News from the cancer side, February 6

February 4 was World Cancer Day

Every year, the 4th of February is designated as World Cancer Day. It is the start of the year-long campaign wherein UICC works will parents, educators, and decision makers to to help children have a healthy and active childhood. On this day, the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) launched “I love my healthy active childhood”, the second full-year theme in our “Today’s children, tomorrow’s world” cancer prevention campaign.

The World Health Organization (WHO) “joins with the sponsoring International Union Against Cancer to promote ways to ease the global burden of cancer. Preventing cancer and raising quality of life for cancer patients are recurring themes.”

News from the patient side

Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalised with pancreatic cancer
US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery today to remove a tumor in her pancreas. The pancreatic cancer has been diagnosed in its early stages during an annual check up last month. A CT scan detected the tumor in the center of the pancreas. The 75-year old Ginsburg was treated for colon cancer in 1999.

News from the healthcare side

Obama Signs Children’s Health Insurance Bill
US President Barack Obama signed the Children’s Health Insurance Bill which is an extension of State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The bill entitles all children, citizens and legal immigrants alike to free health care, including dental care as well as equal coverage for mental and physical illnesses. Similar bills have been previously vetoed by the former US administration on the grounds of them being too close to “socialized medicine.”

News from the clinical researchers

Burzynski Research Institute partners with Premier Research to manage phase III clinical study of children with newly-diagnosed diffuse intrinsic brainstem glioma
The Burzynski Research Institute, Inc. (BRI) teams up with the global CRO Premier Research “to initiate and manage a pivotal Phase III clinical trial of combination antineoplastons therapy (ANP) plus radiation therapy in patients with newly-diagnosed, diffuse, intrinsic brainstem glioma.” The US FDA has already given the go signal for the conduct of the trila under the FDA’s Special Protocol Assessment (SPA) procedure.

News from the health agencies

E-prescribing – a cost saving alternative to paper prescriptions
In this Healthcare 411 podcast of January 28, 2009, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) tells us about the benefits of e-prescribing as more and more doctors “are moving away from writing out paper prescriptions and turning to electronic prescribing.“