Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Unsafe Abortions Continue

Around the world unsafe abortions continue, current public health policies based on abstinence have not helped, nor have restrictions moral and political on contraception. Laws outlawing abortions have had limited impacts.

Backstreet abortions continue by unskilled practitioners. The latest issue of the Lancet shows that at least half of all women who have abortions do not have access to proper medical procedures. This results in the death or injury, thanks to laws and moral programs against a womans right to choose.

As the Lancet points out this is a war on women.

Access to safe abortions a key intervention to improving maternal health

The Lancet, Current Issue, Volume 370, Number 9595, 13 October 2007

Background

Information on incidence of induced abortion is crucial for identifying policy and programmatic needs aimed at reducing unintended pregnancy. Because unsafe abortion is a cause of maternal morbidity and mortality, measures of its incidence are also important for monitoring progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5. We present new worldwide estimates of abortion rates and trends and discuss their implications for policies and programmes to reduce unintended pregnancy and unsafe abortion and to increase access to safe abortion.

Findings

An estimated 42 million abortions were induced in 2003, compared with 46 million in 1995. The induced abortion rate in 2003 was 29 per 1000 women aged 15–44 years, down from 35 in 1995. Abortion rates were lowest in western Europe (12 per 1000 women). Rates were 17 per 1000 women in northern Europe, 18 per 1000 women in southern Europe, and 21 per 1000 women in northern America (USA and Canada). In 2003, 48% of all abortions worldwide were unsafe, and more than 97% of all unsafe abortions were in developing countries. There were 31 abortions for every 100 livebirths worldwide in 2003, and this ratio was highest in eastern Europe (105 for every 100 livebirths).

Interpretation

Overall abortion rates are similar in the developing and developed world, but unsafe abortion is concentrated in developing countries. Ensuring that the need for contraception is met and that all abortions are safe will reduce maternal mortality substantially and protect maternal health.

Unsafe abortion: the preventable pandemic

The Lancet, Volume 368, Number 9550, 25 November 2006

Ending the silent pandemic of unsafe abortion is an urgent public-health and human-rights imperative. As with other more visible global-health issues, this scourge threatens women throughout the developing world. Every year, about 19–20 million abortions are done by individuals without the requisite skills, or in environments below minimum medical standards, or both. Nearly all unsafe abortions (97%) are in developing countries. An estimated 68 000 women die as a result, and millions more have complications, many permanent. Important causes of death include haemorrhage, infection, and poisoning. Legalisation of abortion on request is a necessary but insufficient step toward improving women's health; in some countries, such as India, where abortion has been legal for decades, access to competent care remains restricted because of other barriers. Access to safe abortion improves women's health, and vice versa, as documented in Romania during the regime of President Nicolae Ceausescu. The availability of modern contraception can reduce but never eliminate the need for abortion. Direct costs of treating abortion complications burden impoverished health care systems, and indirect costs also drain struggling economies. The development of manual vacuum aspiration to empty the uterus, and the use of misoprostol, an oxytocic agent, have improved the care of women. Access to safe, legal abortion is a fundamental right of women, irrespective of where they live. The underlying causes of morbidity and mortality from unsafe abortion today are not blood loss and infection but, rather, apathy and disdain toward women.


See:

God Is Pro Abortion

Republican Presidential Paul itics

Procreation To Save The White Race

Not Queer Enough To Be Canadian

Nothing To Fear Here

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Sunday, March 25, 2007

Tories Health Plan Kills Albertan

Yes you read that headline right. The hospital in Vegreville, under an appointed board, ruled over by another appointed board, and all those appointments are by the government, has an outbreak of super bug. And it resulted in one death at least.

Alberta hospital superbug scandal raises fears of Walkerton claim of 1 Death.

Because they failed to follow government health procedures and because they lack proper staffing, and have since the cutbacks under King Ralph.
But the Premier and government steps in and assigns the review to another government appointed board, rejecting any independent review. Stelmach rejects calls for public inquiry

Only in Alberta. Home of the right wingers who bitch about federal accountability while at home they give it the old boot up the bum while covering their asses.


See:

Medicare

Healthcare


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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Socialist Canada

Here is another example that regardless of the party in power as the Government compared to our American neighbours we sure are the socialists they claim us to be.

Yep our Conservative Government is funding mandatory vaccinations for HPV in Canada.

While of course our Americans flip their lids over this when suggested by their own governments.
Why aren't more girls getting the HPV vaccine

It makes them as koo-koo as mandatory Fluoridation, Maine health officials rally for fluoridation, which they know leads to communism.

The controversy has been satirized in feature films. Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb satirized an urban legend with a character declaring water fluoridation to be a communist conspiracy.

There are many who fight to get fluoride banned from drinking water and to warn us of the dangers of this element, including Robert Carton, a scientist who spent 20 years working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and who has stated fluoridation is a fraud. He was convinced that fluoridation presented an "unacceptable risk to public health."


And of course Americans don't have that other socialist milestone; universal medicare, so parents will have to pay to have their daughters vaccinated against a preventable disease; HPV.

 The Federation of Medical Women of Canada
commends the federal government for making $300 million over the next three
years available to the provinces and territories to support the launch of a
national program for GARDASIL(TM), the approved vaccine for HPV-related
diseases such as cervical cancer and genital warts. The Federation is now
challenging provincial governments to follow through and rapidly make the HPV
vaccination universally available.
"With this new budget, the federal government is showing true leadership
with respect to women's health," said Dr. Gail Beck, President of the
Federation of Medical Women of Canada. "Last fall, we urged the federal
government to fund new vaccines, including GARDASIL(TM), which we believe is
the biggest medical breakthrough in women's health in many years. On
International Women's Day we reiterated our message of having the cost of this
vaccine covered and today the federal government has come through. We are now
looking to the provincial governments to help bring an end to cervical cancer
in Canada."
 In July 2006, GARDASIL(TM) was approved by Health Canada and in January
2007 the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommended that
all Canadian girls and women aged nine to 26 be routinely vaccinated with
GARDASIL(TM) to help protect them against cervical cancer, among other
HPV-related diseases.

Thats why Republicanadians of the right will never get anywhere in Canada.

The budget appears to be playing well with social conservatives, with David Quist of the Institute for Marriage and the Family telling Macleans.ca that "the elimination of the marriage penalty is a good start." Quist did not take issue with funding for HPV vaccinations, criticized by some religious groups in the United States for encouraging promiscuity. But he did express regret over the decision to transfer child care funding to the provinces, saying that he would "rather see more money get into the hands of parents so they can make those choices," or failing that into the hands of businesses rather than government.

H/T To Deep Red Tory


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Saturday, February 03, 2007

Helium For Health


It helps you you with smokers cough and you get to sound like Donald Duck

Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have discovered that by combining helium with 40 per cent oxygen allowed patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to increase their exercise capacity by an average of 245 per cent. COPD is a disease of the lungs caused by smoking and includes the conditions of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.



See

Smoking



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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

'El Comandante' Fidel Spoils Party


Bad news for all those folks planning their Post-Castro celebration at the Orange Bowl

New video shows improved Castro

And socialism in Cuba will not collapse with the passing of Comrade El Comandante Fidel.


Post-Castro Cuba already a reality, experts say

Castro, 'El Comandante', is most often known to his people as 'Fidel', even to his face. They 'argue with him, they claim him', writes Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
See

Castro

Cuba

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