Your Health

Your Health

What is Influenza (Also Called Flu)?
The flu is a contagious respiratory illness caused by influenza
viruses. It can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead
to death. The best way to prevent the flu is by getting a flu
vaccination each year.

Every year in the United States, on average:

5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;
more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related
complications; and
about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes.
Some people, such as older people, young children, and people
with certain health conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or
heart disease), are at high risk for serious flu complications.

Tobacco
435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity
365,000
Alcohol
85,000
Microbial Agents
75,000
Toxic Agents
55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes
26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs
32,000
Suicide
30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms
29,000
Homicide
20,308
Sexual Behaviors
20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect
17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin
7,600
Marijuana
0

5 Million African Child Deaths Each Year

FACTS ABOUT MALARIA
March 2009

About 3.3 billion people - half of the world's population - are at
risk of malaria. Every year, this leads to about 250 million
malaria cases and nearly one million deaths. People living in the
poorest countries are the most vulnerable.

Malaria is especially a serious problem in Africa, where one in
every five (20%) childhood deaths is due to the effects of the
disease. An African child has on average between 1.6 and 5.4
episodes of malaria fever each year. And every 30 seconds a child
dies from malaria

Drug-Resistant Staph Germ's Toll Is Higher Than Thought
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 17, 2007; Page A01 Staph Infection Death

A dangerous germ that has been spreading around the country
causes more life-threatening infections than public health
authorities had thought and is killing more people in the United
States each year than the AIDS virus, federal health officials
reported yesterday.
The microbe, a strain of a once innocuous staph bacterium that has
become invulnerable to first-line antibiotics, is responsible for
more than 94,000 serious infections and nearly 19,000 deaths each
year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculated.

Although mounting evidence shows that the infection is becoming
more common, the estimate published today in the Journal of the
American Medical Association is the first national assessment of
the toll from the insidious pathogen, officials said.

"This is a significant public health problem. We should be very
worried," said Scott K. Fridkin, a medical epidemiologist at the
CDC.

Other researchers noted that the estimate includes only the most
serious infections caused by the germ, known as
methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

"It's really just the tip of the iceberg," said Elizabeth A. Bancroft, a
medical epidemiologist at the Los Angeles County Department of
Public Health who wrote an editorial in JAMA accompanying the
new studies. "It is astounding."

Take care of your health before your illness .......

Scientists Find 2 New HIV Antibodies
(Sept. 3,2010) -- Researchers said Friday they have isolated two
antibodies that block HIV from multiplying in the body and causing
severe disease -- an exciting development that could lead to the
creation of a vaccine against AIDS
The two antibodies appear to be 10 times more effective than others
in defusing HIV, the scientists from Scripps Research Institute and
the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative reported in the journal
Science.
Other so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies, immune system
cells that stave off infection, have been isolated from HIV-positive
patients in the past. But the newly discovered antibodies are not
only much more effective, they work against scores of different
strains of the virus found in various continents around the world.

"We looked at 162 different [HIV] viruses, and these antibodies
neutralized 120 to 130 of strains from all across the world," Dennis
Burton of Scripps, the lead author of the study, told Time magazine.
The researchers collected blood samples from more than 1,800
people in Thailand, Australia and Africa who had been infected with
HIV for at least three years without the infection progressing to
full-blown AIDS. These individuals are most likely to produce
antibodies that interfere with the replication of the virus. The
researchers eventually isolated two antibodies, called PG9 and PG16,
from one African patient.
The antibodies could potentially be used to treat HIV-positive
patients who develop severe disease. But more than that,
researchers hope to find molecules that can stimulate the body to
produce these antibodies. These molecules could be the main
building block for a vaccine that would protect against HIV.
[Reported on AOL NEWS.

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Muslim Vital Records.com
A National Registry of Muslim Marriage and Divorce with data & information sharing.

The Life of Muahmmad Part 1

"Clear evidence" that pills prevent HIV transmission in straight
couples by Ryan Jaslow, July 13, 2011 9:53 AM
(CBS/AP) "This is a good day for HIV prevention."

That's what Dr. Lynn Paxton, HIV research coordinator for the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said about promising
new findings from two studies that report daily medication
prevented HIV infection in straight African men and women.

For the first study, CDC
researchers looked at 1,200
men and women in Botswana .
About half took the
Gilead-manufactured HIV pill
Truvada, while the other half
took a placebo pill.

The researchers found four people taking Truvada became infected
with HIV, compared to 19 on the dummy pill - that means Truvada
lowered the risk of infection by roughly 78 percent.

The second study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
looked at more than 4,700 straight couples in Kenya and Uganda,
where one partner had HIV and the other did not. The uninfected
were given either a placebo, Truvada pills, or another Gilead
treatment, Viread.

The researchers found 13 HIV infections in the group that took
Truvada, 18 in those on Viread, and 47 among placebo-pill-takers.
The researchers said Truvada and Viread reduced the risk of HIV
infection by 62 percent and 73 percent, respectively.

An independent review panel on Sunday said the benefit was so
clear-cut that they deemed it unethical to withhold the drugs from
placebo-takers and switched their treatments, said Dr. Jared Baeten,
the University of Washington researcher who co-chaired the study
with the Gates Foundation.

"Our results provide clear evidence that this works in heterosexuals,"
he said. Participants in both studies were offered counseling and free
condoms, which may explain the low infection rate overall.

These are the third and fourth widely reported studies of AIDS
prevention medications.

The first was a study of Truvada in gay men in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil,
South Africa, Thailand and the U.S. that found the drug lowered the
chances of infection by up to 73 percent among men who took their
pills daily.

Experts celebrated the news and the CDC gave advice to doctors on
prescribing Truvada along with other prevention services for gay
men. But momentum stalled in April, when a different study of 3,900
women in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa did not show a benefit
from taking Truvada. Researchers now say that study may have
been flawed based on the new findings announced Wednesday.

Gilead is a major producer of AIDS drugs. On Tuesday, United
Nations health officials announced the company had agreed to allow
some of its drugs to be made by generic manufacturers, potentially
increasing their availability in poor countries.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20079088-10391704.html