Archive for the ‘health’ Category
(Reuters) From Google Health to Wii Fit, Americans have an increasingly wide array of tools for tracking their health backgrounds and statistics but their understanding of what that data means is poor, threatening their health and costing the economy billions of dollars.
Just 12 percent of American adults are health literate at a level that allows them to manage their care, the latest News and Numbers statement from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) showed.
The AHRQ release is based on information from the 2007 National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report , which found that the majority of Americans lacked the skills required to correctly complete health care-related activities like reading a prescription bottle, figuring out medication dosage, filling out forms or calculating insurance coverage. That lack of literacy can negatively affect the quality of care a patient receives and costs the U.S. economy between $106 billion and $236 billion annually, the University of Connecticut said in a report last year. That’s enough to insure all of the more than 47 million Americans currently without coverage.
“There is a number of areas and ranges within the health care system where low health literacy really leads to vast inefficiencies and resource utilization,” said John Vernon, the report’s lead author.
A survey done in 2003 classified Americans into four health literacy categories: proficient, intermediate, basic and below basic. Twenty-two percent were classified as having basic health literacy while 14 percent were below basic. In other words, more than a third of the respondents likely couldn’t determine medication dosage from the instructions on a prescription bottle, said Cindy Brach , a health literacy expert with the AHRQ.
The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.
Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be — often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.
With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.
“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.
Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.
“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”
Already, many doctors say, the soft economy is making some insured people hesitant to get care they need, reluctant to spend a $50 co-payment for an office visit. Parents “are waiting longer to bring in their children,” said Dr. Richard Lander, a pediatrician in Livingston, N.J. “They say, ‘The kid isn’t that sick; her temperature is only 102.’ ”
The problem of affording health care is most acute for people with no insurance, a group expected to soon exceed 48 million, but those with insurance say they too are feeling the pain.
Since the recession of 2001, the employee’s average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled — to $3,300, up from $1,800 — while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household’s income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household’s spending.
In a recent survey by Deloitte’s health research center, only 7 percent of people said they felt financially prepared for their future health care needs.
Shirley Giarde of Walla Walla, Wash., was not prepared when her husband, Raymond, suddenly developed congestive heart failure last year and needed a pacemaker and defibrillator. Because his job did not provide health benefits, she has covered them both through a policy for the self-employed, which she obtained as the proprietor of a bridal and formal-wear store, the Purple Parasol.
But when Raymond had his medical problems, Ms. Giarde discovered that her insurance would cover only $22,000, leaving them with about $100,000 in unpaid hospital bills.
Tuberculosis
Posted on: April 18, 2008
- In: billion | health | killing | lungs | medicine | People | respiratory | TB | Tuberculosis | World Health Organisation
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Modern medicine is facing a resurgence of TB
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There has been a resurgence of tuberculosis around the world.
TB, which is a disease of the respiratory system, is now the biggest killer of women, according to new research from the World Health Organisation.
Figures show that 8.8 million people world-wide are infected with the disease.
It is estimated that two million deaths resulted from TB in 2002 alone.
How long has TB been killing people?
TB or Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been killing people for thousands of years. Tissue samples from Egyptian mummies over 4,000 years old show signs of being infected with the disease.
Some estimate that TB was responsible for around 20% of all deaths in England and Wales in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th and 20th centuries there has been a steady decline in deaths from the disease in industrialised countries. This was given a boost by the development of penicillin and other antibiotics in he last 50 years.
But the decline began to level out in he 1980s and since then the incidence of the disease has started to increase again. Some scientists have said the number of people around the world infected with TB has reached a 10-year high.
What is TB?
TB is a disease which usually attacks the lungs, but it can affect almost any part of the body. A person with TB does not necessarily feel ill but the symptoms can include a cough that will not go away, feeling tired, weight loss, loss of appetite, fever, night sweats and coughing up blood.
Like the common cold, TB is spread through the air after infected people cough or sneeze.
There is a difference between being infected with TB and having the disease. Many people infected with the TB bacteria do not develop the disease, as their body’s defences protect them. Neither can they pass the disease on. But TB can lie dormant in the body for many years and strike when the immune system is weak.
Who is at risk?
The disease is often perceived as most frequently affecting the elderly, and in industrialised countries a quarter of all cases occur in those over 65. But in the developing countries of Africa and South America, TB is most common among young adults.
Women of childbearing age between the ages of 15 and 44 are more likely than men of the same age to fall sick with the disease. Women in this age group are also at greater risk from HIV infection which makes them more susceptible to TB too.
In the developing countries, the leading causes of death of women aged between 15 and 44 are: TB – 9%; war – 3%; HIV – 3%; heart disease 3%.
Why is TB making a resurgence now?
One factor in the rising TB trend in both the developed and the developing world is HIV infection, which weakens the immune system. One third of deaths of those who are HIV-positive are TB related. Those with HIV are 100 times more likely to develop TB than other members of the population. Other people who are at risk from the disease include those with diabetes, the malnourished, alcoholics, and IV drug users.
Another aspect in the resurgence of the disease is the development of drug resistant strains which now affect up to 50 million people. These strains can be created by bad medical practice such as over-prescribing antibiotics or patients not taking the drugs long enough to get rid of the disease. Instead this encourages the bacteria to become tougher.
Treating patients with drug resistant TB is beyond the pocket of many developing countries. The cost of treatment can rise from $2000 per patient with non-resistant TB to $250,000 for multi-drug resistant TB.
The multi drug resistant strains are often fatal and have mortality rates that are comparable with those which existed before the development of antibiotics.
Some experts also blame lax public health procedures at immigration control for the rise in TB in developed countries.
Visitors arriving from less developed countries where TB is more prevalent may get little medical attention even if they admit to having the disease. Among black Africans in Britain TB rose by over 100% between the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.
How much of a threat is the disease?
According to the WHO, TB infection is currently spreading at the rate of one person per second. It kills more young people and adults than any other infectious disease and is the world’s biggest killer of women. In 1993 the WHO declared TB “a global health emergency”.
Researchers have calculated that 8-10 million people catch the disease every year, with two million dying from it. It causes more deaths world-wide than Aids and malaria combined.
The WHO predicts that by 2020 nearly one billion people will be newly infected with TB, of them 70m will die. TB blackspots include eastern Europe with 250,000 cases a year, south east Asia, three million cases a year and sub-Saharan Africa with two million cases a year.
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“(Reuters) — A bran muffin and a flavored coffee drink are not unusual choices for a breakfast on the run. But along with fiber and caffeine, you may be getting something you hadn’t bargained for: a day’s worth of added sugar in just one small early morning meal.
We shouldn’t consume more than 40 grams — about 10 teaspoons — of sugar a day, based on a 2,000-calorie diet, said Andy Bellatti, a graduate student at New York University’s department of nutrition and food studies who blogs about diet and health at Small Bites. ‘It’s very easy, though, to go way above that because that’s basically one can of soda,’ Bellatti said. ‘So although 10 teaspoons sounds like a lot, it’s actually not really that much.’
Though the World Health Organization recommends that added sugar should make up no more than 10 percent of our daily caloric intake, the average American eats about double that. A muffin could have 11 teaspoons of sugar added, and a grande vanilla latte at Starbucks has about seven teaspoons.
There are a few different chemicals we may be referring to when we talk about sugar, although teaspoon-for-teaspoon their calorie content is virtually the same. Sucrose is essentially table sugar. Lactose is a naturally occurring sugar found in milk. Fructose is also found naturally i”
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