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China
The following articles have the tag China
China opens door to health collaboration
AUSTRALIA has a role to play in exchange of information and ideas with China on health care, according to health leaders who attended an annual medical conference in Beijing late last month.
Breastfeeding longer may protect against ovarian cancer
MOTHERS who breastfeed their babies for at least 12 months are less likely to develop ovarian cancer, according to an Australian study.
Warning on rising hoax conference invites
AUSTRALIAN researchers are being targeted in an apparent scam involving international conferences held solely to “extract conference registration fees”. Email addresses appear to be gleaned from recently published papers, and used to bulk-send “guest speaker” invitations for obscure or start-up scientific meetings, usually held in cities in China. Dr Sandeep Gupta, from the Department of Nuclear Medicine at John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, received two of the emails, inviting him to separate conferences in the weeks following publication of a paper. The speaker must pay for flights and a $US800 ...
Coal linked to dental and bone deformities
COAL burning may be poisoning millions of Chinese people. US experts say that burning coal collected off the ground, common in rural China, may be causing outbreaks of the condition fluorosis, which can cause dental problems and bone deformities. In data presented at the recent American Institute of Physics International Symposium in Buffalo, New York, experts said water was the most common cause of fluorosis, but had been ruled out by Chinese government studies. Instead, they say coal burned to dry clothes and for cooking releases fluoride from inorganic clay used as an additive in the coal-burning ...
GP primary care model flagged for China
ONE in five deaths in China could be averted if a primary care-based healthcare model was embraced to address preventable risk factors, Australian researchers say. Associate Professor Lyndal Trevena, head of the Office for Global Health at the University of Sydney, called for China’s billion-dollar health reform package to adopt a primary care approach in which GPs acted as ‘gatekeepers’ for hospital care. Hypertension currently accounts for 11.7% of deaths in China, and smoking for another 7.9 per cent. “Primary care is better placed than large hospitals to monitor risk factors such as high blood pressure, ...
Tainted milk linked to kidney disease long term
A SIGNIFICANT proportion of children exposed to melamine-contaminated dairy products during the health disaster in China last year have long-term kidney damage. Ultrasounds revealed that 12% of 7933 children investigated as part of a follow-up study into the contaminated milk scandal in 2008 had kidney abnormalities. The children were living in Shijiazhuang City and were under three years old at the time of the scandal. In September 2008, melamine-contaminated infant formula, primarily manufactured by Sanlu Infant Milk, killed six children and hospitalised 50,000 additional children. The company had intentionally added melamine, commonly used ...
China gets tough on toxic milk merchants
CHINA has launched an emergency crackdown on melamine-tainted milk products after several companies involved in the original scandal last year were caught again producing toxic milk products, AAP News reports. Chinese health minister Chen Zhu declared that all tainted milk products would be destroyed, after it was found that recalled milk products were being repackaged following the food safety scandal that rocked China in July 2008. Six children died after developing kidney stones and kidney damage, and over 300,000 others became ill when food manufacturers added melamine to infant formula to fool inspectors testing for protein ...
Rising rate of caesareans a global trend
WHILE Australia’s rising rate of caesarean delivery is often attributed to the ‘too posh to push’ set, a study of Asian countries has revealed the trend is going global, even in the developing world. A WHO survey of data from nine countries, including Cambodia, China, Nepal, India, Japan and the Philippines, has found that, across 122 health facilities, more than 25% of women underwent a caesarean section. C-section rates were lowest in Japan, the wealthiest nation in the survey, and were highest in China, where 46.2% of deliveries were caesarean. A quarter of the Chinese procedures occurred ...
World report - 11 September 2009
• CHINA STARTS VOLUNTARY ORGAN DONATION SYSTEM THE Chinese Government has launched a voluntary organ donation system in an attempt to curb the country’s thriving illegal organ trade. Coordinated by the national Red Cross Society in conjunction with China’s Health Ministry, the pilot program was unveiled at a news conference in Shanghai last month. The voluntary donor scheme will be trialled in 10 cities and regions throughout China, including Shanghai and the prosperous Guangdong province, with the program expected to be rolled out nationwide, The New York Times reports. Vice-Minister of Health Dr ...
World report - 26 June 2009
• FRENCH CIVIL ACTION OVER DOCTOR-PHARMA TIES A FRENCH non-profit doctors’ organisation has filed civil charges against nine academic medical specialists considered key opinion leaders, claiming they failed to disclose ties with drug manufacturers. Formindep, an organisation promoting independent medical information, has joined with a leading consumer protection group to file the charges with French medical authorities. They claim the nine doctors, considered leading medical experts in fields such as menopause, diabetes care and Alzheimer’s disease, violated France’s public health code. It requires them to declare ties to relevant products while making public statements. “These ...
World report - 12 June 2009
• CHINA INTRODUCES ETHICAL RESEARCH RULES CHINA is set to overhaul its reputation as the ‘Wild West’ of health care where anything goes after introducing new regulations to tighten the use of unproven and ethically controversial treatments. The Chinese Ministry of Health introduced the legislation last month, banning use of xenotransplantation – including living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another – human cloning and cross-species gene therapies. Medical treatments have been divided into type 1 and type 2 categories of proven safety and efficacy, and ‘risky’ type 3 categories, including stem-cell treatments, gene ...
World report - 27 March 2009
• CHINA'S ANTI-SMOKING PUSH TARGETS DOCTORS THE Chinese Health Ministry is targeting the country’s male doctors who smoke, believing it to be one way to reduce the country’s soaring smoking rate. China has the highest rate of smoking among doctors in the world, with 56.8% of male doctors using tobacco, according to the China Preventive Medicine Association. Ten medical schools and 10 medical associations have already signed up to the campaign, pledging to make their premises smoke-free and promote tobacco control among their students and members. More than half of adult Chinese males smoke, according ...
Melamine tainting double the trouble
NEWS that some 54,000 babies in China have been sickened by milk contaminated with melamine was shocking enough. Even more extraordinary to think that the adulteration of dairy-based products, including infant formula, was deliberate. Some bright spark in the People’s Republic twigged to the fact that by-products of the plastics industry, melamine and cyanuric acid, have high nitrogen content. When milk is quality tested for protein, nitrogen is the marker. So if milk is poor – or you want to make it go further by watering it down – bunging in something with a lot of ...
Apple a day helps medics too
RADIOLOGISTS in China are using music-downloading software to manage their PDF files. A recent study conducted in Shanghai found the Apple iTunes software was an easy way of managing PDF files, allowing radiologists – and potentially other medical professionals – to organise articles and images alongside favourite tunes. “For radiologists, these electronic papers provide richer information (e.g. various cases, reviews and abundant, valuable images) than conventional textbooks and can be easily found and downloaded for further reading via online databases,” the authors said. The researchers happened upon their idea by accident, and said using iTunes meant ...
China and the Olympics
China presents some complex health concerns for travellers. TRAVEL to China has exploded over the last 10 years, doubling from 57 million inbound travellers in 1997 to 132 million in 2007. 1 China ranks as the number one tourist destination in Asia, which is quite extraordinary given that tourist entry to the country has only been possible since the late 1970s. Australia is in the top 15 tourist-generating countries, 1 and the numbers will continue to grow as the two countries forge closer economic and cultural ties. China has much to offer, and ...