At chicken plants, chemicals blamed for health ailments are poised to proliferate

When Jose Navarro landed a job as a federal poultry inspector in 2006, he moved his wife and newborn son to a rural town in Upstate New York near the processing plant, believing it was a steppingstone to a better life.

Five years later, Navarro was dead. The 37-year-old’s lungs had bled out.

His death triggered a federal investigation that raised questions about the health risks associated with a rise in the use of toxic, bacteria-killing chemicals in poultry plants. Agriculture Department health inspectors say processing plants are turning to the chemicals to remove contaminants that escape notice as processing line speeds have accelerated, in part to meet growing consumer demand for chicken and turkey.

The department is now poised to allow a further increase in line speeds, boosting the maximum by about 25 percent. This change is part of new regulations that officials say would make poultry production more efficient and reduce the number of government inspectors while increasing the number of private company inspectors.

(From The Washington Post)

newshour:

At the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in Bronx, NY a medical procedure cost $38k. That same procedure cost $637k at the Stanford Hospital in Stanford, CA.

A new report released by the federal government raises questions about how exactly hospitals determine the cost of treatment, after it revealed that facilities across the country are charging wildly different amounts for the same medical procedures.

nprglobalhealth:

U.S. MRSA Infections Decline By Fifty Percent

Skin infections with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, can be tough to treat.

They develop quickly, and after only a few days, the bacteria can take of hold tissues and even infect the blood. 

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that, in the U.S., serious MRSA infections in hospitals dropped 54 percent between 2005 and 2011:

This study showed that there were 30,800 fewer serious MRSA infections and over 9,000 fewer deaths among individuals hospitalized with MRSA in 2011 verses 2005.

MSRA is still one of the top causes of serious skin infections in the U.S. with more than 82,000 cases reported in 2010. 

In the photo, CDC microbiologist, Valerie Albrecht, holds up two plates of MRSA.

UNICEF: U.S. kids worse off than many of their Western counterparts

American children are on average worse off than children in Western Europe and barely better off than their counterparts in the Baltic states and the former Yugoslavia, according to a recent report from United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on the welfare of children in developed countries.

The report, which compares kids in 29 Western countries, measures well-being across five metrics: material well-being, health and safety, behaviors and risks, housing and environment, as well as education. It ranks the United States in the bottom third on all five measures of well-being and particularly low on education and poverty. The United States is joined at the bottom by “emerging” European economies, while the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands come out on top. The report notes that this latter group of countries tends to spend far more per capita on social welfare programs.

The countries with the best reported child well-being tend to invest in strong social safety nets. Norway, Iceland and Sweden sink nearly 7 percent of their GDP, according to an OECD report, into education. Countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which until the ‘90s had GDPs per capita of less than $5,000, have been able to put less money into such services. Though U.S. GDP per capita was more than $48,000 in 2012, that money is not spread evenly cross the unusually large U.S. population.

(From The Washington Post)

Infant mortality rates, by state: United States, 2010

Recent Declines in Infant Mortality in the United States, 2005–2011

Key findings

• Following a plateau from 2000 through 2005, the U.S. infant mortality rate declined 12% from 2005 through 2011. Declines for neonatal and postneonatal mortality were similar.
• From 2005 through 2011, infant mortality declined 16% for non-Hispanic black women and 12% for non-Hispanic white women.
• Infant mortality declined for four of the five leading causes of death during the 2005–2011 period.
• Infant mortality rates declined most rapidly among some, but not all, Southern states from 2005 through 2010. Despite these declines, states in the South still had among the highest rates in 2010. Rates were also high in 2010 in some states in the Midwest.

(From CDC)

Look How Quickly the U.S. Got Fat (1985-2010 Animated Map)

U.S. Health Costs vs. The World: Is It Still The Prices, and Are We Still Stupid?

Comparing health care prices in the U.S. with those in other developed countries is an exercise in sticker shock.

The cost of a hospital day in the U.S. was, on average, $4,287 in 2012. It was $853 in France, a nation often lauded for its excellent health system and patient outcomes but with a health system that’s financially strapped…

(From Healthpopuli.com)