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Heating Heart With Catheter Better Than Drugs For Common Heart Rhythm Disorder
Treating a common heart rhythm disorder by burning heart tissue with a catheter works dramatically better than drug treatments, a major international study has found.
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Cognitive Impairment Is Associated With Reduced Survival Among Both African-Americans And Whites
Alzheimer"s disease and its precursor, mild cognitive impairment, appear to be associated with an increased risk of death among both white and African American older adults according to a new, long-term research study by neurological experts at the Alzheimer"s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center. The study findings are published in the June issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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North Carolina Senate Delays Vote On Latest Version Of Sex Education Bill
The North Carolina Senate has delayed until Wednesday its vote on a bill (S. 221) that would require public school systems in the state to offer a sex education curriculum that includes information on both abstinence and prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, the Fayetteville Observer reports. Currently, most public schools in the state teach abstinence-only sex education (Fayetteville Observer, 6/11).The bill, which a state Senate committee approved earlier in the week, made major changes to a state House version (H.B. 88) that conservative and liberals in the chamber approved as a compromise measure. The House bill would have required parents to choose from three sex education options: abstinence-only; an abstinence-based program with information on pregnancy and STI prevention; or no sex education. The third option would be the default if parents did not make a selection (Woolverton, Fayetteville Observer, 6/11).The Senate version of the bill was designed to merge the abstinence-only and the abstinence-based comprehensive options of the House bill. Parents would be able to request that their children not receive the comprehensive portions of the lessons.According to the Observer, some lawmakers objected to the idea in the House bill that students would receive no sex education if their parents failed to make a selection. In addition, some school officials voiced concern that the House version would require more teachers and classroom space to meet the requirements for three separate options (Fayetteville Observer, 6/11).
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New York Times Examines Pilot Program To Fight Drug-Resistant TB In South African Communities

The New York Times examines a Doctors Without Borders pilot program to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis in South Africa that allows patients to stay in their homes rather than be isolated in hospital during treatment. The program, which is supported by the city of Cape Town and the Western Cape Province, aims to "show that such patients can be successfully treated in an impoverished community ò€¦ even while they are still infectious," the New York Times writes. Cheryl McDermid, a Canadian doctor with Doctors Without Borders, manages the program in the town of Khayelitsha. "About a fifth of the patients enrolled last year died, either while waiting weeks for a diagnosis or after treatment began. One in six of those who started treatment dropped out. But most patients have stuck with it and are now no longer infectious," the newspaper writes. McDermid said although it is still too early to know what the treatment success rate will be, there is no evidence that patients in the program are infecting the people who live with them. "Drug-resistant tuberculosis is a mounting global health threat," according to the newspaper. The disease is a "particularly virulent problem in Africa, where AIDS has heightened the vulnerability of millions," the New York Times writes. According to Paul Nunn, coordinator of the drug-resistance unit in the WHO"s TB department, ten African countries do not even have laboratories that can detect drug-resistant TB (Dugger, 7/28). This information was reprinted from globalhealth.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Global Health Policy Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at globalhealth.kff.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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