Severe dengue outbreak kills 12 in Thailand
Thailand, where mosquitoes are a pest in every home, is facing a severe outbreak of dengue fever with 12 people dead so far this year, almost double the toll a year earlier, a health official said on Thursday.
Dengue has infected 7,200 people as of May 7, of whom 12 have died, up from seven deaths in the same period last year, Department of Disease Control chief Thawat Suntrajarn told Reuters.
“No province in Thailand is immune from dengue outbreaks because we have mosquitoes everywhere,” Thawat said, adding the outbreak usually peaks between late June and July when wet season rains are the heaviest.
Indonesia finds new polio cases - WHO
Indonesia has found two new polio cases but the government has taken the right steps to control its first outbreak of the crippling disease in a decade, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Thursday.
The confirmation of new cases brings the total infections in Indonesia’s densely populated West Java province to six, said Georg Petersen, the U.N. health agency’s representative in Indonesia.
Indonesia is the 16th previously polio-free country to be reinfected in the past two years.
UK doctors demand wider smoking ban
British doctors called on Thursday for a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places, saying government proposals for a partial ban could be unworkable.
The British Medical Association, which represents three quarters of the country’s doctors, said plans to outlaw smoking in workplaces, restaurants and in pubs serving food do not go far enough.
It wants Prime Minister Tony Blair’s re-elected government to follow the example of Ireland, Norway and other countries that have banned smoking in all restaurants and pubs.
Lonely students show weaker immunity: study
First-year college students who consider themselves to be very lonely on campus and cut off from their friends and family back home may receive less benefit from flu vaccinations than their peers, new study findings suggest.
“The loneliness and social isolation that university freshman experience in their first semester is powerful enough to have a very real impact on immune function, with potentially health relevant implications,” said study author Sarah D. Pressman, a doctoral candidate at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Melon University.
