The News Review:
- Concern celebrates major progress in fight against malaria in Rwanda
- Health Buzz: LASIK Surgery Woes and Other Health News
- Nigeria: Health Insurance Scheme is for All – NHIS
- Low Cortisol Levels Found In Kids Whose Mothers Show Signs Of…
Concern celebrates major progress in fight against malaria in Rwanda
Reuters AlertNet – Apr 25, 2008
We’ve built the bridge between the Ministry of Health and the local communities, now it’s up to them to make it work. She adds, “The US government has long led innovative programs that brought child health care out of the walls of health facilities and into communities. We could be doing this high-impact work in many other countries, but current federal funding is very tight, limiting us to developing programs in only one country per year. We could triple the reach of our programs if the US Congress passed this year’s Child Survival Act. ”
In the past year, over 75,000 children were treated by Concern-trained and equipped Community Health Workers. Based on this success, Concern has facilitated passage of supportive policies to treat the two other leading burdens of childhood death, diarrhea and pneumonia, by these effective and accessible Community Health Workers.
Health Buzz: LASIK Surgery Woes and Other Health News
U.S. News & World Report – Apr 25, 2008
Veterans Will Be Alerted to Available Health ServicesThe Department of Veterans Affairs intends to call about 570,000 recent combat veterans to make them aware of the health services available to them, the agency announced yesterday. A government contractor will handle the $2. 7 million effort, which comes after criticism that the VA’s claims backlog and bureaucratic hurdles have kept some recent veterans from accessing needed mental and physical health services, the… The new data, from the nonprofit Foundation for Child Development, track changes in the lives of children from 1994 to 2006. In that time, the death rates for kids under age 5 declined by one third, and more parents were reading to their kids. Children are also doing better in school, with performance on standardized tests improving for 9-to-12-year-olds.
Nigeria: Health Insurance Scheme is for All – NHIS
AllAfrica.com – Apr 25, 2008
W Dogo Mohammed said in Abuja yesterday. Speaking when he led members of his management team on a courtesy visit to the head office of the Media Trust, the publishers of Daily Trust, Weekly Trust, Sunday Trust and Aminiya, the executive secretary said at present the scheme could not be extended to all Nigerians as is the practice in many countries today because of limited financial resources. GA_googleFillSlot(“AllAfrica_Story_Inset”);He said the scheme now covers the formal sector, and that plans are afoot to cover the informal sector as the proposal is now before the highest authority for consideration and subsequent approval… "We need the financial resource to cover all Nigerians, and to do that, we need to borrow from best practices, elsewhere and know how to mobilize resources", he said. Explaining some of the various means in which Nigeria can achieve its goals of being one of the best economies by 2020, Dogo said funds need to be mobilized to specifically fund the health sector adequately. He fingered the MDG as a major source to finance the country’s health sector saying, "we are working with them to see that by this year, we can capture a state per geopolitical zone; we intend to cover MDG’s two specific course, maternal health, and child mortality". "We have strategies, and we hope it had been captured in the budget with the main purpose of up scaling it from 2009 -2010 to capture all Nigerians", he said. Speaking further on the scope of the scheme, he said the scheme is to provide quality health care system to all irrespective of religion or tribe, and he therefore called for understanding from Nigerians for the scheme to succeed. "Ours is a Herculian task to provide health for all Nigerians; no other organization is saddled with the responsibilities or mandate to take care of the health of Nigerians except NHIS, because all other agencies have limited scope", he said. On the challenges facing the scheme, Dogo decried the attitude of Nigerians who he said are not attuned to planning or preparing for disasters, lamenting that most Nigerians do not see reason in investing in any health insurance scheme.
Low Cortisol Levels Found In Kids Whose Mothers Show Signs Of…
Science Daily – Science Daily (press release) – Apr 25, 2008
5 to 5, live in a region where the median per capita income is $730 per year, more than 14 times lower than the national figure in Mexico of approximately $10,000 per year. Approximately 40 percent of the children come from homes without electricity or running water, and many are from isolated indigenous communities. In 2003, a research team of health professionals paid unannounced visits to homes in the low-income regions, providing verbal explanations of the goals and risks of research to participants and obtaining informed consent from the mothers. The researchers conducted one-hour interviews with each mother that included a standard screening test used to assess symptoms of depression. Although the screening tool has not been extensively used in Mexico, it has been used in the United States, where a score of 16 or higher indicates that the respondent is at risk for clinical depression. More than 60 percent of the mothers in the study scored above 16, with 10 percent scoring above 35. At the same time the mother was being interviewed, the researchers selected one child, usually the eldest, to undergo cognitive tests… More than 60 percent of the mothers in the study scored above 16, with 10 percent scoring above 35. At the same time the mother was being interviewed, the researchers selected one child, usually the eldest, to undergo cognitive tests. They also took three samples of saliva from the child throughout the hour to determine whether any significant changes in levels occurred during the visit, and they controlled for the time of day the sample was taken. The initial saliva sample, collected approximately five minutes after arrival in the home, represented baseline cortisol levels, since it takes more than five minutes for stress activations of the HPA system to raise cortisol concentrations in saliva. It takes about 20 to 25 minutes for the hormone’s secretion to reach peak levels. The unexpected presence of strangers was used by researchers as a mild stressor for young children. The administration of standardized cognitive tasks to assess language and cognitive competence was a second mild stressor for the children.
