This Week in Medicine
Haiti aid plea Haiti and the UN are
planning an emergency appeal after
hurricane Sandy left 60 people dead
and more than 200 000 homeless, and
damaged camps for those displaced
by the 2010 earthquake. Crops were
wrecked, causing food shortages,
and the cholera threat worsened.
Haiti’s “vulnerability increases with
the accumulation of disasters”, said
Oxfam’s Amelie Gauthier.
Approval shopping A UK parlia-
mentary committee has called for
urgent tightening of European Union
regulations on medical devices.
The committee was “shocked” to
find evidence of manufacturers
“shopping” for the least stringent
regulatory bodies, and called for
all approaches to such bodies to be
publicised, along with the clinical data
used to support an approval.
Yellow fever outbreak Sudan’s
Federal Health Ministry has notified
WHO that an unknown fever that
had been spreading across seven
districts in central Darfur has been
diagnosed as yellow fever. There
have been 82 confirmed cases and
32 deaths. A vaccination campaign is
being prepared and pesticide spraying
against mosquitoes is underway.
AP
Hendra vaccine The first equine
vaccine against Hendra virus, which
has been developed by Australian
scientists in collaboration with
partners in the USA and from Pfizer, is
now available for horses in Australia.
Outbreaks of the paramyxovirus
in human beings have resulted in
four deaths, mostly in veterinary
personnel, since the virus was
discovered in 1994.
www.thelancet.com Vol 380 November 10, 2012
In Burma’s fields... The UN Office
on Drugs and Crime has reported
an increase of 17% in opium poppy
cultivation in Burma from 430 km²
in 2011 to 510 km² in 2012, despite
government figures indicating that
237 km² had been eradicated. The
centres of cultivation are in Shan
and Kachin states—areas of ongoing
instability where people’s only income
is often from the opium trade.
Academy approval The American
Academy of Pediatrics has voiced its
approval for human embryonic stem
cell research, with a view to basic
and translational research leading
to advancement in the treatment
of childhood diseases. The policy
statement did however underline the
ethical concerns about destroying an
embryo to derive cell lines.
Positive reduction Angola has seen
a drop in the number of pregnant
women testing HIV positive. The 2007
figure of 9·8% was reduced to 4·8%
in 2011, and is due to government
preventive schemes, according to
the National Institute for the Fight
Against AIDS. Additionally, perinatal,
postnatal, and paediatric services are
being provided, further reducing the
HIV death rate.
Affecting the future The manage-
ment of patients and the teaching
around such management varies
between hospitals and influences
trainee doctors for many years,
according to a study based on
23 teaching hospitals in the USA. The
research challenges the assumption
that clinical science alone affects
medical practice, and is being used to
identify exemplary practice.
MCT via Getty Images
Health workers needed The response
to the ongoing outbreak of Marburg
haemorrhagic fever in Uganda is being For The Lancet News podcast
hampered by a shortage of trained see http://www.thelancet.com/
health workers, according to Kabale’s lancet-news-audio-2012/
District Health Officer. Only 63% of For the UK Science and
health worker positions in Uganda’s Technology Committee report
on medical device regulation
public health sector are filled. A strike see http://www.parliament.uk/
by health workers in Mbarara district business/committees/
over unpaid salaries has compounded committees-a-z/commons-
the problem. select/science-and-technology-
committee/news/
121101-medical-implants-
Watson goes to medical school report-published/
Watson, the supercomputer that For the report on opium
achieved fame by beating two human cultivation in Burma see
contestants on a US gameshow, is http://www.unodc.org/
documents/crop-monitoring/
to be used as a medical teaching aid. sea/SouthEastAsia_Report_
It will draw on artificial intelligence 2012_low.pdf
systems to help medical students in For the American Academy of
Cleveland, OH, USA, analyse cases and Pediatrics policy statement on
postulate potential diagnoses and human embryonic stem cell
research see http://pediatrics.
treatment plans. aappublications.org/content/
early/2012/10/24/
Equity gaps The gap in income per peds.2012-2482.abstract
child between the richest and the For the study on health-care
poorest has grown by 35% since the delivery and residency training
in the USA see http://www.
1990s, across 35 countries studied in dartmouthatlas.org/pages/
a new report from Save the Children. residency
The report shows how progress on For the Save the Children
the Millennium Development Goals report on equity gaps see
has often excluded the poorest of http://www.savethechildren.
org.uk/sites/default/files/
the poor, and argues that inequality
images/Born_Equal.pdf
must be tackled directly as part of any
For the Wellcome Trust Book
post-2015 development targets. Prize see http://www.
wellcomebookprize.org
Wellcome winner Thomas Wright’s
Circulation, a biography of the first
person to describe the human
circulatory system, William Harvey,
has been announced as the winner of
this year’s Wellcome Trust Book Prize.
The book “combines scholarly science
with such narrative excitement that
Random House
it will be a great surprise if we do not
eventually see Circulation: The Movie”,
said chair of judges Mark Lawson.
i