The Colorado Health Foundation released a new study today that further establishes the link between obesity and being poor.Low income children in Colorado are three times as likely to be obese than those of well off parents.The foundation tells the Rocky Mountain News that the link is especially troublesome with more children slipping into poverty. The "Income, Education and Obesity" study by the Colorado Health Foundation found that while Colorado remains one of the leanest states in the nation, its obesity rates are climbing dramatically. If current trends continue, two out of three adult Coloradans will be overweight or obese by 2017, the study's authors said.Eating better and exercising more are the essential keys, but among low-income Coloradans with little education, getting there...
I know that the above title is hard to believe, but it is what a group of medical researchers are saying. A group of Canadian researchers just completed a study on cells and genes related to asthma. One of the conclusions they made, is that negative perceptions about ones life can effect one biologically. A story in the US News and World Report mentions some of their findings. The researchers studied immune system cells called T-lymphocytes in 31 children, aged 9-18, with asthma. T-cells play a role in the airway inflammation that occurs in an asthma attack.Half the children in the study were from disadvantaged families and half from privileged families. The researchers found that genes regulating inflammatory response were more active in poorer children than in those who were from...
Teens from poor neighborhoods are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts and are four times as likley to attempt suicide. These findings are from a new study that is published in the journal Physcological Medicine. The published study on poor teens and suicide was conducted by a pair of universities in Canada and the US. Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins of the University Université de Montréal reports that the study still can not determine why poor teens have a greater risk. The study showed that late teens from disadvantaged neighbourhoods had higher levels of depressive symptoms along with lower levels of social support, but these factors could not fully explain why these Youths were at an increased risk to consider ending their own lives. "Rather, they were more vulnerable because...
Drug companies worldwide have long been critisized for not investing into research and development on drugs that would help the ills of the third world. Instead of finding medicines for malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS, a lot of money goes into curing erectile dysfunction or high cholesterol.U. N. Secretary Ban Ki-Moon recently met with leaders of drug companies such as Abbott Labs, GlaxoSmithKline and others. Moon's aim is to increase access to drugs for developing countries. Which is one of the Millenium Development Goals. This Reuters article details the pledge from the drug companies. from ReutersThe companies also agreed to invest more in prevention, including vaccines and pre- and post-exposure prophylaxis, Ban said in a statement issued after he met with top executives at...
from Tulsa World by Kim ArcherThe mortality rate for infants of Oklahoma high school dropouts is nearly double the rate for children of mothers who completed college, a new national study states.Released by the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the study is the first of its kind to link child health to a parent's income and educational level, said Dr. Paula Braveman, one of the study's authors."What may be most startling to pople is that middle-class children also fare worse than children in wealthy families," she said during a media teleconference this week.Overall, the general health of Oklahoma children in every income or education group did not meet the national benchmark, the report said.The findings don't surprise Jan Figart, associate director of Tulsa's Community Service...
from the Pretoria News Sanitation just doesn't exist for many people in the world. A UK charity has marked Monday as World toilet Day, to shed light on poor hygiene for the poor. - KaleBy Pascal FletcherDakar - Going to the toilet is a matter of life and death in the world's poorest countries where lack of sanitation and poor hygiene kill hundreds of thousands, especially children, every year."One in four people in the world don't have a safe place to go to the toilet," said Barbara Frost, chief executive of UK-based charity WaterAid which marked World Toilet Day on Monday by launching an international campaign for more hygiene awareness and investment in sanitation.Speaking from Mali in West Africa, Frost said the absence of clean toilet facilities, access to safe water and efficient...
from Reuters India Here is an update on what is going on with Massachusetts health care plan. This seems to be written with an international audience in mind, since it came from Reuters India. - KaleBy Jason SzepBOSTON (Reuters) - Nearly half a million people obtained health insurance in the two years since Massachusetts enacted a pioneering health-care law, officials said on Tuesday, putting the state closer to covering nearly all residents.The law, seen as a possible national model as traditional employer-based coverage shrinks nationwide, made Massachusetts the first U.S. state with near-universal health insurance when it went into effect in April 2006.Between June 2006 and March 31, 2008, more than 439,000 people enrolled in private or subsidized health insurance programs, the...
from Newsmax A new survey that counts women having children, has one result that invoulves poverty. The US Census Bureau released the results. Among the results it shows that more women between the ages of 40 and 44 are childless. One result was on our topic, stating a rise in numbers of childbirths in poverty. - KaleDifferences among states also emerged. California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, Illinois, New York and New Jersey had a greater percentage of foreign-born women who became mothers in 2006. A bigger share of women in the Southeast and Southwest who gave birth in the year prior to the survey did so in poverty. Link to full article. May expire in future....
A new report by Ontario doctors, says they should take a more active role in identifying poverty. - KalePosted By FIONA ISAACSONThe report, by the Ontario Physicians Poverty Work Group outlines how poverty "substantially raises" the rate of chronic illness, infant mortality and lowers life expectancy.Dr. Rosana Pellizzari, Peterborough County-City Health Unit's medical officer, is one of seven doctors in the poverty work group."Poverty in Ontario is a growing problem," Pellizzari told The Examiner."Ontario now has 50 per cent of Canada's poor children living here. We've seen an increase in our poverty rates."The group outlines strategies for doctors to help identify poverty and help their patients reach services by working closely with community agencies.Pellizzari said that could...
from the International Herald Tribune More than 2 million Indian children under the age of 5 are dying every year. The UN says it's because of lack of basic care. - KaleThe report by the U.N. Children's Fund focused on the Asia-Pacific region but singled out India home to 20 percent of the world's children under 5. It also warned that rising inequality between the rich and poor risked undermining gains made in other countries of the region.While India has made steady progress in recent years, it's "not nearly enough," said UNICEF regional director Daniel Toole, calling on the government to invest significantly more money on health services.Officials from India's Health Ministry and the Women and Child Welfare Ministry were not immediately available for comment.In 2006, the last year...
from the Hartford Couriant Junk food is the cheapest kind of food. This story shows another effect threat poverty has on children's health. - KaleAn Epidemic Of Tooth Decay Threatens Children In PovertyBy JANE LIAWAs a pediatric dentist, Dr. James Musser sees many cautionary tales.In his 26 years of practice in Sacramento County, Calif., Musser has on occasion placed stainless steel crowns on all of a young patient's rotted baby teeth. Sometimes these tiny teeth are so decayed they are unsalvageable, and he must remove them all."Parents think they get a free ride on the first set," Musser said. "But baby teeth can decay and abscess, and the child can go through severe pain."Musser sees some of the most serious cases in the county because he is one of the few pediatric specialists able to...
from Afrik With a severe respiratory infection and a prescription for medicines that would cost 35,000 CFA francs (US$83) at official prices, Drissa Kone has a problem – he has no hope of raising enough money to buy the medicines.His solution? The stalls of counterfeit medicines at Abidjan’s Adjame market that will sell him an illegal reproduction of the original drug at a fraction of the price.“I can buy the same medicines at the market by the individual tablet not the packet, and pay just 150 CFA francs (US$0.35) per pill,” he said. “For 500 CFA francs (US$1.19) I can get enough medicine to last me three days!”The downside of Kone’s thrift is that the medicines might at best be considerably less effective than the originals – a serious problem when treating potentially...
from The Miami Herald By MICHAEL CASEYMany poor countries accept toxic waste from abroad, such as old computers, rusted ships and pesticides, in a shortsighted bid to lift themselves out of poverty, despite the dangers to human health and the environment, a U.N. rights official said Thursday.Okechukwu Ibeanu, a special rapporteur of the Human Rights Council, also told delegates discussing a convention on moving hazardous waste that rich nations must do their part to help developing countries build sustainable and environmentally sound economies."Many developing countries, despite sometimes knowing the dangers of the waste, continue to accept hazardous products and toxic waste due to poverty and the quest for development," Ibeanu said."Is it worth the short term monetary gain? Is it worth...
from WLTX Tropical diseases that ravage Africa, Asia and Latin America commonly occur among the poor in the USA, leaving thousands of people shattered by debilitating complications including mental retardation, heart disease and epilepsy.The diseases, caused by chronic viral, bacterial and parasitic infections, disproportionately strike women and children and are largely overlooked by doctors, says author Peter Hotez of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, part of Sabin Vaccine Institute.Hotez says the diseases go untreated in hundreds of thousands of poor people who live mainly in inner cities, the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and the Mexican borderlands.In many cases, he says, the infections cause disabilities that trap sufferers in lasting poverty. His analysis, called...
from The Daily BreezeBy Melissa Evans Staff WriterArticle Launched: 05/19/2008 11:51:40 PM PDTYounger black people with chronic kidney disease are at a much greater risk of death than white people of the same age - but the difference has nothing to do with biology, according to a study being published next month by local researchers.Blacks under the age of 65 had a78 percent higher risk of death than whites, largely due to lack of access to health care and other socioeconomic factors, Dr. Rajinish Mehrotra of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute reported in his study.The findings show that poverty, lack of insurance and lower education rates may contribute to higher mortality, he said."Addressing these factors could improve survival rates of blacks in the early stage of kidney...
from the Seattle Post IntelligencerThe goal is better coordinationBy TOM PAULSONP-I REPORTERNot that long ago, Christopher Murray was mostly considered a troublesome "bomb thrower" in the field of global health and development.Now, Murray and his colleagues at the University of Washington's new Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation are welcoming hundreds of key players in international health and development to Seattle for a two-day research conference aimed at trying to bring order to the still relatively chaotic and uncoordinated collection of projects aimed at fighting disease and improving health worldwide."There's a lot of good work being done out there, but it's being done by many groups who don't talk to each other ... and who often use different yardsticks to assess their...
from IRIN NewsClimate change is emerging as a major threat to health and adding pressure on public health systems, especially in Africa, a senior UN official has said."It causes a rise in sea levels, accelerates erosion of coastal zones, increases the intensity and frequency of natural disasters and accelerates the extinction of species," Luis Gomes Sambo, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Africa, said. "The impact on human health is even greater."Climate change, he added, is thought to directly contribute to changes in the geographic distribution of vector-borne diseases such as malaria and epidemics of meningococcal meningitis, Rift Valley fever and cholera in previously unaffected areas."For example, the geographic distribution of meningococcal meningitis appears to...
from the International Herald Tribune By Robert PearWASHINGTON: New government research has found "large and growing" disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the past two decades.Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and that, in turn, has caused a widening gap.One of the researchers, Gopal Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said "the growing inequalities in life expectancy" mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers. Singh said last week that federal officials had found "widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy" at birth and at every...
from the New York TimesBy ROBERT PEARWASHINGTON — New government research has found “large and growing” disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services, said “the growing inequalities in life expectancy” mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government to reduce them. One of the top goals of “Healthy People...
from Reuters Alert NetDHAKA, Abdul Ali Sardar, a fisherman in southern Bangladesh, never thought he would survive tuberculosis (TB)."One year ago, I caught a cold after returning home from a night of fishing along the Kirtankhola river. The cough continued for more than a month. Then came the fever. It would come every evening just before going out on the river for fishing," the 30-year-old recalled."I couldn't go out fishing. We poor people don't have the luxury of sitting at home without working," he said, lying on his bed at the Directly Observed Therapy Shortcourse (DOTS) centre (which specialises in TB treatment) at the Sher-e-Bangla medical college in the southern city of Barisal.Arriving in critical condition just three weeks earlier, Abdul is now on the road to recovery, but only...
from the Los Angeles TimesOverreaching medical journal denounces 'poaching' of medical professionalsBy Kerry HowleyIs Ephraim Dagadu stolen goods? The Ghana-born and trained physician, who runs a successful family practice in Maryland, does not speak like a man who has been ripped from his rightful home and forced to toil in the Baltimore suburbs. His visage appears on no milk cartons; no cross-continental Amber Alert calls for his return. But according to a recent piece [registration required] in a prominent British medical journal, a caring U.S. would have done more to keep Dagadu from encountering opportunity abroad. He, goes the argument, belongs to Ghana."Active recruitment of health workers from African countries is a systematic and widespread problem throughout Africa and a cause...
from the San Luis Obispo TribuneLifewater International of San Luis ObispoThe group headquartered here has helped more than 1 million people in disadvantaged areas of the world gain access to safe water and better hygieneBy Julie LynemDan Stevens had been a pastor in Southern California for 30 years when he decided to pursue another calling.He had been involved in mission work through his ministry, taking trips to Africa, Mexico and the Philippines. But after becoming acquainted with people with ties to Lifewater International, a Christian training organization that helps bring safe water, sanitation and hygiene practices to villages across the globe, Stevens made the leap from the pulpit to the nonprofit world.He became the executive director of Lifewater in 2002, about three years after...
from World VisionStudy shows more benefit from reaching all at-risk children under age 2 with nutrition, versus starting assistance among the malnourished up to age 5Port-au-Prince, Ensuring adequate nutrition for children younger than 2 is more beneficial than intervening with food assistance after young children show signs of malnourishment, according to a study published in the Feb. 16 issue of the Lancet, a leading medical journal.Communities where children under age 2 received food through a preventive program benefited more from nutritional aid than those who received assistance only after showing signs of being moderately undernourished, in a three-year program comparison.The study compared the impact of two approaches implemented by U.S. government-funded World Vision programs in...
from the Financial TimesBy Clive Cookson in BostonPoverty in early childhood poisons the brain, the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston heard on Friday.Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins.Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-economic status.Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s centre for cognitive neuroscience, said: “The biggest effects are on language and memory....
from Reuters Africa By Peter AppsLONDON, Better nutrition not only helps small boys grow up taller and stronger but can boost earning power, a long-term study in Guatemala showed on Friday, with the researchers saying childhood feeding would help reduce poverty.They said the study, published in the Lancet medical journal, made a case for rich country donors, aid agencies and developing nations to target feeding at the very young."Our study is the first to find a direct link between nutrition in childhood and economic productivity in later life," researcher John Hoddinott from the Washington, DC-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) told reporters in a telephone briefing."The implications are stark. Governments... that are interested in welfare and poverty reduction...
from All AfricaNew Vision (Kampala)By Alice Emasu And Irene NabusobaKampalaIf misoprostol, a drug that treats and prevents excessive bleeding during childbirth, receives political blessings, it would enable countries to achieve their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) particularly on the reduction of pregnancy - related death (maternal mortality).Misoprostol is a single dose white generic tablet, which a woman can put under her tongue or insert it into the vagina after giving birth. It dissolves fast, making the uterus that had failed to contract to do so, thereby averting excessive bleeding.Dr. Henry Kakande, a gynaecologist from Engender Health Uganda project- a USAID funded initiative on maternal health, HIV and AIDS, says if misoprostol is used properly, it would reduce Post Partum...
from The ThaindianLondon, About one-third cases of stunting, and deaths by up to a quarter among under 3s in poor countries could be averted with existing interventions, say researchers.The study, conducted by Professor Simon Cousens, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and team, stated that stunting is difficult to reverse after the age of three.Therefore, it is essential to focus on interventions in pregnancy, and in young children, especially those aged under two.The existing interventions include - strategies to promote improved complementary feeding, micronutrient interventions, and interventions aimed at reducing the burden of disease.In addition to reducing stunting, nutrition interventions, including breastfeeding promotion, could prevent about one quarter of child...
from Sci Dev Suhail YusufPoverty is the main cause of blindness and other eye-related ailments among Pakistani adults, according to a report published in the British Medical Journal last month (17 December).Blindness and visual impairment are more common in developing countries than in industrialised countries — the prevalence of blindness is 3–4 times higher in low income countries. But information on its specific associations with poverty is limited.Using data collected between 2001 and 2004, researchers from the Pakistan Institute of Community Ophthalmology in Peshawar, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom looked at the links between blindness, access to eye care services and poverty in Pakistan.A total of 16,507 adults were examined from both rural and urban clusters designated...
from Reuters South Africa By Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorWASHINGTON, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Rising tobacco use and poverty will fuel cancer across the developing world, more than doubling the number of new cases to 27 million by 2050, experts predicted on Thursday.Cancer is already the No. 2 cause of death globally, after heart disease and ahead of AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other causes. And as people live longer and adopt bad habits such as smoking, cancer cases will rise, said Dr. Nancy Davidson of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore."It accounts for 10 percent of deaths," said Davidson, who is president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.She cited this week's report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that 7.6 million people will die of cancer this...
from News MedicalWomen living in the inner city have difficulty meeting dietary goals that could help prevent cancer, according to a report from Johns Hopkins University researchers.In a study of African-American women living in public housing within Washington, D.C., the researchers found that the majority met one - or none - of five dietary goals suggested to reduce the risk of developing cancer. In particular, these women were unlikely to eat a healthy diet that included the recommended amount of fresh fruits and vegetables.Their analysis also linked high risk dietary behaviors with younger age, depression, smoking and being born within the District of Columbia. The researchers present their findings today in Atlanta at the American Association for Cancer Research conference on The...