Health Highlights: Nov. 5, 2005

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Bird Flu Claims Indonesian Woman

Another human fatality from avian flu was reported this weekend.

The Associated Press says that a 19-year Indonesian woman died from the viral infection, and an 8-year-old male relative has been hospitalized. According to government officials, this is the fifth human death from avian flu in Indonesia.

The woman was from the outskirts of the capital city of Jakarta, the wire service reported. She probably got the virus from infected dead chickens in her neighborhood, the A.P. quotes an Indonesian health official as saying.

Meanwhile airline passengers arriving in Honolulu will be asked to volunteer for avian flu testing when they arrive, the wire service reported. They will have nose and throat specimens taken at the airport clinic, making Hawaii the first state to begin screening humans for avian flu virus. But not for long.

The U.S. government announced late last week that it will install a new quarantine station at Logan International Airport in Boston. The quarantine area, patterned after one at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, will be used to evaluate travelers who pose a potential health risk, the AP reported.

Chinese authorities last week ordered the destruction of 370,000 more birds in its fourth bird flu outbreak in three weeks, despite a nationwide effort to contain the virus. The latest outbreak occurred in a northeastern village, the A.P. reported.

In Japan, signs of bird flu were detected at a northern plant and authorities planned to kill 180,000 chickens after it was found that some of the chickens tested positive for antibodies to the H5 family of avian flu.

-----

Poll: For Children, There''s No Such Thing as a ''Good'' Divorce

Divorce takes a psychological toll on children, even in the best of circumstances.

The New York Times reports on a recent survey of 1,500 people between the ages of 18 and 35 that shows the diffrences between children whose parents divorced and those whose parents stayed together. It was split between those whose parents divorced while they were under the age of 14 and those whose parents didn''t divorce.

Even in the most amicable of situations, the study showed, children of divorce found themselves in stressful situations as compared to children whose parents remained married.

"All the happy talk about divorce is designed to reassure parents," The Times quotes study author Elizabeth Marquardt as saying. "But it''s not the truth for children. Even a good divorce restructures children''s childhoods and leaves them traveling between two distinct worlds."

A typical example of a stressful situation, the results say, is how those who came from divorced families felt about relating to their parents. According to the Times, they were far more likely than those who came from intact families to feel as if they were a different person with each parent; they sometimes felt like outsiders. And many of them said they had spent a lot of time alone when they were children.

Marquardt has used her findings as the basis for a book, "Between Two Worlds."

-----

Mild Flu Season Eased Impact of Vaccine Shortage Last Winter

A mild flu season last winter helped offset the flu vaccine shortage in the United States, said a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released Thursday.

That unexpected shortage occurred when Chiron Corp. was unable to provide any flu vaccine for the United States due to possible vaccine contamination at a production plant outside Liverpool, England. As a result, the number of available flu vaccine doses available nationwide -- expected to be about 100 million -- was cut in half.

In an attempt to boost vaccine supplies, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a number measures, including the purchase of a flu vaccine not licensed for the U.S. market. However, by the time those vaccine supplies were secured in December and January, there was little demand for them, the GAO report said, according to the Associated Press.

One of the lessons learned from last year is that foreign-bought vaccines should be shipped to the United States no later than the beginning of October, the report said.

An estimated 17.5 million people in the United States decided not to get a flu shot last year to ensure there was enough vaccine for people at greatest need for a shot. The report said some health experts believe the people who deferred their flu shots should have been told to check later in the winter for a flu shot, the AP reported.

Patient Information Found on Internet

Personal information about an estimated 2,800 Ohio State University (OSU) Medical Center patients appeared on the Internet, hospital officials revealed Thursday.

Names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers and the reason why the patients were making appointments at the medical center were included in the information that appeared on the Internet, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

Patient medical records were not exposed to public scrutiny.

Hospital officials were alerted about the problem three weeks ago and immediately pulled the information from the Web. They have no idea how long the patient information was on the Internet.

The error involved medical center patients who made or changed appointments on April 19, 2004. The hospital has offered to pay for all affected patients to enroll in a 12-month credit protection service, the Dispatch reported.

-----

L.A. Hospital Closes Liver Transplant Program

St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles will close its liver transplant program in response to revelations that program doctors committed a serious breach of national standards by misappropriating a liver.

"It''s the right thing to do for this organization," Gus Valdespino, president and chief executive of St. Vincent, told the Los Angeles Times.

He suspended the hospital''s liver transplant program in late September after learning about the inappropriate transplant, which occurred in 2003. Doctors bypassed patients in more dire need of a new liver and performed a liver transplant on a Saudi national who ranked 52nd on the regional liver transplant waiting list.

Documents were then falsified to cover up the inappropriate transplant. A patient who was at the top of the regional list for a liver transplant -- but did not receive one -- later died.

Ongoing investigations and the challenges of rebuilding the program were among the reasons cited by Valdespino for permanently closing down the liver transplant program at St. Vincent, the Times reported.

-----

Clinton Launches Breast Cancer Fund

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is establishing a breast cancer fund in honor of his mother, who died of the disease in 1994.

The Virginia Clinton Kelley Fund, which will be part of the National Breast Cancer Coalition Fund, will educate and train breast cancer survivors to influence research and increase access to care, the Associated Press reported.

"She had a very upbeat attitude and never thought of herself as dying from the disease but living with it. She was totally at ease with her own mortality and yet ferocious in fighting against the disease," Clinton told the AP.

-

Last Updated: Nov. 5, 2005