The number of dengue fever cases in Guyana is rising, prompting Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony to Tuesday urge people who have a fever to go to a doctor as a precaution against the potentially deadly disease. “If you have a fever, we are encouraging people to come to one of our facilities so that ...

“The funds raised will enable us to continue our vital work in mental health throughout Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique”

View the full post Friends of the Mentally Ill successful Annual Easter Tea on NOW Grenada.

Grenada’s landmark diet survey will be conducted anonymously from April into July 2024, to better understand and evaluate food consumption habits and patterns and methods of food preparation

View the full post Grenada’s landmark diet survey  on NOW Grenada.

Permanent Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Health and Wellness Wayne Marshall said the programme which commenced in February saw a vehicle visiting communities providing healthcare services, including immunisation and health checks. The aim of the initiative, he said, is to ensure greater access to these services.

“So this intervention was very successful . . . and in March alone, there have been 14 outreach clinics [in] that mobile service and 383 Barbadians receiving these services.

“So, generally, I think that having started only in February and what we have recorded for March, this has been a phenomenal success – and I might add that it is nurse-driven. So I want to congratulate our nurses who have started this project,” Marshall told the congregation at Calvary Moravian Church, Roebuck Street, St Michae​​l on Sunday during a service to mark the launch of the 22nd Vaccination Week in the Americas.

The PS said polyclinics are also open on Saturdays — from February to May — to accommodate people who need to get their children immunised but “cannot afford to lose a day’s pay” to do so.

He said this was done as there has been an “alarming” decline in the immunisation rate in the country.

“Before COVID-19 of 2020, Barbados was one of the most outstanding among regional countries achieving and sustaining vaccination rates of more than 90 per cent on an annual basis. Subsequently, however, we have witnessed a measurable decline in our vaccination rates which are now estimated at only 85 per cent in 2023,” Marshall reported. “This decline is alarming because we recognise that vaccinations really extend lives and improve lives.”

Given that development, a study was conducted in collaboration with the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Task Force on Global Health to understand and identify reasons for the decline in immunisation rates, he explained.

The findings, Marshall said, revealed an estimated 10 per cent defaulting rate of vaccination among children under five years of age – children who received one of the first three vaccines but did not return for the first and second booster shots.

The health ministry official said among the reasons for this were that people forgot their appointments, some were unaware when the vaccines were due, others could not attend the clinic as they could not afford to lose a day’s work, and there were others who questioned vaccine safety.

“So these results propelled an all-out response and campaign by the Ministry of Health and Wellness to address the reasons and therefore reverse the decline being experienced, hence the initiatives,” Marshall said, though stressing that the ministry is not resting on its laurels.

“We want to continue and focus on capturing defaulters and reversing the downward trend in vaccination coverage by also implementing a number of other community outreach activities. We at the ministry take vaccination very seriously and the decline has been of great concern to us because we know that the future of our citizens and the prosperity of the nation hinges primarily on our ability to protect our people, and that is something that we take seriously, as I said, and that is something that we will continue to do in this regard.”

The theme for this year’s Vaccination Week in the Americans is Engage Now to Protect Your Future.

“Our ministry’s goal is to create awareness about vaccines to people of all ages and, in doing so, increase vaccine acceptance and uptake. Once vaccinated, lives continue without interruption of vaccine-preventive diseases, leading to healthy, longer and more productive lives,” said Marshall.

This year, he disclosed, there will be activities geared towards following goals, narrowing and eventually closing the existing immunisation gap, reaching and maintaining the targeted 95 per cent of vaccine coverage within the under-five population, maintaining vaccines and immunisations as priorities on the political agenda, and reassuring the population of the effectiveness, safety and benefits of vaccines and immunisations.

The post Mobile clinic making headway, reports senior health official appeared first on Barbados Today.

A chemotherapy alternative called immunotherapy is showing promise in treating cancer — and a new artificial intelligence tool could help ensure that patients have the best possible experience.

Immunotherapy, first approved in 2011, uses the cancer patient’s own immune system to target and fight cancer. 

While it doesn’t work for everyone, for the 15% to 20% who do see results, it can be life-saving.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

Like any medication, immunotherapy has the potential for adverse side effects — which can be severe for some. 

Studies show that some 10% to 15% of patients develop "significant toxicities."

Headquartered in Chicago, GE HealthCare — working in tandem with Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in Nashville, Tennessee — has created an AI model that's designed to help remove some of the uncertainties surrounding immunotherapy.

Over the five years it’s been in development, the AI model was trained on thousands of patients’ electronic health records (EHRs) to recognize patterns in how they responded to immunotherapy, focusing on safety and effectiveness.

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"The model predicts which patients are likely to derive the benefit from immunotherapy versus those patients who may not," said Jan Wolber, global digital product leader at GE HealthCare’s pharmaceutical diagnostics segment, in an interview with Fox News Digital.

"It also predicts which patients have a likelihood of developing one or more significant toxicities."

When pulling data from the patient’s health record, the model looks at demographic information, preexisting diagnoses, lifestyle habits (such as smoking), medication history and more.

"All of these data are already being collected by the patient’s oncologist, or they’re filling out a form in the waiting room ahead of time," said Travis Osterman, a medical oncologist and associate chief medical information officer at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in an interview with Fox News Digital.

(Osterman is working with Wolber on the development of the AI model.)

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"We're not asking for additional blood samples or complex imaging. These are all data points that we're already collecting — vital signs, diagnoses, lab values, those sorts of things."

In a study, the AI model showed 70% to 80% accuracy in predicting patients’ responses to immunotherapies, according to an article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology Clinical Cancer Informatics.

"While the models are not perfect, this is actually a very good result," Wolber said. "We can implement those models with very little additional effort because there are no additional measurements required in the clinic."

This type of technology is "a natural progression of what we've been doing in medicine for a very long time," Osterman said.

"The only difference is, instead of surveying patients, we're taking the entirety of the medical record and looking for risk factors that contribute to an outcome," he said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

With immunotherapy, there is generally a lower response rate than with chemotherapy, Osterman noted — but some patients have "incredible responses" and ultimately become cancer-free.

"I would be horrified to know that one of my patients that I didn't give immunotherapy to could have been one of the tremendous responders," he told Fox News Digital. 

Conversely, Osterman noted that in rare cases, immunotherapy can have some serious side effects.

"I would say about half of patients don't have any side effects, but for those who do, some of them are really life-altering," he said. 

"We don't want to miss anyone, but we also don't want to harm anyone."

At the core of the AI project, Osterman said, is the ability to "put all the information into the exam room," so the oncologist can counsel the patient about the risks and benefits of this particular therapy and make the best, most informed decision about their care. 

Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, was not involved in the AI model’s development but commented on its potential.

"AI models are emerging that are helping to manage responses to cancer treatments," he told Fox News Digital. 

"These can allow for more treatment options and be more predictive of outcome."

AI models like this one are an example of "the essential future of personalized medicine," Siegel said, "where each patient is approached differently and their cancer is analyzed and treated with precision using genetic and protein analysis."

As long as physicians and scientists remain in charge — "not a computer or robot" — Siegel said that "there is no downside."

The AI model does carry some degree of limitations, the experts acknowledged.

"The models obviously do not return 100% accuracy," Wolber told Fox News Digital. "So there are some so-called false positives or false negatives." 

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The tool is not a "black box" that will provide a surefire answer, he noted. Rather, it's a tool that provides data points to the clinician and informs them as they make patient management decisions.

Osterman pointed out that the AI model uses a "relatively small dataset."

"We would love to be able to refine our predictions by learning on bigger data sets," he said.

The team is currently looking for partnerships that will enable them to test the AI model in new settings and achieve even higher accuracy in its predictions. 

Another challenge, Osterman said, is the need to integrate these AI recommendations into the workflow.

"This is pretty new for us as a health care community, and I think we're all going to be wrestling with that question," he said. 

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Looking ahead, once the AI model has achieved the necessary regulatory approvals, GE HealthCare plans to make the technology available for widespread use by clinicians — perhaps even expanding to other care areas, such as neurology or cardiology.

There is also the potential to incorporate it into drug development.

"One of the things that drug makers struggle with is that some of the agents that may be really useful for some patients could be really toxic for others," Osterman said.

"If they were able to pick which patients could go into a trial and exclude patients with the highest risk of toxicity, that could mean the difference between that drug being made available or not."

He added, "If this means that we're able to help tailor that precision risk to patients, I'm in favor of that."

Ultimately, Osterman said, "it's a really exciting time to be in medicine … I think we're going to look back and regard this as the golden age of AI recommendations. I think they're probably here to stay."

For more Health articles, visit www.foxnews/health.

An Air Europa passenger jet — en route from Lima, Peru to Madrid, Spain — made an emergency landing at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) on Monday afternoon because one of the passengers fell ill, officials confirmed. “The aircraft declared a medical emergency on board and as such, an emergency landing was instituted. The airport’s ...

Santo Domingo.- The Dr. Ney Arias Lora Traumatological University Teaching Hospital and the Dominican Medical College (CMD) have filed an Appeal for Constitutional Review against Sentence SCJ-TS-24-0126, issued by the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, regarding a case dating back to 2016.

The appeal aims to review the sentence issued by the high court, as the health center was not allowed to present expert evidence, review management protocols, or examine international treatment guidelines for clinical cases, thus impeding its right to defend itself.

In a statement, the health center expressed confidence that the Constitutional Court judges will uphold fundamental rights and ensure fair application of the law for all parties, maintaining the rule of law in the Dominican Republic.

The sentence from the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice condemns the health center to pay 10 million pesos for the amputation of a patient’s leg, a procedure conducted in 2018 following an admission in 2016.

Dr. Julio Landrón, the hospital’s general director, noted that upon assuming office in August 2020, he inherited several legal challenges stemming from past administrations, including the case of Félix Julián Encarnación. Encarnación was admitted to the hospital in January 2016 following a traffic accident and underwent surgery again in November 2017 for another accident, resulting in the amputation of his leg.

Despite ongoing legal proceedings, Landrón expressed surprise at the timing of the sentence’s issuance, emphasizing the state of the health center inherited from the previous administration. He emphasized the hospital’s commitment to transparency and accountability in addressing legal challenges inherited from past administrations.

View the full post Caribbean Family Planning Affiliation announces new Board of Directors on NOW Grenada.

Barbados has a low immunisation rate making thousands of residents susceptible to many vaccine-preventable diseases, says senior health sister Hazel Forde.

She said this was a major concern, especially in the wake of the island hosting the International Cricket Council Men’s T20 World Cup in June, which is expected to attract more than 20 000 visitors to the island.

She was speaking to Barbados TODAY on Saturday during a health fair and exhibition organised by the Ministry of Health, held at Massy Supermarket in Warrens.

“Herd immunity means that enough people are vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated and the vulnerable — the ones that could not be vaccinated for one reason or another, either because of their age or because of their immune system. For that to occur, you need 95 per cent coverage for most diseases. And based on our current coverage, we are in the high 80s.

“So, we are facing challenges with low immunisation coverage, which means that we are susceptible to vaccine-preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough, things that we thought were gone a long time ago; and they are re-emerging in our tourism source markets — the United States, Canada and Europe. We have the World Cup coming up and we are going to have a lot more tourists, so there is increased risk,” she said, adding that the Ministry of Health was putting measures in place, such as the health fair, to help stave off those vaccine preventable diseases.

At the health fair, interested people also got the opportunity to get their blood sugar and pressure taken and blood work done to test cholesterol levels and kidney and liver health. (Photo by Sheria Brathwaite)

Forde explained that since the advent of COVID-19 there was a surge in the anti-vaccination movement and this was the main reason the island’s immunisation rate was low.

“During COVID-19, we did have a lot of anti-vaccine sentiment and that has transferred from the COVID-19 vaccine to vaccines in general and the childhood vaccines. The anti vaxxers are much more prominent.

They are very vocal, and people, before looking into all the facts, are hooking on to their words. Plus, there’s a lot of distrust as well for health care, so that has contributed to the low coverage.”

At the health fair, there were several adult vaccines on offer such as hepatitis B and the flu shot. All of the children’s vaccines were also available such as measles, mumps and rubella, tetanus and polio.

Interested people also got the opportunity to get their blood sugar and pressure taken and blood work done to test cholesterol levels and kidney and liver health.

There was also a sexual education and reproductive system booth, where men and women got the opportunity to learn more about their reproductive organs and how to practise safe sex. (SZB)

The post Low immunisation rate a major concern, senior health sister says appeared first on Barbados Today.

The Vector Control Unit will focus on the parish of Christ Church when it carries out its fogging exercise this week.

The districts of Maxwell Hill Road, Cane Vale Road, Maxwell Terrace, Maxwell Gardens, Mahogany Gardens, Moravian Gardens, Fair Holmes Gardens, Hythe Gardens, and Ashby Avenue will be fogged on Monday, April 22.

The next day, Tuesday, April 23, the team will spray Graeme Hall Terrace, Graeme Hall Park Road, and Goodwood Drive.

On Wednesday, April 24, St Lawrence Gap, Paradise Village Road, Bath Village Road, Dover Avenues, Dover Gardens, Maxwell Coast Road, Oistins, and surrounding areas will be targeted.

The fogging team will visit Scarborough, Pegwell Road, Church Hill Main Road, Church Road, Evergreen Road, and Windy Ridge on Thursday, April 25.

The fogging exercise for the week will conclude on Friday, April 26, in Windy Ridge, Thornbury Hill, and neighbouring districts.

Fogging takes place from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. daily. Householders are reminded to open their windows and doors to allow the spray to enter. Children should not be allowed to play in the spray.

Members of the public are advised that the completion of scheduled fogging activities may be affected by events beyond the Unit’s control. In such circumstances, the Unit will return to communities affected in the soonest possible time.

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