Free Republic

Around one million doses of Tamiflu have so far been given out, but according to the figures, hundreds of thousands of packets could have been wasted as most people with symptoms of flu did not have the H1N1 pandemic virus. Random swabs taken by the Health Protection Agency show that four out of five people calling the National Pandemic Flu Service with symptoms of the disease, did not test positive for it. At the end of the first wave of the pandemic in Britain, just one in twenty people calling the flu line with symptoms tested positive. It has led...

Five patients on a unit for people with severe underlying health conditions at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff, were diagnosed with swine flu that is resistant to the drug. Three appear to have acquired the infection in hospital, the National Public Health Service for Wales (NPHS) said. Two of the five have recovered and have been discharged from hospital, one is in critical care and two are being treated on the ward. The service said the resistant strain does not appear to be more severe than the swine flu virus circulating since the spring. All patients on the...

Health officials say a Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu has spread between hospital patients. Five patients on a unit treating people with severe underlying health conditions at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff were infected. Three appear to have acquired the infection in hospital. They are thought to be the first confirmed cases of person-to-person transmission of a Tamiflu-resistant strain in the world. There have been several dozen reports around the world of people developing resistance to Tamiflu while taking the drug - but they have not passed on the strain to others. Just one possible cases of person-to-person transmission...

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., center, flanked Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., left, and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., discuss "the urgent need for health insurance reform". GRAND RAPIDS — Senior citizens will find it harder to find a doctor who accepts Medicare if Congress does not stop a 21.5 percent cut in payment rates, say physicians and hospitals. “We might as well start building bigger emergency rooms, because that’s where people will be if they don’t have access to a regular physician,” said Micki Benz, vice president of development for Saint Mary’s Health Care. “In the end, people’s care will suffer, and...

Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.

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Unnecessary fear over swine flu is clogging up area emergency rooms. Three of Cleveland's major hospitals -- MetroHealth Medical Center, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic -- said Tuesday they are seeing unprecedented numbers of people coming into their ERs with flu symptoms. The vast majority of these visits are unwarranted because the cases are mild and don't require emergency medical attention. After being seen by a doctor, most patients are being told to go back home, rest, drink fluids, take Tylenol and avoid contact with others. The emergency room at MetroHealth has seen a record number...

Swine Flu Put Many Hospitalized Patients Into ICU Swine flu killed 7 pct of hospitalized US patients; ICU's in Australia hard-hit, study showsOne quarter of Americans sick enough to be hospitalized with swine flu last spring wound up needing intensive care and 7 percent of them died, the first such study of the early months of the global epidemic suggests. That's a little higher than with ordinary seasonal flu, several experts said. What is striking and unusual is that children and teens accounted for nearly half of the hospitalized cases, including many who were previously healthy. The study did not...

Health Minister Nicola Roxon wants debate about the moral challenge as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee plans trials to determine when costly drugs become ineffective and should no longer be dispensed.

TORONTO -- The lungs of people who have died from swine flu look more like those of the victims of H5N1 avian influenza than those of people who succumb to regular flu, the chief of infectious diseases pathology at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says. Study of about 70 fatal H1N1 cases so far also reveals there may be more incidences of co-infections with bacteria than was earlier thought, Dr. Sherif Zaki told The Canadian Press in an interview. The damage to lung tissue is consistent with that inflicted by ARDS or acute respiratory distress symptom, Zaki says, referring...

"Antiviral drug treatment of swine flu may be wasted on the elderly and should be reserved for young people, suggest researchers who created a model of the effect of antiviral treatment on the spread of the H1N1 virus."

Free Health Care Shortages by: Deidre Almstead, June 16, 2009 Katie Brickell’s new life as a twenty-five-year old newly-wed was all but completely halted when she discovered she had cervical cancer, with only a few years left to live. Her hope for survival was placed in receiving cancer treatments through the United Kingdom’s government-run health care system. Katie claims that her cancer could have been prevented or at least identified at an earlier stage had she been allowed a pap-smear, a common screening test for cervical cancer. Now all Katie can do is to continue to fight for the health...

A friend recalls her visit to Dr. George Tiller's clinic. You can read another memory of Dr. Tiller here: It was horrible. We were driving onto the grounds and the protesters were there with their ugly pictures yelling at us. Just yelling. Then we got inside and it was calm, very professional. Those people are miracle workers, every last one of them, from the littlest nurse to the admin guys. They had to know their lives were in danger, and there was security everywhere, but they just wanted to reassure us. The baby had contracted a virus and you could...

Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients. "What we're really trying to do is find out who's using our emergency rooms ... and find solutions," said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report...

Scores of Palestinian patients being treated in Israeli hospitals, a rare bright spot of coexistence here, are being sent home because the Palestinian Authority has stopped paying for their treatment, partly in anger over the war in Gaza. Hadassah Hospital says that for the past week no payments have come in and Palestinians whose children are being treated there have been instructed by Palestinian health officials to place them in facilities in the West Bank, Jordan or Egypt.

HIGH PRAIRIE, Alta. — About 2,700 patients — including hundreds of children — need to be tested for HIV and hepatitis because a handful of hospital staff in a northern Alberta farming community administered drugs with dirty syringes for nearly two decades. Health officials said Monday they want to perform blood tests on 1,300 patients who had endoscopy procedures at the High Prairie Health Complex over four years dating back to March 2004. Officials said fewer than five staffers were routinely injecting pain killers into intravenous lines with syringes that had already been used in lines attached to other patients....

The other day I heard my mother call downstairs to my father, “Honey, there are a bunch of roosters out in the front yard.” Lest you think we live on a farm or out in rural America, let me set you straight. We live in suburban America where houses are stamped next to each other every hundred feet or so. We don’t get many roosters walking in our neighborhood, and if we did they would be cited for jaywalking. So it was no surprise that curiosity got the best of my father as he ran up the stairs to check...

Fake bus stop keeps Alzheimer's patients from wandering off By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 11:11PM BST 03/06/2008 German nursing homes are using a novel strategy to stop Alzheimer's patients from wandering off: phantom bus stops. The idea was first tried at Benrath Senior Centre in Düsseldorf, which pitched an exact replica of a standard stop outside, with one small difference: buses do not use it. The centre had been forced to rely on police to retrieve patients who wanted to return to their often non-existent homes and families. Then Benrath teamed up with a local care association...

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets. Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge. The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls. Doctors warned last night that the practice of "patient-stacking" was putting patients' health at risk. Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that last year 43,576 patients waited longer than one hour before...

WHEN Sue MacKinnon heard a doctor at a St. James clinic was accepting new patients, she jumped at the chance to find a physician close to home. MacKinnon went to the clinic and filled out a form detailing her medical history, including her Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol and chronic sleep disorder. Weeks later, MacKinnon found out she didn't make the cut -- the physician rejected her as a patient because of her health troubles. "I got a letter saying that I had too many medical problems," said MacKinnon, 51. "I was too complicated to take." According to...