Health Headlines - September 15

Poor U.S. Economy Affects Blood Donations The ailing economy is causing a decrease in the number of workplace-related blood donations in many areas of the United States. For example, 33 corporate blood drives were canceled from June through August, resulting in 1,700 fewer units of blood collected, a spokeswoman with the Badger-Hawkeye Red Cross in Wisconsin told the Associated Press. The state's unemployment rate has doubled to 8.7 percent in the last year. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate (15.6 percent) in the nation, and the Michigan Community Blood Centers has seen a 15 percent to 20 percent drop in blood donations. "We are seeing a direct effect of the recession," spokeswoman Toni Gould told the AP. "So many businesses and factories are closing, and they accounted for a large share of mobile drives." Despite the decline in blood donations in certain regions, there hasn't yet been a significant overall national decrease, according to the American Red Cross. ----- Swine Flu Shots May Come Earlier; New Flu Drug Shows Promise Americans worried about the advance of H1N1 swine flu this fall got two doses of welcome news this past weekend: A potentially faster-than-expected roll-out for a vaccine, and good trial results on a new intravenous drug to fight influenza, the Associated Press reported. Speaking on ABC's This Week on Sunday, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the first batches of an H1N1 vaccine could be available by the first week of October -- earlier than the mid-October delivery the federal government announced back in August. "We're on track to have an ample supply rolling out by the middle of October. But we may have some early vaccine as early as the first full week in October," Sebelius said. "We'll get it to states as fast as it comes off the production lines," she added. Supply of the vaccine should get an added boost from studies released last week that suggest that only one dose might be needed to confer protection against H1N1. In related news, a trial in China of peramivir, an antiviral drug delivered intravenously, has found that the drug eased seasonal (regular) flu within less than five days, similar to the efficacy of the oral anti-flu drug Tamiflu, the AP reported. The finding is important because very ill, hospitalized flu patients often cannot take medicines in pill form. "You can get it into the blood, into the lungs, where infection is occurring," Dr. Nancy Cox, chief of influenza at the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, told the AP. The drug is being developed by BioCryst Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Birmingham, Ala., along with the Japanese drug company Shinogi & Co. ----- Drug-Resistant Bacteria Found at 5 Washington Beaches Drug-resistant bacteria were detected in sand and water at five public beaches along Washington coast and the state's beaches may not be the only ones with this type of contamination, according to scientists. Previously, the dangerous methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) was rarely seen outside of hospitals but is increasingly being found in community locations such as gyms, schools and locker rooms, the Associated Press reported. This new finding suggests that beaches may be another location where people pick up MRSA, which can cause serious skin infections as well as pneumonia and other life-threatening problems. "We don't know about the risk" for a people at the beach, Marilyn Roberts, a microbiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the AP. "But the fact that we found these organisms (at the beaches) suggests that the level is much higher than we had thought." For this study, Roberts and colleagues tested 10 coastal beaches in Washington and found staph bacteria at nine of them, including five with MRSA. The findings were presented on the weekend at an American Society for Microbiology conference.Health Headlines - September 15

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