Copyright 2008 Medical News Today Latest Aid / Disasters News From Medical News Today. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/sections/aid-disasters/ admin@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Admin) editors@medicalnewstoday.com (MNT Editors) en-us Tue, 07 Oct 2008 10:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124574.php Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed a low-cost, high-resolution imaging system that can be attached to a helicopter to create a complete and detailed picture of an area devastated by a hurricane or other natural disaster. The resulting visual information can be used to estimate the number of storm refugees and assess the need for health and humanitarian services. Aid / Disasters Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124489.php WHO is sending drugs and medical supplies to Kyrgyzstan's mountainous Alaisky district, bordering China, where a 6.6 magnitude earthquake has killed up to 70 people and wounded 100. Remoteness and difficult communications are slowing the country's response but UN agencies are supporting Kyrgyz authorities to gain a better understanding of the damage to the area. -- Aid / Disasters Tue, 07 Oct 2008 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124430.php The American Physiological Society has established the Hurricane Ike Relief Fund to provide unrestricted grants of up to $2,000 to support physiology graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who suffered losses as a result of Hurricane Ike. The powerful storm hit the Texas coast on Sept. 13 and also affected other areas of the country. The grants are targeted to students and fellows who are either APS members or working in the laboratories of APS members. Aid / Disasters Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124268.php Future buildings - especially tall structures - should be increasingly resistant to fire, more easily evacuated in emergencies, and safer overall thanks to 23 major and far-reaching building and fire code changes approved recently by the International Code Council (ICC) based on recommendations from the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Public Health Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124116.php Scientists at the University of Liverpool have tested an 'invisibility cloak' that could reduce the risk of large water waves overtopping coastal defences. Mathematicians at Liverpool, working with physicists at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Aix-Marseille Universite have found that coastal defences could be made 'invisible' when water is guided through a special structure called metamaterial. Water - Air Quality / Agriculture Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124112.php Not only are doctors, nurses, and firefighters essential during a severe pandemic influenza outbreak. So, too, are truck drivers, communications personnel, and utility workers. That's the conclusion of a Johns Hopkins University article to be published in the journal of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism. The report, led by Nancy Kass, Sc. Flu / Cold / SARS Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124200.php Two weeks ago, the Lord's Resistance Army attacked a number of villages in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and abducted 90 children from their schools. The SRSG and UNICEF call for the immediate and unconditional release of all of the abducted children, who were taken during simultaneous attacks on the Kiliwa, Duru, and Nambia villages in Orientale Province on 17 September 2008. Aid / Disasters Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124202.php The recent escalation in fighting in one of Mogadishu's most populated residential areas has resulted in a surge of wounded civilians and has once again displaced thousands of people. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is treating some of the wounded and is providing basic relief supplies to newly displaced people. Aid / Disasters Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124203.php A month after the last tropical storms and hurricanes hit Haiti, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams have found a whole village partially submerged and its 2,400 remaining inhabitants stranded with no help. On Tuesday, September 30, MSF teams managed to reach Mamont, a town southeast of Gonaïves in the Artibonite region, which was heavily affected by the series of storms that struck Haiti in late August and last month. Aid / Disasters Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124204.php Ten weeks after Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières' (MSF) authorization to treat malnutrition in the Maradi region was suspended, the French section of MSF is no longer providing any medical-nutritional treatment on site there. A new memorandum of understanding was drafted between the Ministry of Public Health and MSF, but the authorities of Niger have yet to sign it. Aid / Disasters Fri, 03 Oct 2008 08:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124176.php Earlier this week the US government announced measures to boost the nation's preparedness against a potentia outdoor anthrax attack: using letter carriers or mailmen on a voluntary basis to deliver supplies and medicines to residents in communities during an emergency. Bio-terrorism / Terrorism Fri, 03 Oct 2008 06:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124169.php Brad Gautney, medical operations executive for the Integral Life Foundation (ILF), returned from a medical trip to Haiti, where he and a team of four other medical professionals treated approximately 400 Haitian orphans and vulnerable children in the town of Gonaives. Aid / Disasters Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124132.php The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has dispatched a first convoy of food and other supplies for 200,000 displaced people in the LTTE-controlled area of Sri Lanka. The population has been cut off from humanitarian assistance for more than two weeks after fighting in the region escalated. This convoy has delivered enough food to feed the population for one week. Aid / Disasters Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124078.php This month's cover shows a classic public health poster on schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that still affects about 200 million people despite five decades of prevention and control programmes. In an editorial, Myra Taylor (738) introduces three papers on current schistosomiasis control efforts: Xun-Ya Houet al. (788-795) evaluate different combinations of drugs used to treat acute schistosomiasis in China; Veronica L Tallo et al. Public Health Thu, 02 Oct 2008 09:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124012.php Hurricane Ike hit Houston hard less than two weeks ago, but already health leadership is hunkering down to address healthcare issues that affect not only people in the Gulf-coast Region but those around the country. The 2008 Wellness Symposium will be held on November 13th-14th at Minute Maid Park/Union Station in Downtown Houston. Aid / Disasters Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123911.php Communication systems during the evacuations of nursing homes and hospitals for Hurricane Gustav improved significantly from when Hurricane Katrina hit three years ago, but there still is room for improvement, Louisiana health officials said, the Baton Rouge Advocate reports. Aid / Disasters Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123969.php The Hope Flight Foundation provides dependable, free air transportation for children who need critical medical treatment at facilities far from their homes. Flights to children's healthcare camps and 'make-a-wish' flights are also provided. Hope Flight was founded and incorporated as a non-profit public benefit organization in California in October 2005, by Douglas Harding, a pilot and flight instructor. Pediatrics / Children's Health Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123975.php International Medical Corps (IMC) has been voted into the Top 5 as part of the American Express Members Project. After more than 87,000 votes, the project, "Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children," now enters the final round of voting, which ends October 13. Card members will be able to cast their votes a second and final time to decide how the $2. Aid / Disasters Thu, 02 Oct 2008 00:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123830.php Until Christian Children's Fund came into her life, 25-year-old Santa Atalla was a war-wrecked woman in northern Uganda. She was born and raised in Lira; her life and the lives of those around her were full of fear caused by Lord's Resistance Army rebels and their atrocities. One day in 2004, her life took a major turn for the worse. Aid / Disasters Wed, 01 Oct 2008 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123654.php The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Tanzania has awarded Jhpiego up to $40 million over five years to implement the Mothers and Infants, Safe, Healthy, Alive (MAISHA) program. MAISHA is a consortium to improve availability and quality of health care services in Tanzania for pregnant women and their newborns with a focus on more rural and lower level facilities. Aid / Disasters Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123556.php Representatives from Canada and around the world held talks over the last two days to discuss the role the private sector plays through socially responsible initiatives to curb sexual exploitation of children. The private sector plays an important and growing role in the prevention of violence, exploitation and abuse of children. Pediatrics / Children's Health Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123560.php A World Health Organization meeting to develop new recommendations for the treatment of malnutrition will have a far-reaching impact on the quality of food aid and nutrition programs for infants and young children, according to the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF called on WHO experts to take this opportunity to raise the standards of food aid and malnutrition programs. Aid / Disasters Tue, 30 Sep 2008 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123481.php Dr. Walter J. Bradley, Senior Medical Administrator for the Illinois Department of Public Health Office of Preparedness and Response, on 24th September spoke at a town hall luncheon entitled, "Partnership in Emergency Preparedness: Communication, EMS, and Response and Recovery Operations." The luncheon was one in a series of 12 meetings being held across the state to help communities understand the impact a pandemic influenza or other disaster will have and how to prepare. Aid / Disasters Tue, 30 Sep 2008 01:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123457.php The United Nations Foundation's Nothing But Nets campaign announced a new initiative to help eliminate malaria deaths in the next generation. Responding to an urgent and immediate need, Nothing But Nets is working with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to send long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed nets (bed nets) to the more than 630,000 refugees living in 27 temporary camps in Eastern Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Tropical Diseases Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:00:00 PDT http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/123376.php Executive Director of the World Food Programme, Josette Sheeran, called on donor nations to fully fund urgent hunger needs and infrastructure rehabilitation in Haiti, which has been ravaged by a succession of tropical storms. "The misery index is rising daily and this will require a massive effort to help people stave off hunger and save lives," said Sheeran. Aid / Disasters