http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. The Democratic Republic of Congo has displaced Niger to gain the unenviable distinction of being the worst place in the world to be a mother, according to a new report by Save the Children. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-drc-worst-mother.html Health Tue, 07 May 2013 05:10:01 EST news287121409 While poverty and under-education continue to dampen contraception use in Nepal, exacerbating the country's efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality rates, researchers say another, more surprising factor may be more intractable: Deeply held cultural preferences for sons over daughters. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-sons-linked-contraception-nepal.html Obstetrics & gynaecology Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:19:39 EST news282496736 Up to 10 percent of all women experience some form of elevated blood pressure during pregnancy. Researchers from the Centre for Social Evolution at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen show that mild maternal hypertension early in pregnancy actually benefits the fetus, but that late-pregnancy hypertension has negative health consequences for the child. The study is based on more than 750,000 births in Denmark, with follow-up data on children's hospital diagnoses for up to 27 years. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-pregnant-mother-blood-pressure-affect.html Pediatrics Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:00:01 EST news281010577 (Medical Xpress)—In communities where Dad is more likely to be missing from the picture, more babies are born prematurely and of lower weight, according to a researcher from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the Institute for Social Research Population Studies Center. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-babies-born-earlier-smaller-males.html Health Mon, 11 Feb 2013 09:35:00 EST news279797692 Bill Gates on Wednesday urged the world to take a page from his corporate playbook and link aid to measurable results, saying a harder-nosed strategy could dramatically reduce disease and poverty. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-bill-gates-aid-tied-results.html Other Wed, 30 Jan 2013 05:07:32 EST news278744842 (AP)—Most of the world's urgent problems boil down to water and sanitation, and global leaders must act to reduce child mortality and urban poverty, the UN's deputy chief said Friday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-deputy-chief-urges-action-rights.html Health Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:40:02 EST news278342043 (Medical Xpress)—Postpartum depression not only affects mothers but it could mean higher health risks for the baby – especially in low-income countries like Ghana where the condition isn't well-recognized, University of Michigan Health System research shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-postpartum-depression-prevalent-under-developed-countries.html Obstetrics & gynaecology Tue, 08 Jan 2013 11:43:32 EST news276867801 Measures of uncertainty should be taken into account when estimating progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4 (to reduce the mortality rate of children under 5 years by two thirds from the 1990 level by 2015) in order to give more accurate assessments of countries' progress, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-method-quantifies-uncertainty-child-mortality.html Health Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:00:08 EST news274465391 Marking the fourth annual World Pneumonia Day, November 12th, world leaders and the Global Coalition Against Child Pneumonia are calling for major efforts in the fight against childhood pneumonia, which remains the number one killer of children under age five. Pneumonia claimed 1.3 million lives in 2011 alone, and was responsible for nearly one in five global child deaths. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-pneumonia-killer-children-decline-global.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 12 Nov 2012 09:57:11 EST news271936622 Pakistan on Tuesday launched a drive to vaccinate 5.5 million children against pneumococcal disease to fight pneumonia, which kills tens of thousands of youngsters in the country every year. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-pakistan-anti-pneumonia.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:03:42 EST news268992197 With the 2015 deadline to meet the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDG) approaching, scholars and government officials gathered at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on Tuesday to search for lessons in the dramatic progress that Brazil has made in recent decades. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-health-reform-brazil.html Health Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:50:26 EST news267699014 Two studies from UNICEF, forming The Lancet Series on equity in child survival, health, and nutrition, provide compelling evidence for the strategic importance of focusing global health improvement efforts on the poorest and hardest to reach children. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-unicef-highlight-importance-equity-maternal.html Health Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:04 EST news267291141 Latest figures from the Countdown to 2015 group, published in The Lancet, show that official development aid for maternal, newborn, and child health activities stalled for the first time in 2010, with the total volume of aid given decreasing slightly, despite a growing number of donors being recorded. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-aid-maternal-child-heath-stalls.html Health Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:02 EST news267291193 Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, has bucked regional trends to achieve dramatic reductions in child mortality in recent years, according to a Countdown country case study published in The Lancet. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-child-mortality-niger-plummets.html Health Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:30:01 EST news267291227 China is investigating whether more than 20 children were fed genetically modified rice in a project that involved Chinese and US researchers, state media said Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-china-probes-children-fed-rice.html Health Tue, 11 Sep 2012 07:40:15 EST news266568007 Child mortality is a key indicator not only of child health and nutrition but also of the implementation of child survival interventions and, more broadly, of social and economic development. Millennium Development Goal 4 calls for a two thirds reduction in the under-five mortality rate between 1990 and 2015. With the renewed focus on child survival, tracking of progress in the reduction of child mortality is increasingly important. A sponsored collection of new articles on the methodology for estimation of child mortality was published today in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine, in conjunction with the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) and the Technical Advisory Group (TAG). The collection contains seven peer reviewed articles and introduces the methodological innovations by the TAG and UN IGME in estimating child mortality which are critical to the monitoring of progress toward the MDG goal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-08-plos-child-mortality-methods.html Health Tue, 28 Aug 2012 17:00:12 EST news265374802 Preventable childhood deaths caused by illnesses such as pneumonia and diarrhea can be nearly eliminated in 10 years according to researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the National Institutes of Health. In a new commentary featured in the June issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers outline a strategy and benchmarks for curbing childhood preventable deaths and recommend a new common vision for a global commitment to end all preventable child deaths. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-outline-child-deaths.html Health Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:51:30 EST news258911485 Since 1990, annual maternal deaths have declined by almost one half and the deaths of young children have declined from 12 million to 7.6 million in 2010. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-maternal-child-deaths-women-children.html Health Wed, 13 Jun 2012 04:21:25 EST news258780077 Since the 1930s, there have been 75 documented episodes of malaria resurgence worldwide, most of which were linked to weakening of malaria control programs, finds a new study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Malaria Journal. The study, which is allied to the theme of this year's World Malaria Day (25th April 2012) "Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria", found that the most common reason for weakening of malaria control programs was funding disruptions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-malaria-resurgence-linked-reduction-malaria-control.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:25:35 EST news254456717 Malaria continues to be a major disease worldwide, but while funding projects are working hard to improve malaria prevention it is difficult to measure how effective these interventions are. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Malaria Journal has used a Lives Saved Tool (LiST) model to show that the increase in funding for the prevention of malaria has prevented 850,000 child deaths in the decade between 2001 and 2010 across Africa. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-malaria-children.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 28 Mar 2012 03:23:48 EST news252123822 Canada's ranking in international child health indexes would dramatically improve if measurements were standardized, according to a new study by researchers from the University of British Columbia, Dalhousie University, McGill University, the University of Calgary, and the Public Health Agency of Canada, working with the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-international-infant-mortality-flawed.html Health Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:00:01 EST news248675856 In the fight against child mortality in the developing world, simple things make a big difference. A new study by Stanford researchers recently published online by the journal Environmental Science and Technology shows that decreasing the amount of time families must walk to obtain clean water can help save the lives of young children. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-sub-saharan-africa-shorter.html Health Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:16:19 EST news247497368 Social inequality in wealthy nations is increasing while in parts of the developing world many diseases are on the wane, Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization said Monday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-inequality-wealthy-states-diseases-decline.html Health Mon, 16 Jan 2012 09:10:01 EST news245926534 Globalization has led to significant changes in the health care of children worldwide, yet medical education in the developed world has remained domestically focused. Canadian pediatricians are caring for growing numbers of new immigrants, refugees and international adoptees, so their formal training should reflect these changes. Now medical trainees in Canada don't have to go abroad to improve cultural competency and expand their global health education. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-global-child-health-curriculum-canada.html Health Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:00:14 EST news241084807 A global campaign to save new mothers and children under five in developing nations has made strong gains but is set to fall well shy of UN goals, according to a study released Tuesday. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-mothers-children-fall-short.html Health Tue, 20 Sep 2011 04:58:28 EST news235713494 Children who live in households that own at least one insecticide-treated bed net are less likely to be infected with malaria and less likely to die from the disease, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-insecticide-treated-bed-nets-lowers-child.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 06 Sep 2011 17:42:40 EST news234549731 Children in low and middle income countries should be given vitamin A supplements to prevent death and illness, concludes a study published in the British Medical Journal today. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-vitamin-supplements-children-year.html Health Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:42:37 EST news233552538