Pedestrians walk past a mural showing the symptoms of the Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia, September 26, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/James Giahyue
(Reuters) – U.S. health specialists are ready to deploy to Dallas if a patient being evaluated for Ebola is found to be carrying the disease that has killed thousands of people in West Africa, a Dallas County official said on Tuesday.
Arminda Murillo, 54, reads a leaflet at a health insurance enrollment event in Cudahy, California March 27, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
(Reuters) – A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled on Tuesday that tax subsidies vital to the implementation of President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law are unlawful, giving a boost to opponents of the measure known as Obamacare.
U.S. District Judge Ronald White found that the Internal Revenue Service rule that the Obama administration issued to set up tax-credit subsidies to help people afford insurance premiums under Obamacare was “an invalid implementation” of the law based on his interpretation of it.
(Reuters) – U.S. doctors and teaching hospitals received $3.5 billion from pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers in the last five months of 2013, according to the most extensive data trove on such payments ever made public.
The payments, disclosed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Tuesday, include consulting and speaking fees, travel, meals, entertainment and research grants. The names of the recipients of about 40 percent of the payments reported by companies were withheld because CMS had concerns about data inconsistencies.
By Nick Triggle
Health correspondent, BBC News
Midwives will be joining other NHS workers in England in a strike over pay next month.
The Royal College of Midwives announced 82% of its members voted in favour – the first time they have ever been balloted on industrial action.
They will join other staff, including nurses, healthcare assistants and porters, in the 13 October walk-out.
The strike will last four hours, but the RCM said midwives will still be there for women giving birth.
By Helen Briggs
Health editor, BBC News website
Many adults in the UK are unaware of the risk factors for heart disease, according to a new poll.
While a third of people are worried about getting dementia or cancer, only 2% are afraid of coronary heart disease, a survey by the British Heart Foundation has found.
And one in ten adults confessed to not knowing how to look after their hearts.
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A worker makes its way on a bridge at Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche plant in Basel February 2, 2011.
Credit: Reuters/Christian Hartmann
(Reuters) – It is too early to say whether combining Roche’s best-selling Avastin cancer drug with the company’s experimental immune-boosting medicine MPDL3280A gives a better outcome in fighting tumors.
That is the verdict of experts following a presentation of a small clinical study assessing the combination in patients with a variety of solid tumors.
Ebola has spread quickly in the affected countries, partly because many lack running water
The death toll from the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has passed 3,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.
The latest figures indicate that more than 6,500 people are believed to have been infected in the region.
Liberia is the worst affected country, having recorded around 1,830 deaths linked to the latest outbreak.
The outbreak is the world’s most deadly – US President Barack Obama has called it a “threat to global security”.
(Reuters) – Liberia’s chief medical officer, who is also a deputy health minister, has put herself in quarantine as a precaution against Ebola after one of her assistants died from the disease, the government said on Saturday.
Bernice Dahn is the latest senior West African medical official to be directly affected by an outbreak of Ebola, which has killed over 3,000 people as it spreads across most of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“She has placed herself under self observation due to the fact that her special assistant contracted the virus,” Isaac Jackson, Liberia’s deputy information minister, told Reuters.
A sign is seen at an AstraZeneca site in Macclesfield, central England May 19, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Phil Noble
(Reuters) – Early results for a closely watched cancer drug combination from AstraZeneca that boosts the immune system show the cocktail is promising, though limited patient numbers mean the data is far from conclusive.
The British drugmaker, which fended off a $118 billion takeover bid from Pfizer in May in part by talking up its cancer drug prospects, has high hopes for the combination of two experimental drugs known as MEDI4736 and tremelimumab.