I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report , from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

An outbreak of cholera in Haiti continued to spread sickness and worry. Health officials worried that the capital could suffer a major outbreak of the disease. By the middle of November, most cases in Port-au-Prince were found in people who arrived in the city already sick. But health officials confirmed the first case in a boy who had not left the city for at least a year. And there were other suspected cases in the Haitian capital. Cholera causes diarrhea and vomiting. It robs the body of fluids. People can get cholera if they eat foods or drink liquids containing the bacteria that cause the infection. Cholera is not hard to treat. Basically, patients drink a solution of salt, sugar and water. The problem is that help is not always available quickly. If cholera is not treated, it can kill within hours, especially in people already in weakened conditions. The earthquake in January displaced large numbers of people. It forced them into crowded, dirty conditions in tent camps — in other words, the perfect environment for cholera.The outbreak in Haiti has already killed several hundred people. The country’s last major outbreak of the disease was more than one hundred years ago. Disease-control experts from the United States confirmed the first cases of cholera in Haiti on October twenty-first in the Artibonite area. The outbreak was mostly limited to that area until a powerful storm struck Haiti in November. Hurricane Tomas caused heavy rains and flooding and some deaths. The number of cholera cases had been dropping but then rose sharply after the storm. Medical workers in Haiti were trying to spread the message not to use river water without some form of purification. People were being urged to take steps like adding a small amount of bleach to the water or boiling it for at least a full minute.Workers were also struggling to provide clean bottled water and water purification tablets. People were being urged to wash their hands carefully with soap and purified water after using the toilet or changing a baby’s diaper. The same advice goes for washing hands before eating, and before and after preparing food. If no soap is available, then ash can be used instead. For VOA Special English, I’m Alex Villarreal. You can read transcripts and download our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 10Nov2010)

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

Malaria kills about one million people a year and sickens another two hundred fifty million. Most of the deaths are in young children in Africa. Malaria causes twenty percent of childhood deaths in Africa. People become infected when they are bitten by mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite. A new study estimates the possibility of ending malaria in countries that have the deadliest form of the disease. Researchers found that this could be possible in most parts of the world within ten to fifteen years. What it would require, they say, is reducing the spread of malaria by ninety percent from two thousand seven rates. An international team created mathematical models and maps of areas where the disease is gone or almost gone. Andrew Tatem, an assistant professor at the University of Florida, led the study. Professor Tatem says a number of things have helped countries successfully fight malaria.He says these include low levels of malaria risk, political stability, a good health system and low levels of population movement. The study says malaria could be eliminated if countries are serious about using proven control measures. These include insecticides and bed nets.The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partly financed the research. The study appears in the Lancet medical journal in a series of reports on ending malaria. Other malaria experts writing in the Lancet expressed concern about giving too much attention to ending malaria. They say such a goal could take many years, if it is possible at all. The concern is that resources for controlling malaria could be lost if the money is spent instead on trying to defeat it.Years of efforts to end another disease, polio, have largely succeeded. Now, the World Health Organization says a new vaccine combination will help in the fight to end polio in countries where it is still found. That report, based on a study from India, also appears in the Lancet.There are three kinds of polio virus. Vaccination campaigns normally use vaccines designed to protect against all three types. But cases of the type two virus have not been seen in years. And the new study confirmed that the type two vaccine reduces the effectiveness of the other vaccines when given together. To avoid that problem, the new combination contains vaccine only for the type one and type three polio viruses. For VOA Special English, I’m Alex Villarreal.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 03Nov2010)

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

A neighborhood barbershop might seem to some Americans like a thing of the past. Today men often get their hair cut at the same salons as women. But the traditional barbershop still holds a special place in black culture. A barbershop is a place of trust where men can talk about things they might not want women to hear. This is why black-owned barbershops increasingly offer more than just a haircut. Men also receive health education and testing that could save their life. Right now a program called the Black Barbershop Health Outreach Program is traveling to fifty cities across the United States. A doctor started the program in California in two thousand seven. It tests men for diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions, and provides information about how to stay healthy. Black men in the United States are three times more likely than white men to die from high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. They are also more likely to get diabetes.A new study has examined the barbershop health-care model in Dallas, Texas. The study involved about one thousand three hundred customers at seventeen black barbershops. Researchers had the barbers at eight of the shops continue to just give haircuts. The other barbers learned how to measure blood pressure and offered it with every haircut. If a customer had high blood pressure, the barber would intervene. The customer would be urged to see a doctor. If the man did not have a doctor, then a visit to one would be set up. Customers who went to a doctor would get their next haircut free of charge.The study lasted ten months. All of the men had their blood pressure taken at the start. They also received educational materials about hypertension. The study found that blood pressure rates decreased at the shops where the barbers intervened and also at those where they did not. But the difference was in the amount. Twenty percent of the men who were urged to see a doctor got their blood pressure down to a healthy level. So did only eleven percent of the men who just got haircuts. Researchers from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles did the study, reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Dr. Ronald Victor, the study leader, says barbers historically were members of the medical profession. So he thinks it makes a lot of sense for today’s barbers to act as “health care extenders” by sharpening their skills. For VOA Special English, I’m Alex Villarreal.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 27Oct2010)

I’m Mario Ritter with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

No one wants a pilot to make a mistake. This is why flight crews are trained in teamwork and communication. Now a study finds hospitals that trained their operating room teams had a lower rate of surgical deaths than other hospitals. The study is in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It involved more than one hundred American hospitals for veterans. Some had taken part in a program of medical team training. Researcher Julia Neily, a Veterans Administration nurse, says the training seeks to empower each team member, including technicians. She says everyone in the operating room could bring up any concerns they had about the patient.And the more training, the better the chances that a patient would survive. Study co-author James Bagian is a Veterans Administration doctor. He says better communication improves teamwork. At first, some team members questioned the value of the communication training. But another new study shows how a lack of communication can lead to mistakes like operating on the wrong part of the body or the wrong patient. Since two thousand four, hospitals and surgical offices in the United States have had a “universal protocol.” For example, they are supposed to mark the area to be operated on and perform a “time-out” immediately before the procedure. The study looked at records of a company that provides liability insurance to six thousand doctors in Colorado. The doctors reported twenty-five cases involving the wrong patient between two thousand two and two thousand eight. Five patients suffered serious harm. Surgeons and other doctors also reported one hundred seven cases involving the wrong site. More than one-third led to serious harm. One patient died. The researchers blamed most of the wrong-site cases on errors in judgment or a lack of a time-out. But they say errors in communication were at least one cause of all the patient mix-ups involving the wrong patient.Philip Stahel at the Denver Health Medical Center led the study in the Archives of Surgery. For VOA Special English, I’m Mario Ritter. You can find other Health Reports online at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and iTunes at VOA Learning English.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 20Oct2010)

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

Years ago, scientists began to learn that certain parts of the brain had certain duties. For example, one part was responsible for breathing; another dealt with the sense of smell. Scientists thought our brains could not change. But then they discovered that the brain could sometimes reorganize itself when conditions required. Josef Rauschecker is a professor of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown University in Washington. He wondered if this ability to change could explain the idea that other senses in blind people improve to balance their lack of vision.He noted the large number of blind musicians including Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and Andrea Bocelli.The visual cortex is the part of the brain that processes sight. But earlier research by Professor Rauschecker and other scientists found that it can also do other jobs. The research showed that the brains of blind people can use the visual cortex to process sound and touch. But the visual cortex is divided into separate parts, or modules. Each module normally performs different jobs related to vision. Professor Rauschecker said: “Do blind people have that same or similar functional organization, that these modules just get rededicated to touch and hearing? And the answer is yes.”Professor Rauschecker and researchers from Finland and Belgium found this answer using an fMRI scanner. That means functional magnetic resonance imaging. The machine recorded brain activity as twelve blind people and twelve sighted people performed tasks involving sound and touch. For example, they would try to decide which direction sounds were coming from, or which finger was feeling gentle vibrations. Professor Rauschecker says large parts of the visual cortex became active during the sound and touch tests, but only in the blind people. He says this study and earlier research has led to an experimental device designed to help the blind. It can process images taken by a camera into sensations that could be used by a blind person wearing it. He said the device would change visual information into auditory information that could be processed by the brain of a blind person. The study is in the journal Neuron. For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our reports at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 13Oct2010)

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

Rachel Valltos and Evan Sapperstein are dentists who share an office and a life together near Washington, D.C. In nine years of marriage, they have built a successful dental practice and a family. Rachel and Evan laugh about the last time they argued at home. He wanted her attention. So did one of their three children. Evan yelled at the child. Rachel told Evan that he was the one acting like a baby. That only brought more yelling, which Rachel ignored. She says in the heat of the argument, she usually will back away because she wants to avoid confrontation in front of her children. But she always plans to have a discussion about it later. Rachel and Evan made peace. But researchers might describe the way she dealt with the argument at first as a withdrawal strategy. A team at the University of Michigan recently published a study of how married couples fight. They also looked at how different kinds of arguing might predict the future of a marriage. The study followed three hundred seventy-three couples over sixteen years. Forty-six percent of them had divorced by the final year in two thousand two.The couples were asked at four different times to report on their most recent conflict. The husbands and wives each had to choose from a list of behaviors to describe the strategies they used. The list included behaviors like calm discussion, listening and trying hard to find out the other person’s feelings. The list also included yelling, using insults, walking away or not communicating. Assistant professor Kira Birditt led the study. She said the husbands were more likely to use constructive strategies like discussing the problem and finding solutions. The wives were more likely to use destructive or withdrawal strategies. But she says the study found that over time, wives became less destructive in the way they argued. Husbands stayed the same.She says the researchers also found that different combinations of strategies may help predict whether a couple will stay together. The chances decrease if only one partner uses constructive strategies. So now back to Evan and Rachel. We spoke with Evan Sapperstein just after he finished a long, difficult root canal on a patient. If he had to choose between another operation like that or a fight with his wife, which would he choose? He said: “Oh, definitely, the root canal.”For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 06Oct2010)

Every few years, two groups do a study of how many Americans wash their hands after using the toilet. These groups are the American Society for Microbiology and the American Cleaning Institute, formerly the Soap and Detergent Association.There was good news in the latest study. Researchers found that eighty-five percent of adults washed their hands in public restrooms in August. That was the most since the studies began in nineteen ninety-six. Researchers visited restrooms at a baseball park in Atlanta, Georgia and a science museum and aquarium in Chicago, Illinois. They also visited two train stations in New York City and a large farmers market in San Francisco, California. In all, they observed about six thousand adults.The researchers found that seventy-seven percent of men and ninety-three percent of women washed their hands. That was up from sixty-six percent of men and eighty-eight percent of women in the last study three years ago.The lowest rate of hand washing among men was at Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves baseball team. Only sixty-five percent of men washed their hands, compared to all but two percent of women. Chicago and San Francisco had the most hand washers — eighty-nine percent of adults. Atlanta followed at eighty-two percent. New York had the lowest rate, at seventy-nine percent of the adults observed at Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.The findings of the observational study conflicted with the findings of a separate telephone survey of about one thousand people. Ninety-six percent of them said they always wash their hands after using public restrooms. Almost nine out of ten also said they always wash after using the bathroom at home. Hand washing can help prevent the spread of many different infections. To clean your hands well, wet them first and rub in soap for at least twenty seconds, including between the fingers and under the fingernails. Then rinse under running water. In a public restroom, if you dry your hands with a paper towel, you should also use the towel to shut off the water and open the door. Hand washing is also important when preparing food and after changing a baby’s diaper. You should also wash if you cough or sneeze into your hands. If you use an alcohol-based product instead of soap and water, make sure it contains at least sixty percent alcohol. For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal.

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

Every year, one million women around the world are found to have breast cancer. Almost two hundred thousand others are told they have ovarian cancer. The decisions for treatment are more difficult when the women have abnormal versions of two genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2. The mutations in these genes can also increase the risk for other kinds of cancer, including cancer of the cervix, uterus and pancreas.Sandra Cohen has never had breast cancer or ovarian cancer. But she has the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. So she decided to have doctors remove her breasts and ovaries. She made the decision after her mother and grandmother both died from the same kind of cancers. Doctors have known for several years that preventative surgery reduces the risk of ovarian and breast cancer for women with the mutations. But a new study also shows that these operations help those patients live longer. The four-year study involved about two thousand five hundred women with the genetic mutations.One of the researchers was Dr. Susan Domchek at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She said: “Women who had their ovaries removed had a decrease in the risk of breast cancer and a decrease in the risk of ovarian cancer. In addition, they were less likely to die of breast cancer, less likely to die of ovarian cancer and also had an improvement in their overall survival.” The study found that none of the women who had preventative breast removal developed breast cancer. Seven percent later did among those who decided against the surgery. The rate of breast cancer was also seven percent among women who did not have their ovaries removed. Among those who did, the breast cancer rate was one percent. The study also found that the women who had their ovaries removed lowered their risk of death from ovarian cancer by almost eighty percent. Their risk of death from breast cancer was fifty-six percent lower, says Dr. Domchek. The researchers say women with a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancers should get genetic testing. Sandra Cohen did.She says: “Do some research with a genetic counselor. Meet some other women who have gone through it. It really will empower you to take some action.” The study appeared in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 22Sept2010)

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

Vaccines and chest compressions are both ways to save lives. Now, separate new reports say each could save more lives if they were used more. One report is from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the GAVI Alliance. GAVI is the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. This alliance of public and private groups finances vaccines in poor countries. Spokesman Jeffrey Rowland says GAVI has done a lot since it began ten years ago. He says they have prevented 5.4 million premature deaths. And he says they hope to prevent 4.2 million premature deaths by keeping immunization rates high for several diseases including pneumonia and rotavirus diarrhea. GAVI says these two diseases cause more than one-third of all deaths in children under age five. It says new vaccines against the pneumococcal bacteria and rotavirus could save more than one million children each year. But the group warns that a shortage of four billion dollars threatens these and other immunization programs. In other health news, a new study compares ways of saving patients with cardiac arrest. Sudden cardiac arrest is when the heart develops an abnormal rhythm and stops beating. An analysis of four studies found no difference in short-term survival when rescuers followed current guidelines. These call for defibrillation as soon as possible. A defibrillator is the device used to shock the heart back to normal rhythm. But there was a small increase in long-term survival among those who received chest compressions before defibrillation. This was true especially if there were delays in the arrival of emergency medical services.Dr. Pascal Meier of the University of Michigan Health System led an international study of one thousand five hundred patients. He said they wanted to test whether it would be better to start with chest compressions to get some blood circulation to the brain and heart before they applied the electrical shock. Dr. Meier says people should start to give compressions immediately if emergency help has not arrived. He says good quality compressions are done in the middle of the chest, about two fingers above the lower end of the chest bone. You put both hands on the chest, straighten your arms and do strong compressions. For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 15Sept2010)

From http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglish

I’m Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Health Report.

World Suicide Prevention Day was September tenth. This year’s observance was meant to bring attention to the differences among suicidal individuals and their situations around the world. But the organizers also said that all over the world, people have something in common. They need to feel connected to others for good mental health.The organizers included the International Association for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organization. The World Health Organization says that every year about one million people kill themselves. It says suicide is one of the top three causes of death among people between the ages of fifteen and forty-four. Among people age ten to twenty-four, suicide is the second leading cause of death, after road accidents. Lanny Berman is president of the International Association for Suicide Prevention. He points out that suicide rates differ from country to country, as do common ways that people kill themselves. As a result, he says, prevention efforts must fit with local needs. He says the main methods of suicide in developing countries have been pesticides, pesticide poisoning and overdose. And there have been efforts to develop prevention programs to reduce the use and availability of pesticides.Mr. Berman says findings from agricultural areas of Sri Lanka, India and China show promise. They show that programs are helping to limit access to these poisons.There are often clear warning signs before a suicide attempt. Lanny Berman says individuals usually talk about the idea before they try it.Another warning sign, he says, is a sudden increase in the use of drugs or alcohol. Warning signs also include expressions of hopelessness or a sense of feeling trapped.Mr. Berman says the risk of suicide can be more difficult to identify in children. They generally communicate more with other children than with adults. But the other children often do not understand the messages. As a result, he says, when children speak of suicide, other children rarely report it.For VOA Special English I’m Alex Villarreal. You can post comments on our website, voaspecialenglish.com. You can also find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs. And you can find us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 08Sept2010)
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