By Lara Holmes

The Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS, for its name in Spanish) under the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, has received 269 reports of incidents of breast implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), and has already made the withdrawal of 391 of these products, of which a 70 percent (275) presented some type of breakage.

So far, according to the agency, all regions have provided almost all of their data and it is estimated that the number of women with silicone breast implants PIP in Spain is 18,500, having deployed some 37,000 prosthesis.

 

By Lara Holmes

Until last Friday in Hidalgo there were recorded 212 cases of influenza of all types, of which 207 are for A-H1N1, and they have confirmed five deaths associated with other diseases and / or risk factors, as well as the late service request, evolving favorably 9 out of 10 patients with outpatient treatment, which were released.

This was announced by the Ministry of Health of the State of Hidalgo, after cutting that is performed every Friday at the national level to inform, evaluate and point out the plan of intent to the seasonal flu and prevention measures to be applied in Federal states and the District local authorities and the federal IMSS and ISSSTE in the states.

By Lara Holmes

Between 2004 and 2009, the number of home births in the U.S. increased by 29 percent, leading to 29,650 babies born at home in 2009. This new trend was reported in the report, Home Births in the United States, 1990-2009 by the National Center for Health Statistics.

The cause of this developing trend remains unclear. However, between 1990 and 2004, the number of reported home births was decreasing, from 0.67 percent to 0.56 percent. In 2009, 0.72 percent of babies are born at home.

By Lara Holmes

With a total of three deaths and 44 cases of leptospirosis recorded in 2011, the Ministry of Health in Barbados is urging residents to protect themselves against the disease.

According to Senior Medical Officer of Health - North, Dr Karen Springer, there were six recorded cases in the first half of the year and that number tripled for the last six months of 2011.

By Lara Holmes

Dramatic improvements in water and sanitation services are needed to eliminate cholera in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, health experts who took part in a United Nations-organized briefing to outline concrete steps to stem the spread of the disease in the region said last week.

The event, organized by the UN World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional arm, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), urged governments and international organizations to boost investment in the infrastructure and institutional capacity required to provide water and sanitation in areas affected by the disease.

By Lara Holmes

A lawyer filed on Wednesday before the Justice of the province of Entre Rios, Argentina an order for a girl of 11 who became pregnant after allegedly having relations with a child under 17 to be  subjected to an abortion, judicial sources said.

Maria Benitez's attorney, legal representative of the family of the child and the hospital of the city of San Salvador, which initiated the complaint, made ​​the request before a Family Court arguing that the girl was sexually abused and that there is a risk for her health.

By Lara Holmes

Web addicts have brain changes similar to those hooked on drugs or alcohol, preliminary research suggests.

Experts in China scanned the brains of 17 young web addicts and found disruption in the way their brains were wired up.

They say the discovery, published in Plos One, could lead to new treatments for addictive behavior.

By Lara Holmes

This was announced by the Colombian Government to introduce the new Mandatory Health Plan.

President Juan Manuel Santos and the Minister of Health, Mauricio Santa Maria, officially presented on Wednesday the new Mandatory Health Plan (POS for its name in Spanish), which came into effect last January first.

By Lara Holmes

Panamanian authorities are almost certain that breast implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) have entered Panama clandestinely which ended up being defective, said Health Minister Franklin Vergara.

Vergara revealed that there is an investigation that keeps looking at private clinics and looking in the same population to find breast implants that have come to be defective because he ensures that they only came in in a clandestine manner.

The scandal over breast implants, which affects thousands of women in various countries, intensified on Monday after revelations that the breast implants contained a fuel additive.

 

By Lara Holmes

The French head of the company at the center of the international breast implant scare was employed by a second firm making medical prosthetics set up by two of his children.

Jean-Claude Mas, the founder of Poly Implant Protheses (PIP), the firm accused of using cheaper industrial silicone rather than approved medical material in its implants, is listed as a technical and commercial consultant to the new company, set up eight months after his own firm was closed down.

 

By Lara Holmes

Steticus, Quito clinic specializing in plastic surgery, will have their patient withdraw the French Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) implants although the National Cancer Institute of France concluded that these do not increase the risk of cancer.

The CEO of the clinic Steticus, Patricio Toscano, said that this measure is adopted due to concerns generated by the news that these prostheses led to eight cancer patients in Europe.

 

By Lara Holmes

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez has a papillary thyroid carcinoma and will undergo surgery on 4 January, said the government spokesman, Alfredo Scoccimarro on Tuesday.

Scoccimarro told reporters at Government House that the condition was detected in the right lobe of the thyroid during a routine test conducted last December 22.

By Lara Holmes

The annual top 10 list by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science, appear in the magazine's December 23 issue.

The lead story of the year was an international trial, coined HPTN 052, which showed that people taking anti-retroviral drugs reduced the risk of heterosexual transmission to partners by 96 percent.

 

By Lara Holmes

Port of Spain, Trinidad.-  Dr Ernest Pate, PAHO Caribbean program coordinator has asserted that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) must be more data driven in the prevention and treatment of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs).

He also called upon CARICOM heads of government to move their commitment from principle to practice, noting that adequate resources were an imperative to fighting NCDs.

 

By Lara Holmes

A mysterious epidemic is sweeping Central America - it's the second biggest cause of death among men in El Salvador, and in Nicaragua it's a bigger killer of men than HIV and diabetes combined. It's unexplained but the latest theory is that the victims are literally working themselves to death.

In the western lowlands of Nicaragua, in a region of vast sugar cane fields, sits the tiny community of La Isla.

The small houses are a patchwork of concrete and wood. Pieces of cloth serve as doors. And men are dying from this mystery kidney disease.

By Lara Holmes

Colombia .- A total of 15 children from Boyaca will undergo surgery in the coming days as a result of the Fourth Day of the Take My Heart campaign.

This was determined by the Cardioinfantil Foundation cardiologists in the campaign carried out in Duitama which had the support of Mediagnostica in that city.

By Lara Holmes

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.’s emergency contraceptive may be the first approved for over-the- counter use by females of all ages if U.S. regulators lift restrictions this week.

Teva, in February, asked the Food and Drug Administration to review rules that require the product, called Plan B One-Step, be kept behind pharmacy counters and sold with a prescription to girls younger than 17 years old. The so-called morning-after pill reduces pregnancy risk if taken within three days of sex.

By Lara Holmes

The Latin American Medicine Day was held at Guantanamo as a cultural and political event held at the General Teaching Hospital Dr.Agostinho Neto of this city, where they concentrated health workers from different fields related to the sector.

At the meeting several centers that have ratified the status model were encouraged. Including Psychiatric Hospital Luis Ramírez López, nursing homes  Santa Catalina and Charity Jaca, the Clinic of Natural Medicine and Traditional Home and Southern Maternal of this city.