Thursday, May 14, 2009

News Clipping Archives

 

Maryland / Regional

Doctor shortage plagues health care (Annapolis Capital)

Showers Of Plastic Disconcert Bethesda (Washington Post)

A Hospital's Virtual Connections (Washington Post)

New way to treat drug addicts – online (Catonsville Times)

Health partnership celebrates 10 years (Carroll County Times)

County population growth slows (Frederick County News-Post)

From a '52 Cadillac to 50 Years of Service for Rescue Squad (Washington Post)

Hopkins, UM get most stem cell grants (Daily Record)

NAACP Seeks Meeting on Paquin (Baltimore Afro-American)

Maryland Ranked 12th in Child Deaths From Unintentional Injuries  (Baltimore Afro-American)

 

National / International

Number of Unwed Mothers Has Risen Sharply in U.S. (Washington Post)

A Long Battle Ahead For Health-Care Czar (Washington Post)

Free Viagra, Lipitor, other Pfizer drugs for uninsured jobless (Baltimore Sun)

WHO meets on production of swine flu vaccine (Washington Post)

Studies find two new methods for curbing nausea of chemotherapy (Baltimore Sun)

5 common myths about aging (Baltimore Sun)

NYC closing schools for another swine flu outbreak (Washington Post)

Angered by China and others, Mexico warmly grateful to US over response to swine flu outbreak (Baltimore Sun)

 

Opinion

Fishing Guide change downplays health warnings (The Gazette Letter to the Editor)

We need a Good Samaritan law to prevent binge drinking (The Gazette Letter to the Editor)

 

 

Maryland / Regional

 

Doctor shortage plagues health care

State has 16 percent fewer doctors than national average

 

By Liam Farrell

Annapolis Capital

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

With the nation poised to fundamentally reform health care, local political and medical leaders believe the debate must include both expanding coverage to the uninsured and increasing the ranks of professionals who provide care.

 

The goal of Congress is to have a health care reform proposal out of committee by the August recess, U.S. Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Baltimore, told an audience Tuesday at a health care forum hosted by the Fort Meade Alliance at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie.

 

As the conversation turns to whether to provide a public health option along the lines of Medicare, stakeholders should not lose sight of "tremendous" nursing and physician shortages, Sarbanes said.

 

"We have a coverage problem and an access problem," the congressman said. "The challenge before us is to fix them both simultaneously."

 

Maryland had an estimated 760,000 uninsured people aged 65 and younger between 2006 and 2007, according to the Maryland Health Care Commission. At the same time, the Maryland Hospital Association found in 2007 that the state had 16 percent fewer physicians per thousand than the national average.

 

"I have high, high anxiety about this piece," Sarbanes said. "We have got to deal with this pipeline of caregivers."

 

Health care officials who attended the forum pointed to various causes, such as budget pressures, a lack of nursing teachers and low reimbursement rates. A 2005 Government Accountability Office study on physician reimbursements placed Baltimore at the bottom of a list of 319 metropolitan areas.

 

Dr. Lawrence Linder, a senior vice president and chief medical officer of BWMC, said its "irrelevant" to compare the salaries of the state's doctors to other industries and believe they are at a level that will attract and retain talent, especially considering the high debt levels of medical students and Maryland's living expenses.

 

"If physicians are being paid more somewhere else in the country … it is basically a lifestyle no-brainer," he said.

 

But John Colmers, the secretary of the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, cautioned about only looking at reimbursement from one angle.

 

"One person's income is another person's cost," he said.

 

Both Sarbanes and Martin Doordan, the president and chief executive officer of Arundel Health Systems, said medical care needs to be brought into communities through schools, businesses and senior centers in order to ease the strain caused by people using hospitals as the sole outlet.

 

"You can't have 50 million people without insurance and expect the hospital community to be the provider," Doordan said.

 

Ultimately, Linder said people have to decide how much the United States wants to spend on health care and where it should go.

 

"As a country, we need to make some of those hard decisions," he said.

 

Sarbanes is confident the time is right to make health care changes, as businesses struggle against competitors residing in countries with wider government care and voters clamor for change.

 

"What is working in our favor is the public is demanding this," he said. "If we don't deliver on that, we are going to pay for it."

 

Copyright © 2009 Capital Gazette Communications, Inc., Annapolis, Maryland.

 

Showers Of Plastic Disconcert Bethesda

County Warns Construction Firm

 

By Miranda S. Spivack

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Mike August, a partner in a Bethesda ad agency, arrived at work one recent day to find the parking lot covered in a mysterious white substance.

 

"It looked like snow," August said. Never mind that the temperature was in the 50s.

 

He traced the substance, a combination of plastic foam bits and fine dust, to a Hilton Garden Inn under construction across the street. A county inspector soon issued a violation notice to Donohoe Construction, ordering the company to clean up the site and change its construction practices. A company official agreed to do so, according to Montgomery County records.

 

But the problem, which began in late March, continued as recently as yesterday, despite eight more visits from county environment officials, three citations totaling $1,500 in fines and a threat by the county to withdraw the building permit.

 

County officials said the mix of dust and plastic foam -- caused by sanding on the side of the hotel -- is not a health hazard.

 

Even so, residents and occupants of nearby office buildings said they are worried. Yesterday, Carole Brand, a former Parent Teacher Student Association president at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, was proctoring an exam for students in a nearby office building when she noticed particles floating in the air.

 

"So you are breathing this stuff in downtown Bethesda," she said. "You are not supposed to be breathing fine particles. I covered my mouth when I left the building. It is not solved."

 

Officials from Donohoe, a major construction firm in the Washington area, did not return phone calls and e-mails seeking comment. Donohoe has not been cited for any other environmental violations in Montgomery in the past six years.

 

County law requires builders to take "reasonable precautions" to minimize airborne pollution, county spokeswoman Esther Bowring said.

 

County records and interviews with occupants of nearby offices show that throughout April and early this month, fine dust and bits of plastic foam were often seen in the air near the construction site, on Waverly Street in downtown Bethesda. The particles covered streets, cars and grassy areas, and they blew into a stream in the nearby Georgetown Branch walker-biker trail.

 

Officials grew increasingly concerned after receiving repeated calls from nearby office buildings that the construction site was creating "a pollutant, litter and a nuisance," Bowring said.

 

A county inspector, Susan Allen, visited the site several times, documenting the company's failure to comply with requests to clean up the area and minimize particles and dust.

 

At times, when Allen was nearby, workers appeared to stop the activity that was creating the particles. Finally, Allen went to an office building for a different vantage point. According to county records, she documented that workers were not using the vacuums and techniques that company officials had promised would be used to minimize the problem.

 

County officials threatened to issue a stop-work order and revoke the building permit. During a May 5 meeting, Donohoe representatives agreed to take steps to improve the site. In an e-mail summarizing the discussion, Donohoe's development director, Steven J. VanDorpe, said that most of the particles had been contained. Wind and traffic made it difficult to prevent dispersal of the particles, he wrote.

 

The company agreed to put up netting, bring in extra cleanup crews and use vacuum-equipped tools and other construction techniques to minimize the dispersal of particles.

 

"This project has been ongoing for over 18 months with minimal impacts to date," VanDorpe said in his e-mail to county officials. "We certainly regret this recent event and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or worry it has caused."

 

Last week, workers put up the netting and began taking other steps to minimize the particles.

 

But on Saturday, August's business partner, Chuck Husak, was at his office and saw particles flying. And yesterday, the particles were flying again.

 

"It's a blizzard again," said Don Mooers, a lawyer and former congressional candidate, who has repeatedly complained to county and state officials about the site.

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

A Hospital's Virtual Connections

Calvert Memorial to Join System That Sees Patients From Del.

 

By Christy Goodman

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Starting Monday night, Calvert Memorial Hospital will allow a team of doctors and nurses to help care for patients in its intensive care unit -- from Delaware.

 

The Prince Frederick hospital is the first in Maryland to go live with the eICU program, which will electronically connect six of the eight rooms in its intensive care unit to a monitoring center in Wilmington.

 

The program won't replace services at Calvert Memorial, said Ed Grogan, vice president of information services at the hospital. "It is another layer. It is more diligent care."

 

The program will also help offset a shortage of critical care physicians in Calvert County. Officials said that hiring more such physicians at Calvert Memorial is not an option. There are about 6,000 intensive care physicians in Maryland, with a projected need of 35,000 in the next 12 years, officials said.

 

In the eICU program, a patient's medical records, vital signs and other data are updated every three seconds on computer screens watched by nurses and doctors in Delaware.

 

Patients' rooms are equipped with a camera that allows the off-site team to see the patients, watch procedures and read equipment. A microphone and call button are installed so that nurses and family members can speak directly to the staff in Wilmington.

 

Hospital officials said that eICU is a cost-effective way to ensure that a patient is cared for immediately, and it also aims to reduce mortality rates and hospital stays.

 

Calvert Memorial also has TV screens in the rooms so people can see whom they are speaking to in Delaware.

 

"We were afraid patients would be alienated," said Anne Lockhart, director of critical care at Calvert Memorial. "This way, the patient, family and staff can see who they are talking to."

 

If a patient begins to decline, a computer will alert hospital staff. With the guidance of the off-site doctors, the staff at Calvert can change medication or arrange for a procedure.

 

"A human mind won't always pick up changes a computer will," said Marc T. Zubrow, medical director of Maryland eCARE, a group of seven independent hospitals that plan to install eICUs.

 

The group of hospitals also includes Civista Medical Center in La Plata and St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown, which plans to go online by the end of the year.

 

Maryland eCARE received a $3 million grant to disburse among the hospitals. Calvert spent about $250,000 to upgrade its rooms and systems. Hospital officials said the fees for the eICU services will be absorbed without passing the costs to patients.

 

The cost of operating eICU at the seven hospitals over the next five years is estimated at more than $10 million.

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

New way to treat drug addicts – online

 

Catonsville Times

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

The idea that addicts need to physically go to treatment may be becoming obsolete, 'Virtual' drug treatment -- online therapy sessions conducted by home computer -- works, according to a study released last month.

 

A 50-patient pilot study published by the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment showed that participants in online drug addiction counseling were more satisfied with their treatment overall, compared to traditional group sessions.

 

Patients for the study were drawn from the Addiction Treatment Services program in Baltimore and had ongoing illicit drug use problems.

 

Some were randomly selected to receive online treatment with eGetGoing, an online counseling center, or traditional counseling at a local treatment site. 'An individual's pathway to recovery can be varied,' said Kathleen Rebbert-Franklin, acting director of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration. 'There are some who will flourish with online counseling and others will need to face-to-face.' The eGetGoing patients cited more convenience and privacy compared to traditional care. 'The ideal form of therapy would be face-to-face,' said H. Westley Clark, director for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, who is also a psychiatrist. 'But I can't help an empty chair. Sometimes, it's Internet or nothing,' Clark said. EGetGoing helps patients with severe and chronic abuse problems. For $400 a month, patients receive a headset and software that brings treatment home in a format similar to instant messaging.

 

Patients, without fear of being stigmatized by their problems, log on to the site and attend virtual group sessions.

 

Each group member is assigned a screen name and cannot be identified by the others.

 

Group members see real-time video of their counselor, but not each other, and talk to one another and the counselor as if they were face-to-face. It's like an online forum with microphones. 'No approach is without limitations,' Clark said. 'If you don't have a computer or access to the Internet, this form of treatment is not available to you.' Adherence to the schedule of treatment sessions is a big obstacle in addiction treatment, said Dr. Van King, of Johns Hopkins University, co-author of the study.

 

Online patients attended 92 percent of their scheduled sessions, while those in traditional treatment attended 76 percent.

 

In Maryland, many addicts can't get help because there are too few counselors and treatment centers, Rebbert-Franklin said. 'We need to explore new technologies to overcome the barriers,' she said. Even with the potential success of online treatment, there are technical difficulties.

 

Nine of the selected participants were removed from the study after failing to adhere to mandatory computer software registration appointments.

 

Four others were withdrawn either because they did not have a working computer at home or had problems connecting to the eGetGoing Web site.

 

Those access problems could be significant, said Maryland Health Department Deputy Secretary Renata Henry. 'Great intervention methods mean nothing unless we can get them into the field,' she said. Henry's comments came during a conference at the Institutes for Behavior Resources in Baltimore that also featured U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat whose 7th Congressional District includes part of north Baltimor, and former White House drug czar retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey.

 

Glen Conrad, a counselor at Institute for Behavior Resources who did not attend the conference, said the benefits of face-to-face counseling cannot be replaced with Internet sessions, unless the counselor could view the patients. 'Body language is so important when you're a counselor,' Conrad said. 'A patient can say 'I'm fine' and when you see them, you know they're not.' Virtual therapy may not be ideal, some experts acknowledged.

 

But it can be a tool in the treatment arsenal. '(Addiction) is an illness that is progressive in nature, and every opportunity that we have to reach these individuals is valued,' Rebbert-Franklin said.

 

Copyright 2009 Catonsville Times-News.

 

Health partnership celebrates 10 years

 

By Erica Kritt

Carroll County Times

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Leaders of the Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County celebrated 10 years Wednesday, then set goals including expanding efforts into the southern, northern and western parts of the county during the next decade.

 

Barb Rodgers, director of community health improvement, said at the group’s annual We’re On Our Way meeting that looking ahead, the Partnership will be challenged with improving all health indicators in the county, spending the community’s and the Partnership’s money wisely, and covering more areas in Carroll.

 

Rodgers said the Partnership has tended to work mostly in Westminster.

 

The group, which is a collaboration between the Carroll County Health Department and Carroll Hospital Center, seeks to help solve some of the county’s greater health and health-care issues.

 

At Wednesday’s meeting, Tricia Supik, the executive director and CEO of the Partnership, and other members of the nonprofit spoke about the achievements that have been reached in the last decade and the goals that are set for the coming decade.

 

Among the work that people with the Partnership have accomplished is aiding in the development of Access Carroll, a facility that provides health care to uninsured, low-income residents in the county and helping with the establishment of Seniors Keep in Touch, a nonprofit that provides outreach to elderly residents who are isolated in their homes.

 

In the past year, the Partnership has had three programs at Gerstell Academy in Finksburg reaching an estimated 500 people with each event.

 

Rodgers said this has been a great venue to get information out to the public.

 

“It goes from a big picture to an individual,” she said.

 

At Wednesday’s meeting, the organization unveiled its new Web site, which was designed to give the community a better look at the data and displayed their new logo.

 

The Partnership also gave an overview of the health initiatives that Carroll is doing well with and those that aren’t going as good.

 

“Smoking is still an issue in our community,” Supik said. “Obesity - we have a lot of work to do there.”

 

Supik said that as the Partnership evolves, it will continue to work to improve the health of Carroll’s residents.

 

Reach staff writer Erica Kritt at 410-857-7876 or erica.kritt@carrollcountytimes.com.

 

On the Net

Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County: www.healthycarroll.org

 

Copyright © 2009 Carroll County Times. All Rights Reserved.

 

County population growth slows

 

By Justin M. Palk

Frederick County News-Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

From July 2007 to July 2008, Frederick County's population grew at the lowest rate in at least eight years.

 

According to estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau, the county's population increased 0.7 percent between July 1, 2007, and July 1, 2008. The previous year's growth rate was 1.2 percent.

 

The county's population is 225,721, making it the eighth-largest in the state, between Harford County, with a population of 240,351, and Carroll County, with a population of 169,353.

 

Frederick County's population continues to become more diverse, although the growth in its minority populations has slowed, just as growth overall has.

 

From July 1, 2007, to July 1, 2008, the county's Hispanic population grew by 6.1 percent, to 13,641. That's the lowest growth rate in the county's Hispanic population in at least eight years.

 

The previous year, the Hispanic population growth rate was 14.4 percent.

 

Since July 2000, the county's Hispanic population has grown 188 percent, the largest such increase in the state.

 

The black population grew 3 percent, to 22,510; the American Indian and Native Alaskan population grew 2.9 percent, to 1,518; the Asian population grew 3.9 percent, to 9,370; and the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population grew 5.1 percent, to 187.

 

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Copyright 1997-09 Randall Family, LLC. All rights reserved.

 

From a '52 Cadillac to 50 Years of Service for Rescue Squad

 

By Jenna Johnson

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

More than 50 years ago, John W. Roache's uncle was driving his old pickup truck on Route 5 in Mechanicsville when a "carful of visitors" crashed into him. He lay in pain on the side of the road and waited to be picked up by the local funeral home's hearse, which doubled as the village's ambulance.

 

"They decided to take him to Greater Southeast hospital. He died crossing the D.C. line," Roache said. "That's when people decided we really needed an ambulance."

 

So in 1959, a group of village leaders, including Roache's father, donated $2,500 to buy a used 1952 Cadillac ambulance from a rescue squad in Bethesda-Chevy Chase. They signed a charter that established the Mechanicsville Volunteer Rescue Squad, parked the vehicle in a volunteer's garage and answered 66 calls their first year.

 

St. Mary's County is unique in that its rescue squads were formed independently of the fire stations, and nearly all have stayed independent.

 

Today the Mechanicsville squad has about 70 members and answers more than 2,000 calls each year with its fleet of four ambulances. On Sunday, the rescue squad will kick off a year-long 50th anniversary celebration with an open house at the station. The Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department is celebrating its 75th birthday this year.

 

"A whole lot has changed in that time period," said Roache, 68, a doctor who practices medicine in St. Mary's. "Things were rudimentary back then."

 

When the Mechanicsville squad formed, members were trained only in advanced first aid, and they carried their medical supplies -- painkillers, bandages and "Kotex pads for big bleeding" -- in a red toolbox, Roache said.

 

One night Roache and two other members heard about an Amish man who had been hit by a truck near New Market.

 

They rushed to the scene in the '52 Caddy, saw that the man's jaw was broken, loaded him and his wife into the ambulance and drove to the closest hospital. There they were told the man needed to go to a hospital in Baltimore. So they grabbed some cookies from the hospital cafeteria and got back in the ambulance.

 

They hadn't gotten far when the car's fan belt gave out, and they had to stop at a garage and have it fixed. Finally, they delivered the man to Baltimore and returned to St. Mary's.

 

"We didn't get home until 2 or 3 a.m. It was our longest call," Roache said. "Of course, before we got back, the story got around that we had stopped at Penney's on the way up there and had a steak dinner and left the patient in the ambulance."

 

It would be years before responders learned about clearing airways and decades before they would be subjected to dozens of hours of state-required medical training.

 

Today it takes a new recruit nearly a year to undergo the necessary training and testing required to answer calls.

 

And St. Mary's has morphed from a rural, "dead-end peninsula" inhabited by the descendants of Maryland's first settlers to an exurban county of more than 100,000 people, a major naval base and numerous housing developments with twirling roads and cul-de-sacs.

 

The squad is in charge of all emergency calls for a 100-square-mile area that stretches north to the county line, east to the Patuxent River, south to Route 247 and west to the Wicomico Creek. In 1989, the squad built its current station on Old Flora Corner Road in Mechanicsville.

 

In addition to six bays for apparatus, the homelike station has a lounge and bunk, exercise and training rooms.

 

It has become more difficult for the squad to recruit new members, because of the major time commitment, intense training and emotionally exhausting work, members said.

 

More and more members work outside the county, so it is difficult for them to respond to calls during the day.

 

But the Mechanicsville volunteers say once they get involved, it is difficult for them not to spend time at the station.

 

"It's just like a great, big family," said volunteer Jessica Vallandingham, 24. "It's a mix of personalities and skills . . . and we're all just really proud to give back."

 

Copyright 2009 Washingtin Post.

 

Hopkins, UM get most stem cell grants

 

By Danielle Ulman

Daily Record

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland won the lion’s share of $18.9 million in grants the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission said it would award researchers Thursday.

 

Of the 59 grants doled out, Johns Hopkins got funding for 39 projects and the University of Maryland School of Medicine received money for 11 projects.

 

Despite the competitive nature of winning grants, the race is really for a cure, said Curt I. Civin, director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

 

“It’s really wrong to paint this as a contest between Hopkins and Maryland,” he said. “The competition is to understand how stem cells work so we can manipulate them for patients’ benefit.

 

“I’m on the team to really cure disease, not to out-compete my crosstown friends and neighbors,” said Civin, who until last year worked at Johns Hopkins.

 

Maryland launched its stem cell program in 2006 to provide state funding for human embryonic stem cell research after former President George W. Bush banned federal funding of the research in 2001.

 

In March, President Barack Obama lifted the ban on federally funded embryonic stem cell research, and ordered the National Institutes of Health to come up with new guidelines for funding within 120 days. When NIH does produce the new set of rules, Maryland’s funding program will still be important because it gives grants for exploratory research, said Karen Rothenberg, chairwoman of the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission.

 

More than half of the state’s grants this year went to researchers who are new to the stem cell field or who present new approaches or models not used in the field.

 

The exploratory grant awarded to Civin is actually a joint project between the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins on which Civin will lead the research to determine whether stem cells can be made to multiply and expand and then shrunk down when they are put back into the body.

 

It’s a project that Civin said would likely not pass muster with the crowd at NIH.

 

“That’s why [Maryland’s program] is so neat, because we just couldn’t get money from NIH to see if this works,” he said. “We can take a raw idea like this that’s risky and, you could say, naïve and if it pays off you could say it was high-risk but it has a high reward.”

 

None of the research funded by the state has moved into the clinical stage, but Rothenberg said some has moved into translational research, which aims to move basic research into a practical application.

 

“One of the important things when you’re using state resources is that you have to manage expectations,” she said. “It’s a complicated area of science, and we’re learning a lot and we have to manage the expectations of when it’s going to give us a cure.”

 

Other groups that received grants were the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Hugo W. Moser Research Institute at Kennedy Krieger. Montgomery County-based Virxsys Corp. and GlobalStem also received grants.

 

Rothenberg said she expects more businesses to apply for grants once the research becomes more translational.

 

State funding of stem cell research fell from $18 million in fiscal 2009 to $15.4 million for fiscal 2010, as Maryland struggled to find a balance between supporting its programs and balancing its budget.

 

“We’ll just have to do the best we can based on the science,” Rothenberg said. “You can’t fund too many $1.5 million grants and have anything left.”

 

Copyright 2009 Daily Record.

 

NAACP Seeks Meeting on Paquin

 

By Sean Yoes

Baltimore Afro-American

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

(May 14, 2009) - The president of the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wants to meet with City Schools CEO Andres Alonso about the fate of the Laurence G. Paquin School.

 

Marvin “Doc” Cheatham says Alonso’s proposal to merge Paquin—which has served pregnant girls and adolescents with children for decades—with the Baltimore Rising Star Academy—an alternative middle school for overage students—is “objectionable.”

 

“I find it objectionable to put boys in a school where girls are already experiencing challenges…and the whole reason why they are in that particular school is their relationship with boys,” Cheatham said during an interview prior to the meeting.

 

“These are teenage girls that have gotten pregnant, which means we’re trying to get them to better understand their responsibility and their role and you’re going to put boys right back in the school with them again. We’re trying to teach them how to deal with this better and you’re compounding the problem by putting the challenge right there before them.”

 

Cheatham opened up this week’s meeting of the local branch of the NAACP to those who want to offer an alternative to the Paquin merger. The meeting, which was attended by five teachers from Paquin, was co-convened by Anne Chester of Iota Phi Lambda Sorority.

 

“If there are young men who have to be placed from an alternative setting, my sense is that there are also young women who…may not be pregnant who need that nurturing environment,” Chester said during the meeting.

 

“So, if you’re going to fill the school, fill it with …other females, and that has become I think the thing that is now a political football.”

 

Alonso has not commented publicly on the Paquin merger since the last school board meeting in April made it official. But, one of the concerns he has voiced in the past about Paquin is that space is underutilized. Ultimately, however, because Paquin is a program and not a school—it was made a program last year—Alonso has the authority to close or merge programs without the school board’s authority.

 

“It is a school not a program,” Chester said. “The board is remiss in allowing that kind of delineation.”

 

According to the teachers in attendance at the meeting, Paquin is now the only school for pregnant girls in the United States. Paquin’s Director Rosetta Stith said she presented a plan to Alonso last year to expand Paquin to a citywide program.

 

 

“We were ready to put it in place, but there were no funds,” one of the teachers said. The instructor asked not to be identified for this article, because they have been instructed not to speak to the media about the pending Paquin merger.

 

Alonso has said he is open to other possibilities, but the merger between Paquin and Rising Star will happen unless another proposal that is more viable is presented to him.

 

“The minute you put the young men in there, it’s over,” Chester said. But, she also said it was not her desire to dismiss or demonize Black boys.

 

“If we are saying, ‘not in our back yard,’ we can’t ignore our young men, they are also our children,” Chester said. “I want them to have a place to go.”

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Afro-American.

 

Maryland Ranked 12th in Child Deaths From Unintentional Injuries

 

By Alan King

Baltimore Afro-American

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

(May 14, 2009) - Two recently released studies highlighting risk factors that could hinder childhood development ranked Maryland 12th in the nation for the number of unintentional injury deaths among children during the summer.

 

Both reports, “Raising Safe Kids: One Stage at a Time” and “Safe Kids U.S. Summer Safety Ranking Report,” were conducted by Safe Kids USA, one of several global networks for Safe Kids Worldwide.

 

With a mission of preventing unintentional childhood injury – what child advocates noted as “a leading killer of children 14 and under” – Safe Kids operates in 17 countries and unites health and safety experts.

 

“Raising Safe Kids: One Stage at a Time” is a study that links age-appropriate recommendations to an extensive analysis of research on children’s cognitive, behavioral and physical development.

 

The report is divided into four different stages of development including infancy (0 to 12 months), early childhood (1 to 4 years), middle childhood (5 to 9 years) and early adolescence (10 to 14 years).

 

It’s “the first step in being able to foresee and prevent serious injuries,” Martin Eichelberger, M.D., founder of Safe Kids Worldwide and former chief of Trauma and Burn Services at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were more than 6 million unintentional injuries (12 injuries per minute) to children ages 0 to 14 in 2007 that required care in an emergency room.

 

Although the childhood injury death rate in the United States has dropped by 45 percent in the 22 years Safe Kids has been in operation, unintentional injury remains the leading cause of death and disability in children ages 1 to 14 in the country.

 

According to another report, Safe Kids U.S. Summer Safety Ranking Report, Vermont leads the country with 1.63 children for every 100,000 children dying in an unintentional incident during the summertime. New Jersey was No. 2, followed by the District, New York and Delaware.

 

Maryland was ranked 12th on the list, with the unintentional injury-related death rate over a five-year period at 2.42 children for every 100,000 children.

According to Safe Kids Baltimore, 75 children ages 14 and under died of unintentional injuries between 2003 and 2005.

 

Karen Hardingham, a coordinator with the city’s Safe Kids affiliate at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children, noted that during 2003-2005, more children visited emergency rooms for non-fatal injuries.

 

“Over 22,691 children ages 14 and under were seen in Baltimore City Emergency Departments for unintentional injuries and 1,219 children ages 14 and under were admitted to Baltimore City hospitals for unintentional injuries,” Hardingham said in an email.

 

The top injury-causing incidents for children ages 14 and under in Baltimore City included fires, burns and motor vehicle collisions. Drowning and pedestrian accidents were also added to the 5-14 age group list.

 

For children age 4 and under, the list included airway obstruction, suffocation and unsafe sleeping habits.

 

“Serious injuries have effects lasting well into adulthood, such as spinal cord injuries, brain damage and other physical handicaps, which also lead to costly emergency department bills, missed school days and limited future employment and life opportunities,” Eichelberger said. “But the good news is these injuries can be prevented if parents and caregivers take the right steps.”

 

For starters, parents can provide safe play areas by allowing their children access to playgrounds with 12 inches of safe surfaces such as shredded rubber, hardwood fiber/mulch or fine sand below the equipment to create a softer landing in case of a fall.

 

Other tips include: installing stair gates to keep children from falling down stairs, securing furniture to the wall and keeping medicines and poisonous household items locked and out of reach.

 

Eichelberger said, “Your child’s physical, behavioral and cognitive abilities should affect the precautions you take to help them avoid serious injury.”

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Afro-American.

 

National / International

 

Number of Unwed Mothers Has Risen Sharply in U.S.

Women in 20s, 30s Are Driving Trend, Report Shows

 

By Rob Stein and Donna St. George

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Katrina Stanfield, 25, is raising her 3-year-old daughter in Middletown, Md., without a husband because she and her boyfriend decided that marriage would not work for them.

 

Heidy Gonzalez, 21, is living with her two children and their father in Mount Rainier, but tying the knot is not a priority for them now.

 

Emily Smatchetti, 38, is a single mother of a toddler in Miami because she had not found the right man and worried that time was running out. So she found a sperm donor.

 

The mothers are part of a far-reaching social trend unfolding across the United States: The number of children being born out of wedlock has risen sharply in recent years, driven primarily by women in their 20s and 30s opting to have children without getting married. Nearly four out of every 10 births are now to unmarried women.

 

"It's been a huge increase -- a dramatic increase," said Stephanie J. Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, which documented the shift in detail yesterday for the first time, based on an analysis of birth certificates nationwide. "It's quite striking."

 

Although the report did not examine the reasons for the increase, Ventura and other experts cite a confluence of factors, including a lessening of the social stigma associated with unmarried motherhood, an increase in couples delaying or forgoing marriage, and growing numbers of financially independent women and older and single women deciding to have children on their own after delaying childbearing.

 

"I think this is the tipping point," said Rosanna Hertz, a professor of sociology and women's studies at Wellesley College. "This is becoming increasingly the norm. The old adage that 'first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage' just no longer holds true."

 

The trend has unfolded despite decades of political and social hand-wringing over the issue, such as Vice President Dan Quayle's attack on the unmarried television mother Murphy Brown, President Bill Clinton's revamp of welfare and President George W. Bush's focus on "family values." President Obama has said that one of his priorities is reducing abortions, in part by helping women who become pregnant and want to keep their children.

 

Some experts said the trend represents a positive change for many women, allowing them to avoid becoming social outcasts, being forced to give up their babies for adoption or having abortions, and letting them raise children in nontraditional families.

 

"Women can have children on their own, and it's not going to destroy your employment, and it's not going to mean that you'll be made a pariah by the community," Hertz said. "It's much more socially acceptable."

 

But others said the trend is disturbing because children who grow up without stable, two-parent families tend not to fare as well in many ways.

 

"I look at this and say, maybe this trend is what young adults want or stumble into, but it's not in the best interest of children," said Sarah Brown, chief executive of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

 

About 1.7 million babies were born to unmarried women in 2007, a 26 percent rise from 1.4 million in 2002 and more than double the number in 1980, according to the new report. Unmarried women accounted for 39.7 percent of all U.S. births in 2007 -- up from 34 percent in 2002 and more than double the percentage in 1980.

 

"If you see 10 babies in the room, four them were born to women who were not married," Ventura said.

 

Although experts have been concerned about a recent uptick in births to older teenagers after years of decline, that is not the driving force in the overall trend but more likely a reflection of it, Ventura said. Instead, much of the rise is due to significant increases in births among unmarried women in their 20s and 30s. Between 2002 and 2006, the rate at which unmarried women in that age group were having babies increased between 13 percent and 34 percent, the report found.

 

The rates increased for all races, but they remained highest and rose fastest for Hispanics and blacks. There were 106 births to every 1,000 unmarried Hispanic women in 2006, 72 per 1,000 blacks, 32 per 1,000 whites and 26 per 1,000 Asians, the report showed.

 

The percentage of babies born to unmarried women in the United States is starting to look more like that in many European countries, the data shows. For example, the proportion of babies born to unmarried women is about 66 percent in Iceland, 55 percent in Sweden, 50 percent in France and 44 percent in the United Kingdom.

 

In many of those countries, couples are living together instead of getting married, which is also the case in the United States. Previous research indicates that about 40 percent of births to unmarried women occur in households where couples are cohabitating.

 

Gonzalez, the mother who lives with her children's father in Mount Rainier, said marriage has not loomed as a necessity for them. "Time goes by and we think about other stuff -- and we think about rent," she said. This holds true, she said, for most of her friends. "Most of the people I know just live with their baby's father or boyfriend and don't get married," she said.

 

Other couples today feel less compelled to marry just because they are having a child.

 

"It seems to be more wrong to be in a marriage with someone who you don't love and consider to be your best friend than not to be in a marriage at all," said Barbara Katz Rothman, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York. "It's not that people care less about marriage. In some ways, it's because they care more."

 

Stanfield and her boyfriend tried living together after she got pregnant, but he moved out when it became clear to both of them that they were not compatible, she said.

 

"He's a good dad and a good person, but he's just not right for me," Stanfield said.

 

In New Carrollton, Natrice McKenzie, 25, a teller supervisor at a bank, said she did not set out to become a single mother but has no regrets.

 

"Getting married was something I had in mind, but that basically was not what happened," said McKenzie, pregnant with her third child. She said it can be difficult, and she knows she is far from unique. "Nowadays it's becoming more like, single moms are everywhere," she said.

 

Alana Hill, 33, sees family history as an important influence. A single mother in Silver Spring who works as a dancer and a dance teacher, Hill was raised by a single mother and was part of a large extended family in which most of the mothers were not married. Except for grandparents, "I didn't have a role model of a husband and a wife who were married for years," she said. Even when she was very young, her foremost wish, she said, was motherhood, not marriage. "I knew I wanted a child," she said.

 

Smatchetti, who works as a U.S. attorney in Miami, said she is glad that she had the option of using a sperm donor after a long-term relationship ended.

 

"I didn't want to pick the wrong person just to have kid, so I just decided to go ahead and do it and work on the relationship later," she said. "It's hard, but in a good way."

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

A Long Battle Ahead For Health-Care Czar

White House Event Was Early Victory

 

By Ceci Connolly

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Nancy-Ann DeParle was dubious. She had not even settled into her job as White House health czar when the nation's big insurance companies made her an offer.

 

Eager to be at the bargaining table for this year's health-care reform debate, Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, told DeParle that the health industry was willing to wring about $2 trillion in savings out of health spending over the next decade.

 

"I was skeptical," DeParle recalled in an interview this week. She thought, "They probably don't even know what these numbers mean."

 

A few weeks later, in mid-April, Ignagni, who opposed President Bill Clinton's reform effort in the early 1990s, enlisted a hospital group and a labor union. DeParle still wasn't satisfied. "I need to see that it's more than just the three of you," she said she told them.

 

Over the next month, as DeParle kept a wary distance, a coalition was built and the proposal refined. Finally DeParle was sold, and on Monday she brought the group to the White House, where industry titans better known for killing health-care reform 15 years ago found themselves basking in presidential praise.

 

"This is a historic day," President Obama declared, "a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health-care reform."

 

Seated to his left in the State Dining Room was DeParle, a woman Obama had not met until he hired her in March to run the White House Office of Health Reform.

 

On her petite shoulders rests the administration's top domestic policy goal: to cover millions of uninsured Americans, improve care nationwide and control skyrocketing medical bills that are devouring personal, corporate and government budgets.

 

She was not Obama's first choice for the post. But when former senator Thomas A. Daschle withdrew because of tax troubles, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel persuaded his former Clinton administration colleague to leave the lucrative private sector and return to government.

 

Her first gambit in the health battle -- Monday's splashy White House event -- illustrates well the challenges DeParle faces in a role she never sought. Touted by Obama backers as a "game-changer," the industry pledge has been ridiculed by economists as an unenforceable wish list from less-than-virtuous players.

 

"On the one hand, it's an empty gesture," said Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University scholar and DeParle admirer. Yet the image of all those "erstwhile insurgents" seated at the table sans weapons was also "a stroke of genius," he said.

 

"It was a PR coup," he added.

 

'American Success Story'

The life story of Nancy-Ann Min DeParle is "the prototypical American success story," said her friend Chris Jennings, a health-care strategist who advised the Clintons. Raised by a poor single mother in East Tennessee, DeParle remembers the day in 1965 when her family first heard about a new government health program for seniors called Medicare.

 

Her grandmother reached for a shoebox stuffed with medical bills, DeParle said, and asked: "Do you think it will pay for these?"

 

By age 17, DeParle was all too familiar with the staggering cost of health care, personally as well as financially. "My mother had lung cancer," DeParle recalled. "She was very, very sick."

 

The disease and aggressive chemotherapy took a ferocious toll, but her mother kept working, struggling to support three children on a meager clerical salary.

 

Showing up for work meant the family could keep its health insurance. More important, her mother refused to take vacation time or use sick days "so we would get paid for them when she died." That came less than a year after the diagnosis.

 

With scholarships, loans and odd jobs, DeParle excelled in school and beyond: Harvard Law, Rhodes scholar at Oxford, youngest Medicaid director in Tennessee history. Under Clinton, she served first as an associate director in the Office of Management and Budget and later oversaw Medicare and Medicaid.

 

"I swore I'd never come back in this building," said DeParle, 52, in her office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. "I thought my stint in public service was over and I'd be a cheerleader from the sidelines."

 

Perhaps most daunting, DeParle is, in the words of Obama, his "point guard" on a White House team of confident -- even cocksure -- men.

 

"The challenge for her is there is a proliferation of cooks in the kitchen," said Dan Mendelson, a former Clinton administration colleague.

 

Besides negotiating with industry powerhouses, it is DeParle's job to referee the likes of chief economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers, budget chief Peter Orszag, legislative liaison Phil Schiliro, message guru David Axelrod and Ezekiel Emanuel, the physician brother of Rahm Emanuel.

 

"She knows what sharp elbows are," said Donna E. Shalala, a friend of DeParle's since the Clinton days. "In taking this job, she knew the risks."

 

At 5-foot-2, in feminine suits and pearls, DeParle was amused by Obama's designation of her as the point guard. "I'm not accustomed to being drafted for any basketball teams," she said, "so I rather liked that."

 

Over the years, her penchant for data, coupled with her Southern gentility, has helped her neutralize power-hungry peers, influential lawmakers and even those on the other side. She counts among her admirers Thomas A. Scully and Leslie V. Norwalk, who ran Medicare and Medicaid under Republican presidents.

 

"Nancy-Ann is a completely honest broker," Summers said. "People have compared health care to the Balkans. There are long-established deep rivalries, factions, differences of opinion." She transcends the skirmishes, he said, because "she doesn't have an axe to grind."

 

Though others may possess more expertise in a given policy area, her strength comes from a breadth of experience no one else has, Rahm Emanuel said. "She understands the size and scope of the challenge and where the pitfalls are," he said.

 

Since 2001, DeParle has thrived in the private sector, first at J.P. Morgan Partners and then at a private-equity spinoff, CCMP Capital. She earned more than $2 million in the past two years on corporate boards such as DaVita, Boston Scientific, Cerner and Medco Health Solutions, according to public records. Her financial disclosure form is pending.

 

A White House aide said DeParle, who lost money on her investments when she joined the administration, will recuse herself from deliberations about any company she previously advised. But because her job is a White House post, she will not be required to testify on Capitol Hill, giving her enviable latitude in the dealmaking.

 

Although some consider her lucrative stint in the corporate world a liability, Jennings argues that it is a unique asset. "She's seen the books in the private sector," he said.

 

On Tuesday, as other administration aides were celebrating the health industry's pledge to slow the rate of spending growth by 1.5 percentage points over the next 10 years, DeParle was guarded:

 

"Well, it hasn't happened yet."

 

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

Free Viagra, Lipitor, other Pfizer drugs for uninsured jobless

 

Associated Press

By Linda A. Johnson

Baltimore Sun

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

TRENTON, N.J. - Pfizer Inc. is unveiling a new program Thursday that will let people who have lost their jobs and health insurance keep taking some widely prescribed Pfizer medications -- including Lipitor and Viagra -- for free for up to a year.

 

The world's biggest drugmaker will provide more than 70 of its prescription drugs at no cost to unemployed, uninsured Americans, regardless of their prior income, who lost jobs since Jan. 1 and have been on the Pfizer drug for three months or more.

 

The announcement comes amid massive job losses caused by the recession and a campaign in Washington to rein in health care costs and extend coverage. The move could earn Pfizer some goodwill in that debate after long being a target of critics of drug industry prices and sales practices.

 

The program also likely will help keep those patients loyal to Pfizer brands.

 

"Everybody knows now a neighbor, a relative who has lost their job and is losing their insurance. People are definitely hurting out there," Dr. Jorge Puente, Pfizer's head of pharmaceuticals outside the U.S. and Europe and a champion of the project, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Wednesday. "Our aim is to help people bridge this point."

 

Officials for New York-based Pfizer said they don't know how much the program will cost and haven't put a cap on spending for it.

 

Applicants will have to sign a statement that they are suffering financial hardship and provide a "pink slip" or similar employer notice. Applications will be accepted through Dec. 31, with medication provided for up to 12 months after approval -- or until the person becomes insured again.

 

Starting Thursday, patients can call a toll-free number, 866-706-2400, to sign up, and those whose drugs are not included in the program will be referred to other company aid programs. Starting July 1, patients can also apply through the Web site, www.PfizerHelpfulAnswers.com, which has information about the other Pfizer aid programs.

 

Pfizer and the rest of the drug industry is trying to have a voice in the debate over how to overhaul the U.S. health care system, partly by joining in a pledge this week to help hold down inflation of health costs.

 

"There's a long-term benefit there, beyond the goodwill and the publicity," said David Heupel, health care portfolio manager at Thrivent Large Cap Growth Fund. "Pfizer is trying to maintain their (market) share, if not grow their share" by keeping people from switching to generic versions of its drugs to save money.

 

"If you're already taking medication that's working, typically doctors don't push to change it," Heupel said.

 

Pfizer's program comes at a time when many drugmakers, including Pfizer, have been raising prices on their drugs, partly to offset declines in revenue as the global recession reduces the number of prescriptions people can afford to fill.

 

The idea for the program came just five weeks ago, at a leadership training meeting, as the workers discussed how many patients are struggling, Puente said.

 

"It was my idea," he said. "I floated it, and the reception it got was so dramatic that it very quickly became our idea."

 

Colleagues suggested employees could donate to a fund to help support the effort, Puente said. He said some employees had tears in their eyes when discussing how they could help people who had lost jobs.

 

He said he urged top management to approve the program, presenting a recent Associated Press article about how newly uninsured diabetics are suffering serious complications because they can no longer afford the medicines and testing supplies. Approval came quickly.

 

The 70-plus drugs covered include several diabetes drugs and some of Pfizer's top money makers, from cholesterol fighter Lipitor and painkiller Celebrex to fibromyalgia treatment Lyrica and Viagra for impotence. The list includes drugs from several other popular classes, including antibiotics, antidepressants, antifungal treatments, several heart drugs, contraceptives and smoking cessation products. Cheaper generic versions are available for quite a few of the drugs.

 

Pfizer said that from 2004 through 2008, its patient assistance programs helped 5.1 million people get 51 million Pfizer prescriptions for free or at reduced cost, with a total value of $4.8 billion.

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Sun.

 

WHO meets on production of swine flu vaccine

 

Associated Press

By Maria Cheng and Frank Jordans

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

GENEVA -- As swine flu cases topped 6,600 worldwide, vaccine makers and other experts met Thursday at the World Health Organization to discuss the tough decisions that must be made quickly to fight the evolving virus.

 

Pharmaceutical companies are ready to begin making a swine flu vaccine _ but as the virus constantly mutates, questions abound: How much should be produced? How will it be distributed? Who should get it?

 

The expert group's recommendations will be passed to WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, who is expected to issue advice to vaccine manufacturers and the World Health Assembly next week.

 

WHO's flu chief said the meeting of industry representatives and independent experts sought to answer questions including when to recommend to manufacturers that they switch from a seasonal vaccine to one that works against the pandemic strain.

 

"No big decisions, no announcements," Keiji Fukuda told reporters after the meeting. "These are enormously complicated questions, and they are not something that anyone can make in a single meeting."

 

But some feel the main decision has already been made.

 

"It's a foregone conclusion," said David Fedson, a vaccines expert and former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia. "If we don't invest in an H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine, then possibly we could have a reappearance of this virus in a mild, moderate, or catastrophic form and we would have absolutely nothing."

 

Most flu vaccine companies can only make one vaccine at a time: seasonal flu vaccine or pandemic vaccine. Production takes months and it is impossible to switch halfway through if health officials make a mistake.

 

Vaccine makers can make limited amounts of both seasonal flu vaccine and pandemic vaccine _ though not at the same time _ but they cannot make massive quantities of both because that exceeds manufacturing capacity.

 

"What is really going to be wrestled with is that seasonal influenza itself has a significant impact on people," said Fukuda. "This is an infection which is estimated to kill some hundreds of thousands of people each year around the world, so there is a real trade-off if you just say we're going to stop making that vaccine."

 

At the moment, health officials aren't sure how deadly swine flu is, and whether they will need more seasonal flu vaccine or swine flu vaccine. And if the swine flu mutates, scientists aren't sure how effective a vaccine made now from the current strain will remain.

 

WHO estimates that up to 2 billion doses of swine flu vaccine could be produced every year, though the first batches wouldn't be available for four to six months.

 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently working on a "seed stock" to make the vaccine, which should be ready in the next couple of weeks. That will be distributed to manufacturers worldwide so they can start producing the vaccine.

 

Until vaccine manufacturers get the seed stock, they won't know how many doses of vaccine they can make or how long that would take. Sanofi Pasteur, the world's biggest vaccine producer, said Thursday it is waiting for the green light from WHO before it starts making swine flu vaccine.

 

WHO is also negotiating with vaccine producers like GlaxoSmithKline PLC to save some of their swine flu vaccine for poorer nations. Many rich nations like Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Switzerland and the United States signed deals with vaccine makers years ago to guarantee them pandemic vaccines as soon as they're available.

 

As of Thursday, at least 33 countries reported more than 6,600 cases of swine flu worldwide, with 69 deaths. The figures are based on tallies provided by national governments and WHO. According to the global body's pandemic alert level, the world is at phase 5 _ out of a possible 6 _ meaning that a global outbreak is "imminent."

 

"It's a no-brainer," Fedson said of the decision to make swine flu vaccine. "All that's being discussed now is the details of how to make sure you have enough seasonal flu vaccine and the logistics of making the switch to H1N1 vaccine production."

 

While the vaccine question hangs in the air, WHO has given Indian pharmaceuticals giant Cipla the medical go-ahead to produce a generic version of the anti-viral medication Tamiflu. The drug, also known as oseltamivir, is one of two anti-virals shown to work against swine flu.

 

WHO said Cipla's generic version was as effective as the original made by Swiss firm Roche Holding AG and would hopefully make the drug more accessible to poor countries.

 

North America has been the hardest-hit continent. The United States has reported 3,352 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu, including three deaths. Mexico has 2,656 cases and 64 deaths, while Canada has 389 cases with one death, according to WHO figures.

 

Mexico confirmed 374 more cases Thursday including four more deaths, but Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said the new cases show the virus is appearing less deadly. Mexico's swine flu deaths now represent 2.4 percent of its confirmed cases, he said.

 

Spain and Britain have the most cases in Europe, at 100 and 78 respectively.

 

In Central America, Costa Rica has eight cases and one death and Panama has 29 cases.

 

Maria Cheng contributed from London.

 

© 2009 The Associated Press.

 

Studies find two new methods for curbing nausea of chemotherapy

Ginger, a home remedy for helping an upset stomach, and a cocktail of anti-nausea drugs both reduced vomiting and sickness in cancer patients.

 

By Shari Roan

Baltimore Sun

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Chemotherapy could soon become less grueling.

 

Simply adding a teaspoon of ginger to food in the days before, during and after chemotherapy can reduce the often-debilitating side effects of nausea and vomiting, a large, randomized clinical trial has found. And a newer type of anti-nausea drug, when added to standard medications, can help prevent such side effects as well.

 

The ginger results will be presented later this month at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting; the drug study was published this week in the Lancet Oncology.

 

The findings are significant, cancer experts say, because about 70% of chemotherapy patients experience nausea and vomiting -- often severe -- during treatment.

 

"Chemotherapy has come to be the thing cancer patients fear the most," said Dr. Steven Grunberg, a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study published in the Lancet Oncology. "We've made a huge amount of progress, but we haven't completely solved the problem."

 

In the ginger study, 644 patients, most of them female, from 23 oncology practices nationwide received two standard anti-emetic medications at the time of chemotherapy. They also were given a capsule containing either 0.5 gram, 1 gram or 1.5 grams of ginger, or a placebo capsule. The patients took the capsules containing the placebo or ginger for three days before chemotherapy and three days after the treatment.

 

All of the patients receiving ginger experienced less nausea for four days after chemotherapy, said study lead author Julie L. Ryan of the University of Rochester Medical Center. Doses of 0.5 gram and 1 gram were the most effective, reducing nausea by 40% compared with the patients taking the placebo.

 

The study is the largest so far to examine the effect of ginger, already widely used as a home remedy for an upset stomach. One gram of ginger is the equivalent to about one teaspoon. Ryan cautioned that some foods labeled as ginger, such as ginger ale or ginger cookies, may contain only ginger flavoring.

 

Researchers don't know why ginger seems to help, Ryan said. But, she added: "There is other research showing it has a potent anti-inflammatory effect in the gut."

 

In the study led by Grunberg, 810 patients were given two standard anti-nausea drugs, dexamethasone and ondansetron, that work by blocking a neural pathway in the brain that controls nausea. This two-drug regimen is most effective in preventing nausea and vomiting in the first 24 hours after chemotherapy.

 

One-third of the patients also received a one-day dose of the new drug, one-third received a three-day dose, and one-third received a placebo.

 

Adding casopitant mesylate, the authors found, helped control symptoms in the so-called delayed phase of nausea that occurs beyond the first day after chemotherapy. While 66% of the patients receiving the standard two-drug regimen experienced no nausea or vomiting in the five days after chemotherapy, 86% of patients taking a single dose of casopitant mesylate, and 80% of those taking a three-day dose, were protected.

 

Casopitant mesylate probably adds extra relief from nausea symptoms because it acts on different nerve systems than the standard drugs, Grunberg said. Dexamethasone and ondansetron are in a class of drugs known as serotonin receptor antagonists; casopitant mesylate blocks the so-called NK1 pathway in the brain.

 

"NK1 antagonists work better for that later period," Grunberg said. "This study reinforces the value of this family of anti-nausea agents."

 

It also appears that the three-drug combination can be given on the day of chemotherapy without the need for additional doses, he said.

 

Copyright 2009 Baltimore Sun.

 

5 common myths about aging

 

U.S. News & World Report

By Deborah Kotz

Baltimore Sun

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Think aging is all about losing your memory and becoming hard of hearing? Think again. Many people sail through the aging process without walkers or pacemakers. Consider this: The vast majority of those who live to be 100 are able to live independently on their own well into their 90's, and about 15 percent of them have no age-related diseases even after they hit the century mark, according to the New England Centenarian Study.

 

Here are some other common myths about aging:

 

1. Losing those few extra pounds will extend your life. Once you hit 75, carrying a little extra weight can be protective. The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, a 50-year ongoing study involving 3,000 seniors, has shown that older folks who have a body mass index of 27--about 154 pounds for a 5-foot-4 woman--live longer than everyone else, including those with a "healthy" BMI in the range of 19 to 25.

 

2. You'll need a hearing aid. Granted, some hearing loss is quite common with age; as part of the normal aging process, sensory cells within the ear begin to die off. Still, only 35 percent of 80-year-olds actually need a hearing aid, and some folks in their 90s still have perfect hearing.

 

3. You're bound to get crotchety and withdrawn. The BLSA study found that our personalities don't change much after age 30. So, if you're cheerful and gregarious in your 40s, you can expect to be the same in your 80s. Marked personality changes some seniors experience are due not to normal aging but to some related disease like dementia or stroke.

 

4. Senility is inevitable. Sure, you may forget a word or someone's name here or there, but the senile stereotype of an old person--remember Mr. Magoo?--is a thing of the past. While nearly everyone experiences a certain amount of decline in cognitive abilities as they age, most of us don't have an actual impairment in memory that severely interferes with our ability to live independently well into old age. The unlucky ones who do usually have a memory-robbing disease like Alzheimer's.

 

5. You won't have the energy to exercise well in your 80s. Ninety is the new 70. Evidence now suggests that people who take up exercise later in life--say, at age 70--experience improved heart function by lowering their resting heart rate and increasing their heart mass and the amount of blood pumped with each beat. Older exercisers also experience less shortness of breath and fatigue.

 

(c) 2009 U.S. News & World Report

 

Copyright © 2009, Tribune Media Services.

 

NYC closing schools for another swine flu outbreak

 

Associated Press

By Sara Kugler and Adam Goldman

Washington Post

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

NEW YORK -- New York City has closed three schools in response to a swine flu outbreak that has left an assistant principal in critical condition and sent hundreds of kids home with flu symptoms, in a flare-up of the virus that sent shock waves through the world last month.

 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that four students and the assistant principal have documented cases of swine flu at a Queens middle school. More than 50 students have gone home sick with flulike symptoms at the school, he said. At another middle school in Queens, 241 students were absent Thursday. Dozens more were sick at an elementary school.

 

The Health Department said the assistant principal from the Susan B. Anthony middle school is on a ventilator, marking the most severe illness in the city from swine flu to date. The students who have fallen ill in this latest surge of illness appear to be experiencing mild symptoms, similar to routine flu.

 

The assistant principal, identified by colleagues as Mitch Weiner, may have had pre-existing health problems, the mayor said. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

 

The mayor said that the sick assistant principal may have had pre-existing health problems. In many other swine flu cases that turned critical, patients had pre-existing conditions.

 

Bloomberg said that three schools _ with more than 4,000 students altogether _ would be closed for at least a week because "there are an unusually high level of flulike illnesses at those schools."

 

"There are documented cases of H1N1 flu at one of them," the mayor said, using the formal name for swine flu.

 

New York City's first known cases of swine flu appeared in late April, when hundreds of teenagers at a Roman Catholic high school in Queens began falling ill following the return of several students from vacations in Mexico, where the outbreak began.

 

At first, the virus appeared to be moving at breakneck speed. An estimated 1,000 students, their relatives and staff at the St. Francis Preparatory School fell ill in a matter of days. A limited number of kids had confirmed cases of swine flu because the Health Department tested only a small amount of students.

 

City health officials became aware of the outbreak on April 24. The school closed and health officials began bracing for more illnesses throughout the city.

 

But the outbreak then seemed to subside. Additional sporadic cases continued to be diagnosed, but the symptoms were nearly all mild. The sick children recovered in short order. St. Francis reopened after being closed for a week.

 

The middle school with the confirmed cases is two miles from St. Francis.

 

People at the school said students started going home sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, alarming parents.

 

"I'm worried," said Dino Dilchande, whose sixth-grade son goes to the school. "The city should have taken more precautions. We should have been notified earlier."

 

At the Susan B. Anthony, administrators posted a sign on the door from the Health Department informing students and teachers that the school would be closed for a week. The school is in the Hollis section of Queens, a neighborhood known for producing several rappers including the group Run-DMC.

 

A knock on the door of an address for a Mitch Weiner in the neighborhood of the school went unanswered.

 

Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, a deputy commissioner of the health department, said investigators are trying to learn more about why the disease has spread erratically, moving quickly through a few schools but slowly everywhere else.

 

"We're trying to answer some of those questions," he said.

 

Schools are a good incubator for illness in general, he said, because space is tight and youngsters often don't practice the best hygiene.

 

Across the country, most of the people getting the illness have been young. Some experts have speculated that older people might have some immunity to the virus because of genetic similarities to more common types of flu.

 

At the start of the flu outbreak in the United States, government health officials recommended that schools shut down for two weeks if there were students with swine flu. But when the virus turned out to be milder than initially feared, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention dropped that advice but urged parents to keep children with flu symptoms home for a week.

 

So far, the virus has not proved to be more infectious or deadly than the seasonal flu.

 

CDC officials said schools may decide to close if there is a cluster that's affecting attendance and staffing.

 

Associated Press Writer David B. Caruso contributed to this report.

 

Copyright 2009 Washington Post.

 

Angered by China and others, Mexico warmly grateful to US over response to swine flu outbreak

 

Associated Press

By Alexandra Olson

Baltimore Sun

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Swine flu has infected Mexico's relations with China and other countries that have canceled airline flights and halted some trade. But its most prickly neighbor — the United States — now seems like the country's most loyal friend.

 

Mexico is smarting from what it considers discriminatory actions by countries it had considered friendly, insisting the world should be grateful for its open and aggressive efforts to stem the spread of swine flu. The shutdown of public life cost Mexico $2.2 billion in the first 10 days after the epidemic was announced.

 

The government sent a plane to pick up 70 of its citizens quarantined in China. It rebuked Cuba, Ecuador, Argentina and Peru for banning flights to Mexico, saying they were acting "incongruously with our traditional ties of friendship."

 

France tried — and failed — to win a European Union-wide ban on flights to Mexico.

 

Particularly insulting for Mexico: Haiti rejected a Mexican ship last week carrying 77 tons of much-needed food aid because of swine flu fears.

 

All of that put the U.S. response in a very favorable light. Neither the United States nor Canada banned flights or restricted trade with Mexico. The three countries are partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

 

President Barack Obama forcefully rejected the idea of closing the border, despite arguments from conservative talk show hosts that swine flu showed immigration from Mexico was a threat.

 

The Obama administration cast the decision as a recognition of reality: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said sealing the border would be extremely costly and pointless since the virus was already in the United States. Obama likened the idea to "closing the barn door after the horses are out."

 

Even so, it was symbolically significant in Mexico, which protested when the U.S. began building a border fence under former President George W. Bush.

 

While Obama has also beefed up border security, he has pledged to renew efforts to push through immigration reforms that eluded the Bush administration, including extending a citizenship path for illegal immigrants. His emphasis on open borders during the swine flu outbreak could help set the tone.

 

"There was a very explicit recognition that the U.S. and Mexico cannot close their borders," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Washington-based Wilson Center. "Maybe that tells you that Mexico is really more integrated with its neighbors to the north than the rest of Latin America."

 

Mexico took note. The Foreign Relations Department held a special ceremony to thank the U.S. government both for keeping the border open and for providing aid and medical expertise.

 

"The way in which the border between Mexico and the United States stayed not only open but alive in the past days has been exemplary," said Carlos Rico, Mexico's deputy secretary for North American relations. "The open border is something that has not been recognized enough."

 

Even members of the opposition leftist Democratic Revolution Party — long known for its nationalistic wariness of the United States — were impressed.

 

"I thought the reaction and response from the three countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — was definitely laudable," said Alfonso Suarez de Real, a lawmaker from the party. "It contrasted with the reaction that other countries have had."

 

The experience added momentum to increasingly warming relations, coming on the heels of Obama's April 16 visit to Mexico and his acknowledgment that Americans share the blame for violence south of border because of drug consumption and gun trafficking. Mexico, for its part, has set aside traditional sovereignty concerns in welcoming increased U.S. border security and even U.S. training for Mexico's navy.

 

In contrast, relations with China have been frayed, threatening to undermine trade and investment between the two countries just as it has been picking up, said Hector Cuellar, president of the recently formed Mexico-China Chamber of Commerce.

 

Prominent Mexican companies have started opening operations in China in the last three years, while Mexican exports to China have jumped ninefold over the past decade to some $2 billion.

 

But Mexicans were angered when China banned the direct flights that leading Mexican airline Aeromexico started offering in October, and then quarantined Mexican travelers. Mexico canceled its participation at a Shanghai trade fair where it had meant to showcase its pork products — now banned in China and at least four other nations even though health experts say people can't catch swine flu from meat.

 

The epidemic also set back Mexico's efforts to improve ties with Cuba, which soured during the 2000-06 presidency of Vicente Fox, when Mexico voted at the U.N. in favor of monitoring human rights on the communist island.

 

Fox's successor, Felipe Calderon, had planned a conciliatory trip to Cuba this year. That's up in the air after Calderon said he may have to cancel because Cuba grounded flights to and from Mexico.

 

Mexican officials also didn't take kindly to Fidel Castro lashing out after Cuba confirmed its first swine flu case, accusing Mexico of waiting to disclose the epidemic until after Obama visited, even though Canadian and U.S. scientists did not identify the virus in Mexican patients until a week later.

 

In Europe for a summit Tuesday, Foreign Relations Secretary Patricia Espinosa told Cuba's foreign relations minister, Bruno Rodriguez, that such remarks "hurt bilateral relations."

 

Deputy Health Secretary Mauricio Hernandez said Wednesday that Mexico would support a global compensation fund for countries that suffer from epidemics, and warned that the threat of trade and travel restrictions could provoke governments to hide future outbreaks.

 

"We were responsible, and we ended up with trade sanctions — we were discriminated against," Hernandez said at an academic forum on swine flu. "So, the question is: What is the incentive (for countries to be open)?"

 

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

 

Opinion

 

Fishing Guide change downplays health warnings

 

The Gazette  Letter to the Editor

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

Maryland needs to do a better job of informing anglers about the dangers of eating some fish caught in some waters. Several years ago it moved its fish consumption advisory from its Fishing Guide, a pamphlet given to each fisherman who purchases a license, to its Web site where far fewer anglers will see important information about what not eat. All that was left of the advisory in the Fishing Guide was a small headline and a reference to a Web site.

 

This year it downplayed the urgency of the clear warnings found on its Web site by changing the headline in the Fishing Guide from "Fish Consumption Advisory" to "Fish Consumption Recommendations." Advisory connotes danger as in a weather advisory; recommendation implies endorsement as in a chef's recommendation. Because there are some fish laden with mercury and PCBs in Maryland waters shouldn't the Fishing Guide warn fishermen about those fish in clear and specific terms and in a publication we all can access?

 

John Mathwin, Rockville

The writer submitted this letter as an individual, not as a member of any group.

 

Copyright 2009 The Gazette.

 

We need a Good Samaritan law to prevent binge drinking

 

The Gazette Letter to the Editor

Thursday, May 14, 2009

 

While we should do all we can to educate and prevent teenage binge drinking ("Target binge drinking," The Gazette, April 9), we must provide a means for teens to call 911 without fear of punishment.

 

Teens die because no one calls. This is insanity.

 

Many parents will tell their teens that they can call and be picked up anytime/anywhere, if the teen were in danger by driving themselves or with another person. The teen is not punished.

 

Why can't Maryland become as wise as many parents?

 

Nearly 100 colleges and universities have this Good Samaritan-type law that saves the lives of countless young people.

 

Howard J. Wooldridge,

Frederick

 

Copyright 2009 The Gazette.

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