Syrian people feel abandoned as world focuses on Islamic State: U.N.

By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The people of Syria feel "increasingly abandoned by the world" as global attention focuses on Islamic State militants, while violence and government bureaucracy hinder attempts to deliver aid to 12 million people, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday. In his 13th monthly report to the United Nations Security Council on Syria, Ban said a lack of accountability during the four-year civil war has also led to a rise in allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other human rights abuses. "While global attention is focused on the threat to regional and international peace and security which terrorist groups such as ISIL (Islamic State) and (al Qaeda's) Nusra Front pose, our focus must continue to be on how best to help and support the Syrian people," Ban said in the report, seen by Reuters. Extremist Islamist groups have exploited the chaos and complicated diplomatic efforts to end the conflict with Islamic State, declaring a caliphate in the swaths of territory it has seized in Syria and Iraq.

March 23, 2015 at 11:46PM

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Montana officials end bighorn sheep hunting after die-off

The die-off of bighorn sheep from pneumonia led Montana wildlife managers on Monday to take the unusual step of abruptly closing a hunting season tied to a wild herd near Yellowstone National Park whose seasonal mating rituals attract scores of wildlife watchers. The emergency closure came after state biologists estimated that pneumonia had claimed nearly 40 percent of a herd near Gardiner, Montana, whose numbers fell to 55 this month from 89 last year, state wildlife managers said on Monday. Such pneumonia outbreaks have been linked to contact between wild sheep and domestic ones that graze on public allotments and private lands across the Rocky Mountain West. More than 1 million bighorns once roamed the region but their numbers had fallen to just tens of thousands in the first decades of the 20th century because of unregulated hunting and disease, according to the Wild Sheep Foundation.

March 23, 2015 at 11:20PM

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Tenet in deal to create largest outpatient surgery provider

Tenet Healthcare Corp on Monday said it would become the largest U.S. provider of outpatient surgery services through a joint venture with United Surgical Partners International and expects to fully own the company within five years. More medical procedures are being performed on an outpatient basis as technology improves, thus lowering costs by allowing patients to go home sooner. Tenet's shares rose 5.4 percent to $52.32 in midday trading, as investors applauded the move into an area of healthcare that is seeing faster growth and higher margins. Tenet, the third-largest U.S. hospital operator, said it will pay $425 million to private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe and other USPI shareholders and assume $1.5 billion of USPI's debt for a 50.1 percent stake in the venture. March 23, 2015 at 03:15PM

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Drug-resistant TB threatens to kill 75 million people by 2050, cost $16.7 trillion

By Astrid Zweynert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Over the next 35 years, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis will kill 75 million people and could cost the global economy a cumulative $16.7 trillion - the equivalent of the European Union’s annual output, a UK parliamentary group said on Tuesday. If left untackled, the spread of drug-resistant TB superbugs threatens to shrink the world economy by 0.63 percent annually, the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Tuberculosis (APPG TB) said, urging governments to do more to improve research and cooperation. "The rising global burden of multidrug-resistant TB and other drug-resistant infections will come at a human and economic cost which the global community simply cannot afford to ignore", economist Jim O'Neill said in a statement. March 23, 2015 at 08:02PM

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House Dems say new abortion language helps Medicare doc deal

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats say language has been added to their Medicare deal with GOP leaders clarifying that the agreement's abortion restrictions on community health centers are temporary and won't be inscribed into permanent law. March 23, 2015 at 08:01PM

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Children with TB at risk of dying amid slow progress on child-friendly treatment

By Astrid Zweynert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - More than half a million children who fall ill with tuberculosis each year are at risk of dying because of a lack of child-friendly treatments, experts said. Tuberculosis, which kills more than one person every 20 seconds, is much harder to detect in children than in adults because they do not always show the typical symptoms, such as coughing, night sweats and blood in the phlegm or spit. "A huge number of children are suffering and dying from TB because the majority of efforts to fight the disease have focused on adults, so children with TB have become invisible," said Mercedes Becerra, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in Boston, United States. "And even if they get treatment, we lack reliable diagnostic tools and child-friendly medicines, which hinders effective treatment and can even fuel drug resistance," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview. March 23, 2015 at 08:00PM

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Icahn raises stake in Chesapeake Energy to 11 percent

(Reuters) - Activist investor Carl Icahn raised his stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp to almost 11 percent even as the company continues to cope with low oil and gas prices. Chesapeake's stock rose 3.8 percent to $14.64 in late trade. Icahn increased his stake to 10.98 percent from 9.98 percent with 73.05 million shares held in Chesapeake, according to a regulatory filing on Monday. (http://1.usa.gov/1HsJzA0) Icahn will remain the second-largest owner in the company with his increased stake, according to Thomson Reuters data. ...

March 23, 2015 at 07:53PM

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Statins can be stopped toward the end of life

By Andrew M. Seaman (Reuters Health) – - Taking people off cholesterol-lowering medications near the end of life is safe and may actually be beneficial, according to a new study. Among people without active heart disease who were expected to live no more than a year, stopping the drugs, known as statins, didn’t increase the number of deaths within 60 days, but did improve quality of life. “We start a lot of medicines, and many of these medicines come with the tagline that ‘you’ll be taking these medicines for the rest of your life,’” said Dr. Amy Abernethy, the study’s senior author from the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina. The researchers write in JAMA Internal Medicine that drug trials rarely address the issue of when to stop using the treatments. March 23, 2015 at 07:46PM

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Utah brings back firing squads if lethal drugs unavailable

Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed a law on Monday that makes Utah the only U.S. state to authorize the use of firing squads for executions if lethal drugs are not available, his spokesman said. The Republican-sponsored bill, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this month, was introduced amid national concerns about the efficacy of lethal injections. "Those who voiced opposition to this bill are primarily arguing against capital punishment in general and that decision has already been made in our state," Marty Carpenter, spokesman for the Republican governor, said in a statement. Carpenter said the state preferred to use its primary method of lethal injection when a death penalty is issued. March 23, 2015 at 07:35PM

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U.S. funding research of better anthrax vaccine: health officials

By Yasmeen Abutaleb (Reuters) - Government-funded clinical trials are under way of an improved anthrax vaccine requiring fewer doses and that has the potential to boost immunity faster, top health officials said on Monday. The Department of Health and Human Services said it signed a 30 month, $31 million agreement with Maryland-based Emergent Biosolutions Inc to develop a vaccine that would require only two doses to confer immunity. Emergent currently has a Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccine called BioThrax that requires three doses. ... March 23, 2015 at 06:48PM

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Sierra Leone army confines troops to barracks amid political crisis

Sierra Leone's army chief on Monday ordered soldiers to remain in their barracks and warned them to steer clear of a political crisis that has erupted following the controversial dismissal of the West African nation's vice-president. President Ernest Bai Koroma sacked his deputy, Samuel Sam-Sumana, last week, saying he had abandoned his duties by requesting asylum at the U.S. Embassy in the capital Freetown. The ruling All People's Congress had accused the vice-president of creating his own political movement and kicked him out of the party. "Politics is not for a soldier," Major General Samuel Omar Williams told more than 2,000 troops gathered at a military barracks in Freetown. March 23, 2015 at 06:48PM

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Obamacare subsidies likely expanded insurance coverage: report

By Susan Cornwell WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Early evidence suggests that the tax credit subsidies at the core of President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law likely helped expand U.S. health insurance coverage last year, Congress's non-partisan research arm said on Monday. The subsidies - which can be paid by the federal government to insurers in advance to lower monthly insurance premiums - significantly reduced the premium costs, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report. "Surveys GAO identified estimated that the uninsured rate declined significantly among households with incomes eligible for the APTC (Advanced Premium Tax Credit)," the GAO said.

March 23, 2015 at 06:18PM

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Slow Ebola response cost thousands of lives: MSF

By Misha Hussain DAKAR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The slow international response to the West Africa Ebola outbreak created an avoidable tragedy that cost thousands of lives, a leading medical charity said on the one year anniversary of the first confirmed case. The world's worst Ebola epidemic has killed over 10,200 people in the three most affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since March 2014 when it was first confirmed in the forest region of Guinea. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which first raised the alarm over Ebola, said in a report that everyone from national governments to the World Health Organization (WHO) had created bottlenecks that prevented the epidemic being quickly snuffed out. "The Ebola outbreak has often been described as a perfect storm: a cross-border epidemic in countries with weak public health systems that had never seen Ebola before," Christopher Stokes, MSF's general director, said in the report.

March 23, 2015 at 02:47PM

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Reimburse doctors for helping patients plan end of life care, experts say

By Randi Belisomo WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters Health) - - Physician incentives are needed to improve end of life care in the U.S., health experts said Friday at an Institute of Medicine (IOM) forum. The forum convened at the National Academy of Sciences to discuss action on the recommendations of the IOM’s seminal fall report, Dying in America. “Our current system is not equipped to deal with these challenges,” said IOM President Victor Dzau, citing a rising number of elderly with multiple chronic illnesses, too few palliative care services to keep pace with demand, and time pressures that keep providers from having conversations with patients about end of life preferences and values. “We need to make sure that healthcare providers do not shy away from these discussions,” said Senate Aging Committee Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine). March 23, 2015 at 06:07PM

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Kids exposure to secondhand smoke tied to clogged arteries

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) – - In a Finnish study spanning 26 years, kids exposed to parental smoking were more likely to develop plaque in their carotid arteries as young adults than kids who were not exposed to secondhand smoke. These findings and others suggest the health effects of passive smoking on children are not limited to respiratory or developmental health, but can have a long-term impact on cardiovascular health, said senior author Costan G. Magnussen of Menzies Research Institute Tasmania in Hobart, Australia. Researchers used frozen blood samples from more than 1,000 kids ages three to 18 collected in 1980, along with parental reports of smoking status in 1980 and 1983 from a larger group of kids. They also had ultrasounds of the adult children in 2001 and 2007. March 23, 2015 at 06:06PM

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U.S. developing bird flu vaccine, no plans to distribute it yet

By Tom Polansek CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. government is developing a vaccine to protect poultry from new strains of avian flu that have recently killed birds from Arkansas to Washington state. Within two months, scientists at a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research lab in Georgia will test the vaccine on chickens to see how well it prevents birds from getting sick and dying of the virus. The government has linked its spread to wild birds that carry it and then infect domestic flocks. Progress toward creating a vaccine has not previously been reported. March 23, 2015 at 05:59PM

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Arkansas moves to resume executions after 10-year hiatus

By Steve Barnes LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Reuters) - A decade after the last execution in Arkansas, a ruling by the state's Supreme Court has moved the state back on a path to resuming capital punishment by lethal injection. The Arkansas court ruling was applauded by the Republican-dominated government that took office in January, wanting to resume executions of the 33 people on the state's death row, and residents, with opinion polls showing strong support for capital punishment. "Obviously they are all in a very perilous situation," said Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock attorney who represents four of the eight prisoners at the front of the line for execution. There are about 1,000 U.S. inmates who have been sentenced to death in states like Arkansas, California and Pennsylvania that have not conducted any execution for years because of political or judicial reasons. March 23, 2015 at 05:53PM

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FDA approves Abiomed's blood pump device

(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it approved Abiomed Inc's miniature blood pump system that maintains heart function and circulation during high-risk procedures. The device, Impella 2.5 System, can be used during angioplasty and stenting, the regulator said on Monday. (http://1.usa.gov/1xWUGfq) Angioplasty and stenting are procedures used to re-open arteries in the heart that are blocked due to coronary artery disease. (Reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila) March 23, 2015 at 05:52PM

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U.S. justices voice support for criminal justice reform

By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two members of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday voiced support for efforts in Congress to reform the American criminal justice system, criticizing the reliance on mandatory minimum sentences in recent decades and the penal system in general. Testifying before a U.S. House of Representatives panel about the court's annual budget, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy and liberal Justice Stephen Breyer both spoke of problems with the system. Addressing the U.S. penal system, Kennedy said, "In many respects I think it's broken." Breyer said the move in recent decades toward mandatory minimum sentences - a policy that takes away discretion from judges and sometimes imposes long sentences for low-level, non-violent drug offenders - was "a terrible idea." In February, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation that would abolish mandatory minimum sentences for certain non-violent drug offenders. March 23, 2015 at 05:38PM

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Kids eat more veggies when tasty

Children just hate all vegetables, no matter how tasty you make them, right? Wrong, says an influential study out Monday that found US children in Massachusetts ate up to 30 percent more vegetables when school meals were made more palatable with the help of a professional chef. The research, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association's website, provided an encouraging sign in the battle to fight childhood obesity. "The results highlight the importance of focusing on the palatability of school meals," said lead author Juliana Cohen of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University.

March 23, 2015 at 05:19PM

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