ANALYSIS AND COMMENTS

August 2017  Washingtonpost; The Food and Drug Administration is investigating the sudden deaths of five people who had undergone an obesity treatment that places an inflated silicone balloon in their stomach. All deaths happened within a month of the procedure, the FDA said in a letter earlier this week to health-care …

May 2017 BBC; US scientists have re-engineered a vital antibiotic in a bid to wipe out one of the world’s most threatening superbugs. Their new version of vancomycin is designed to be ultra-tough and appears to be a thousand times more potent than the old drug, PNAS journal reports. It …

May 2017 Dailynation; Kenya’s public health system is in a crisis with corruption as the biggest challenge. The latest suspension of $21 million (Sh2.1 billion) direct funding to the Ministry of Health by USAid adds to a series of issues pointing to a system in need of urgent governance and leadership …

April 2017 med.news; Here’s one for all of us glued to our smartphones. A 69-year-old patient in the eastern Chinese region of Hangzhou is making the news for using her phone, while undergoing a procedure on her legs. The patient, surnamed Zhu, was allowed to bring her phone into the …

April 2017 Standardnewspaper;Cancer patients bore the brunt of the stalemate pitting medics against the Government in their push for better pay and working conditions. Many were forced to turn to private hospitals for treatment – some of them seeking help after defaulting on treatment due to closure of public health …

March 2017 vox; Paul Krugman has a column Monday offering Republicans some advice for how to improve Obamacare. This paragraph is worth calling out: One important answer would be to spend a bit more money. Obamacare has turned out to be remarkably cheap; the Congressional Budget Office now projects its …

February 2017 stamfordadvocate; Hundreds of patients every day visit a campus on Long Ridge Road for primary and specialty care and a range of tests. And they receive all those services several miles from the nearest hospital. The adjacent outpatient centers that have opened in the past two years at …

February 2017 theguardian; Fitness trackers and mental health apps could be doing more harm than good because they are not based on sound science, researchers have warned, comparing some health app developers to “snake oil salesmen of the 1860s”. Greg Hager, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, said …

January 2017 BBCHealth; Cramming all your recommended weekly exercise into one or two weekend sessions is enough to produce important health benefits, a study suggests. And being active without managing 150 minutes of moderate activity a week was still enough to reduce the risk of an early death by a …

January 2016 cbc; Living within half a city block of a major road may be associated with a small increased risk of dementia, suggests a new Canadian study that could help shed light on factors contributing to the brain disorder. To learn more, researchers at Public Health Ontario and the …