AIDS Patients to Receive Free Treatment in Gov’t Hospitals

 

AIDS/HIV Infected Health Care Workers: Guidance on the Management of Infected Health Care Workers and Patient Notification

Key Points and Recommendations for the Management of infected health care workers.

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Appealing Health Insurance Denials

Getting your medical expenses covered by your health plan can be frustrating, but a little knowledge can go a long way.

Blue Cross paid former CEO $16.4 million in retirement benefits

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts paid its chairman, William C. Van Fassen, $2.96 million in salary and incentives last year, along with an additional $16.4 million in a lump sum retirement cash benefit, according to a Thursday filing with state regulators.

Corporate Responsibility in a World of AIDS: The Economic Case for Investing Now

Power Point Presentation

254 kb

Cost of Hepatitis C

We estimate $5.46 billion as the cost of HCV in 1997.  Costs are split as follows: 33% for direct and 67% for indirect costs.  Hepatitis C virus that results in chronic liver disease contributes roughly 92% of the costs, and HCV that results in primary liver cancer contributes the remaining 8%.  The total estimate of $5.46 billion is conservative, because we ignore costs associated with pain and suffering and the value of care rendered by family members.

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Criminal Charges Against Pfizer for Illegal Human Experimentation in Africa

THE Federal Government yesterday filed fresh charges against Pfizer International Incorporated (PII), accusing seven of the company’s top officials of fraud and criminal breach of trust of its controversial drug test, popularly known as Trovan Clinical Trials, it carried out on Nigerian citizens in Kano in 1996, which had fatal results.

Crisis of America's "free market" health care system: Health Care is Our Right

In his State of the Union address on January 20, 2004, George Bush said his goal is to ensure that Americans can choose and afford private health care coverage. But, in three years he did nothing to ensure health care for all Americans. Rather, he pushed an exploitative Medicare Bill through Congress that bans Americans from getting cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, and that allows even greater exploitation of the elderly by pharmaceutical companies. He is concerned with wasteful medical lawsuits because he works for the wealthy, profit-making doctors whose goals for even greater wealth dare not be hindered by the poor seeking justice from their medical mistakes. While countless Americans are without health care, CEOs of health management organizations (HMOs) and insurance companies earn annual salaries of more than $350,000 with stock options of more than $15 million. Bush said that he wants to preserve the system of private medicine that makes America’s health care the best in the world. But is it the best? Presidential candidate Howard Dean has been rattling off the names of more than ten industrialized countries that all have better health care systems, defined as having lower mortality rates for all categories of diseases and greater longevity. In this 21^st century, for the American government to deny health care to 20 percent of its population can be considered as crimes against humanity, and George Bush should be tried for these crimes in the International Criminal Court.

DECLARATION OF ALMA-ATA

Under WHO director Mahler of Denmark (1973-88) the goal of "Health for All" was proposed and was formally put forth in the 1978 WHO-UNICEF Alma-Ata Declaration. The attendees of the conference realized that improving health called for a comprehensive approach whereby primary health care was seen as "the key to achieving an acceptable level of health throughout the world in the foreseeable future as a part of social development and in the spirit of social justice." WHO, Declaration of Alma Ata, as reported in "Report on the international conference on primary health care".

Ethical Considerations Regarding Access to Experimental Treatment and Experimentation on Human Subjects

One overall conclusion shared by everyone should be stressed at the beginning. There are interesting problems concerning fair distribution of experimental treatments (although no unanimity exists about whether persons’ interests in participating should be thought of as a right). As a practical matter, however, distribution of experimental treatment is a problem of much lesser importance than fair distribution of established treatments. This paper does not address the problem but that it is a much more important issue for political action is clear.

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FBIC RANKING 100* Ranking Of Group Insurers Claims Payment Practices

It's The Law That Insurance Companies 'Willingly' Pay Claims Properly And Promptly (Good Faith) And That It Is Illegal To 'Willingly' Discount, Delay Or Deny Payment Of Claims (Bad Faith) ^*

Guidance for the prevention, testing, treatment and management of hepatitis C in primary care

This guidance has been produced to aid medical practitioners and others in the management of hepatitis C infection in primary care. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was first identified in 1989and rapidly emerged as a significant world public health problem

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Health care for ALL, not just the rich

Malaysia - Since the government’s announcement of its’ intention to restructure the country’s health system, many non-governmental organisations have pressed the government to be open, transparent and consultative during the entire process of reforming and restructuring the health system. These NGOs, largely representative of workers, consumers and low-income groups, have even come together to form a Coalition Against Health Care Privatisation in the hope that mass support can be mobilised to press for a health system that is both equitable and efficient.

Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) Infection in Health Care Workers

In the delivery of health care services, transmission of HBV from a HCW can occur only when infected blood or its components enters a patient through injury or mucocutaneous transmission

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How African doctors make ends meet: an exploration

This paper is an attempt to identify individual coping strategies of doctors in sub-Saharan Africa. It also provides some indication of the ‘effectiveness’ of these strategies in terms of income generation, and analyses their potential impact on the functioning of the health care system. It is based on semi-structured interviews of 21 doctors working in the public health sector in sub-Saharan Africa and attending in 1995 an international Master’s course in Public Health in Belgium or in Portugal.

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Infectious disease control police, prison officers, other workers in correctional facilities and emergency response workers

This information bulletin provides examples of several safe work practices which could form the basis of more detailed procedures to be adopted in individual work situations or incorporated into the work of high risk professions such as the police, prison officers and emergency response workers.

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INSURANCE “CRISIS” OFFICIALLY OVER

In the last few years, the nation’s medical lobbies, insurance and health care industries have been advancing a legislative agenda to limit their liability for medical malpractice that causes injuries and death. One of the principal arguments on which these industries rely is that laws that make it more difficult for the sick and injured to go to court (i.e., “tort reform”) will reduce medical malpractice insurance rates for doctors.

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Insurance for the Poor?

Uninsured risk has substantial welfare costs, not just in the short run, but also in terms of perpetuating poverty. This paper discusses the scope for extending insurance to the poor in LAC countries. It is argued that insurance provision to the poor could play an important role in a comprehensive system of protection against risk, including other ex-ante measures such as promoting credit and savings as insurance, as well as a credible overall ex-post safety net. Insurance provision is best promoted via a partner-agent model, in which a local finance institution with close links to relatively poor communities teams up with an established insurer to deliver low cost, tailored products, and possible products include life, health, property and weather insurance. An essential role of the government would be to promote insurance provision to the poor by a relevant regulatory framework favouring MFIs within a partner-agent setup, and to provide overall credibility to the overall system of social protection. The paper also argues for the involvement of local indigenous risk-sharing and finance institutions as intermediaries to maximise the ability to reach the poor and the overall welfare benefits.

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Is the AIDS epidemic having an impact on the coping behaviour and health status of the elderly? Evidence from Northwestern Tanzania

This paper is based on a research project entitled, “The economic impact of fatal adult illness due to AIDS and other causes in sub-Saharan Africa”, sponsored by the World Bank, USAID and Danida. We are grateful to UNAIDS—particularly Anita Alban—for the financial support for this paper, to Paurvi Bhatt, Deon Filmer, Robert Hecht, John Knodel, Sukhontha Kongsin and John Stover, for comments on an earlier draft, and to Anna Marie Marañon for expert assistance in producing the paper with all of the figures intact. Our use of the term ‘elderly’ in this paper to describe adults over the age of 50 is purely for convenience; we wish to affirm that none of our friends, colleagues or co-investigators over 50 could in any way be described as elderly. The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank or its members.

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Management of healthcare workers after occupational exposure to hepatitis C virus

·   The increasing rate of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the community means that there is increased risk of occupational exposure for healthcare workers.

·   In metropolitan hospitals in Victoria, we found that 80–150 healthcare workers have occupational exposures from HCV-infected patients annually.

·   As there is a 1.8%–3% risk of transmission of HCV from a needlestick injury, two to five healthcare workers are likely to acquire HCV each year in Victoria.

·   These needlestick injuries pose a personal, legal and professional risk to healthcare workers and their patients.

·   Recent information shows that early antiviral treatment of acute HCV infection has high cure rates.

·   Current local and international protocols for management of healthcare workers exposed to HCV do not address these issues.

·   We propose a management protocol after needlestick injury that is stratified according to the likelihood of HCV acquisition and potential risk of staff-to-patient transmission, and that is consistent with the current legal and clinical context of HCV infection in Australia.

Managing the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: 2006-2055

HIV and AIDS has become a particularly challenging problem to deal with in the developing world. In countries where poverty and famine are widespread, methods of prevention such as condoms and HIV/AIDS education aren’t available. Furthermore, these countries often lack the necessary funding to test citizens for HIV and to treat current patients with antiretroviral drugs (ARV treatment). International funding has become an integral part of managing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the world today. Funding from private sectors, non-profit organizations, as well as individual governments, provides the majority of the resources with which nations are able to

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Medical Experimentation

The United States has a long history of human medical experimentation. As early as 1900, an American doctor
conducting research in the Philippines was found guilty of infecting prisoners with the Plague and Beriberi.1 Such incidents have outraged and shocked many Americans, but they have continued to occur nevertheless. There have been some interesting developments in human medical experimentation this century, most of them referring to the idea of informed consent, which has its roots in the Nuremberg Code.

Neglected Diseases and Poverty in “The Other America”: The Greatest Health Disparity in the United States?

Notifying patients exposed to blood products associated with Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease: integrating science, legal duties and ethical mandates

In many respects the “duty to warn” former patients of the potential risks related to a past medical procedure (such as receiving a blood product) is part of a health care provider’s continuing duty to disclose risks.20 Indeed, in the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Hollis v. Dow Corning Corp.21 Justice La Forest drew a comparison between the duty of informed consent and the ongoing duty to warn patients of the risks associated with a medical product

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Occupational Disease in Connecticut, 2001

Occupational diseases are a potentially under-recognized source of disability given the wide disparity in reporting requirements and procedures that exist in various jurisdictions. Nonetheless, an occupational disease could have major impacts on worker health, ability to work, and employer costs. Some diseases, such as cancers from asbestos exposure or HIV or hepatitis from exposure to bloodborne agents in health care, can be fatal. Other diseases, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from ergonomic problems, can result in high levels of disability from loss of use of the hands. Prevention efforts, such as effective health and safety committees, ergonomic programs, or use of safe needle devices can result in substantial reductions in disease and costs; in theory, all occupational diseases are preventable.

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Occupational Medicine/ AIDS-HIV

HIV is an occupational disease for corrections workers - Estate of Doe v. Dep't of Corr., 268 Conn. 753, 848 A.2d 378 (Conn 2004)

Prevalence and Costs of Chronic Disease in a Health Care System Structured for Treatment of Acute Illness

Chronic illnesses account for 70% of deaths and for the expenditure of over 75% of direct health care costs in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Direct costs are now estimated at over $1.5 trillion. Indirect costs of chronic diseases, in the form of lost productivity and nonreimbursed personal costs, add several more hundreds of billions of dollars each year. In a landmark study published in 1996, Hoffman et al reported that in 1990 90 million people in the United States lived with a chronic disease or condition and 39 million people had more than one such condition. Extrapolating from these and other data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that as many as 25 million Americans have a chronic condition that is disabling . Although the literature does not support a single uniform definition for chronic disease, recurrent themes include the non–self-limited nature, the association with persistent and recurring health problems, and a duration measured in months and years, not days and weeks

Proposed Regulations to Change the SSA Appeals Process: Are They Fair to Claimants?

Power Point Presentation

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Researchers Project Lifetime Cost and Life Expectancy for Current HIV Care in the United States

The authors estimated the monthly medical cost for people with HIV, from the time of beginning appropriate care until death, to be $2,100 on average. The projected life expectancy for these individuals, if they remain in optimal HIV care, has now increased to 24.2 years, and the lifetime per person HIV care cost is now $618,900 per person. This amount is comparable to the estimated lifetime medical cost for women under age 65 in the U.S. with cardiovascular disease, who can also have long life expectancies with appropriate medical management. When HIV care costs are discounted to reflect the fact that they will be incurred in the future, the projected lifetime cost per person at the time of entering optimal HIV care is $385,200, and the treatment expense that can be avoided by preventing each HIV infection is $303,100.

Risk and Management of Blood-Borne Infections in Health Care Workers

Risk Pooling in Health Care Financing:

Pooling is the health system function whereby collected health revenues are transferred to purchasing organizations. Pooling ensures that the risk related to financing health interventions is borne by all the members of the pool and not by each contributor individually. Its main purpose is to share the financial risk associated with health interventions for which there is uncertain need. The arguments in favor of risk pooling in health care embody equity and efficiency considerations. The equity arguments reflect the view that society does not consider it to be fair that individuals should assume all the risk associated with their health care expenditure needs. The efficiency arguments arise because pooling can lead to major improvements in population health, can increase productivity, and reduces uncertainty associated with health care expenditure. The report considers four classes of risk pooling: no risk pool, under which all expenditure liability lies with the individual; unitary risk pool, under which all expenditure liability is transferred to a single national pool; fragmented risk pools, under which a series of independent risk pools (such as local governments or employer-based pools) are used; and integrated risk pools, under which fragmented risk pools are compensated for the variations in risk to which they are exposed. It notes that small, fragmented risk pools, which are the norm in developing countries, contribute to seriously adverse outcomes for health system performance. It therefore argues strongly for integration of risk pools as an important health system stewardship responsibility. There are numerous practical difficulties in making integration operational, so the report offers some guidance on implementation, noting that optimal design of risk pooling arrangements depends heavily on local circumstances. It concludes with suggestions for a number of measures of health system performance that can offer indications of the success of risk pool integration

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Routes to HIV transmission and intervention: an analytical framework

Research and intervention strategies on HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa are increasingly recognizing the socio-cultural, economic, environmental and political dimensions of the epidemic. Gender inequality, manifesting itself in double sexual standards for males and females; the general vulnerability of women which partly accounts for a wide range of female reproductive health problems; and variation in socio-economic and political status by gender, have emerged as some of the factors increasing the spread of HIV infection in parts of Africa. Lack of male circumcision has also been suggested as a possible reason for elevated rates of female-male infection in parts of Africa. Other factors such as poverty, type of residence, mobility, displacement as a result of wars and social as well as political unrest have been associated with the spread of HIV among some groups of people has noted that HIV infection in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, among for instance street children, ‘may be the result of multiple infections under conditions of poor nutrition due to poverty’.

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Social Costs of Occupational Disease and Injury

Socio-economic Impact of HIV/AIDS on People Living With HIV/AIDS and their Families

The deteriorating economic impact on the PLWHA is also shocking, said Mr Rai. “We will do a mistake if we don’t act now. India has 4.58 million people living with HIV/AIDS by 2002. The number is increasing and now we are about 10% of the global HIV population. Six states are high prevalence states. He said, "to my mind, the report gives us one message very clearly and that is HIV/AIDS is a real threat, it has started showing adverse effects in India. We shall make mistake if we don’t take these findings seriously and strengthen our response to HIV/AIDS". The epidemic is becoming a serious problem for the country. We need to learn from the Sub Sahara African countries where most of the younger generation is affected by the disease,” said Mr Rai.

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State-by-State Staff with HIV

Rules/laws concerning staff who is infected with a disease

Statistics of occupational injuries

In recent decades, a number of countries have considerably developed their systems for the notification of occupational injuries and for the collection and compilation of statistics in this field (see, for example, HSE, 1996; The Danish Labour Inspection Service, 1991; and United States Department of Labor, 1997). These developments concern not just the types of data collected and the coverage of the systems, but also the classifications used in order to improve the data available for prevention purposes. In addition, in January 1990, the European Union launched a study on European Statistics on Accidents at Work (ESAW), aimed at formulating proposals for the harmonization of statistics of accidents at work throughout the European Union. The project is managed jointly by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (EUROSTAT) and the Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs (DGV). Considerable progress has been achieved in this project in the development of common variables relating to occupational injuries and accidents, together with their respective classification systems, which are crucial to the goal of harmonization (EUROSTAT, 1992 and 1997).

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"The thing that bugs me is that the people think the FDA is protecting them. It isn't. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it's doing are as different as night and day".- Dr. Herbert Ley, FormerFDA Commissioner, 1970

The causes of corruption in the health sector: a focus on health care systems

Corruption exists in all types of health care systems. William Savedoff and Karen Hussmann look at the reasons why the health sector is especially vulnerable to corruption, and ask whether the vulnerabilities are different in kind and in magnitude, depending on the type of system chosen. An analysis of Colombia and Venezuela shows that very different manifestations of corruption emerged as the two countries’ health care models diverged. If there is corruption, no matter which system is opted for, and how well it is funded, health spending may not lead to commensurate health outcomes. In the United States, Americans spend more on health care than many other industrialised countries, yet health outcomes are arguably no better. At the opposite end of the scale is Cambodia, which is reliant on hundreds of millions of dollars per year in overseas development assistance to prop up its health care system, and where known cases of tuberculosis are increasing.

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The Economic Cost to New Jersey’s

Restricting access to sterile syringes is not only bad public health policy, it is bad economic policy. There are currently approximately 32,300 people living with HIV in New Jersey. More than half of them became infected by sharing contaminated needles, or having sex with someone who did. The current estimated lifetime cost of care for someone living with HIV is $618,000. This means New Jersey has spent, and will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on medical costs to treat injection-related HIV infections that could have been prevented by access to sterile syringes.

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The Ethics of AIDS Care

The readers of this journal are acutely aware of the expanding research data on the most effective treatment regimens for HIV/AIDS, as well as the medical and socioeconomic dimensions of the formularies that often govern access to these regimens, their costs, and the characteristics of the population affected. This article will, therefore, focus on the question of what is appropriate medical care for people with HIV disease and the ethical principles involved in providing drugs to the medically indigent for such appropriate medical care. An opinion concerning the ethical issues that the problem raises is given. Then suggestions are made to solve the problem in an ethically acceptable way.

The Impact of AIDS on Business, Labour and Development

One of the particular features of the HIV epidemic is that it affects adults of working age – the active population of a nation – rather than those traditionally vulnerable to disease, the young and the old. Progress in the spread of primary health care, access to vocational training, industrial investment – to name only a few activities where advances have been painstakingly achieved – is now being undermined by the incapacity and loss of government officials, business people, trade union activists and community leaders.

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The Katrina Incident: Media Manipulation Masks Government Malfeasance.

New Orleans, Louisiana is the location of one of the greatest disasters to occur in modern times. On August 29, 2005 a hurricane hit land and began its destructive movement north. The hurricane's official designation became 'Katrina,' and will be remembered as the most expensive natural disaster to occur in United States history at roughly 86 billion dollars. Whole island chains were obliterated, as evinced by satellite photography, and nearly 80% of New Orleans ultimately ended up flooded. [1] The meteorological nature of hurricane Katrina is but a small piece of what actually happened, however; the real disaster began after landfall. The political action, or inaction, by the government is viewed by a wide array of people as a chief failure of current executive power. Therefore, various failures in government reaction have been the main focus in the public consensus. However, the proactive quality of engaging in illegal activities by the government should be viewed with far greater scrutiny. Indeed, could it be that the media coverage was manipulated in such a way as to mask the true nature of government infringement on rights? These and other issues are of prime importance to this essay and will be supported by evidence from the public forum held at Chester University, October 23, 2007.

The Management of End Stage Liver Disease in the Correctional Setting

(large report-increase download time)

Over the past 20 years, correctional healthcare providers have become increasingly important in our nation’s response to tuberculosis and HIV. With one-third of HCV infected individuals in the US passing through our jails and prisons, correctional clinicians are now faced with a new challenge. As we become experts in the antiviral treatment of those with chronic hepatitis, we must also be cognizant of the management of those with ESLD. By doing so, we can decrease ESLD associated morbidity and prolong the lives of our patients suffering with this serious illness.

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THE MEDICAL FEE SCHEDULE UNDER THE WORKERS’ COMPENSATION LAW

Workers’ compensation in Hawaii, as established under the Workers’ Compensation Law, Chapter 386, Hawaii Revised Statutes, has three major components. They are indemnity, lost time, and medical care. Each of these components has specific costs that are commonly associated with the phrase “the price of workers’ compensation.” “Indemnity” costs refer to the lump-sum payments workers receive for permanent damage incurred as a result of an injury at work. “Lost time” refers to payments made to injured workers in the form of temporary disability. Finally, the third component, and subject of this study is medical care. The medical care component encompasses the costs incurred for all medical care received by injured workers. The cost to the employer comes in the form of an insurance premium that will provide the employee the benefits required by law.1 The premiums are broken down into temporary disability insurance (TDI) which covers only the “lost-time” wages and is regulated under chapter 388, Hawaii Revised Statutes, and workers’ compensation (WC) premiums. The WC premiums cover both the “indemnity” and “medical care” costs of the injured worker. Both indemnity and medical care are regulated under chapter 386, Hawaii Revised Statutes. The scope of this report includes only the fee schedule for payment of medical care costs as provided in section 386-21, Hawaii Revised Statutes.

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Workers’ Compensation

This information brief explains workers’ compensation in Minnesota including its history, what is covered under the law, benefits available to an employee and an employee’s dependents, and how disputes are resolved. A glossary at the end defines agencies and terms.

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Workers’ Compensation and Hepatitis C

XXth EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON PHILOSOPHY OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH CARE

“Medicine, philosophy and the humanities” Organised by The European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Healthcare (ESPMH) and the Finnish Society for Philosophy of Medicine.