should be provided for medical students to do more work and research on those medical conditions and management issues in order to increase the amount of expertise in Indonesia.

It's time to prepare Jakarta for better health care to prevent tragedies. Better service, better expertise and better equipment.

(source: www.thejakartaglobe.com)