China: Reports profile Caribbean chikungunya threat to Europe

Jamaica is stepping up mosquito-control efforts in the wake of its first case. The surge of chikungunya cases in the Caribbean region is making ripples in Europe, and the disease could become a bigger threat there if it gains a firmer foothold in Central and South America, according to reports published yesterday in Eurosurveillance. In other developments, Jamaica reported its first imported chikungunya case today, and a media outlet offered some new details on the first locally acquired cases in Florida, saying they involve a 41-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man. The cases were first revealed yesterday. French and Spanish cases The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) in its latest weekly communicable disease threat report said several European countries have reported travel-linked cases, and separate reports in Eurosurveillance detailed cases in two of them, France and Spain The French report describes 126 imported chikungunya cases detected in mainland France from May 2 through Jul 4, many in people who had traveled to the French Caribbean area. Between Nov 1, 2013, a month after the first cases in the Caribbean, and Jun 27, 475 cases were detected in France. In contrast, only 33 and 17 cases were reported in 2011 and 2012, respectively. The authors noted that 47 of the patients with lab-confirmed infections live in districts in which Aedes albopictus mosquitoes, one of the...

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The Shame of American Health Care

The workers' compensation medical treatment delivery system is problematic as it as delays and denials and epidemic in the program. Looking for a solution, hope beams bright in the implementation of a single-payer universal program. Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

Even as Americans struggle with the changes required by health care reform, an international survey released last week by the Commonwealth Fund, a research organization, shows why change is so necessary. The report found that by virtually all measures of cost, access to care and ease of dealing with insurance problems, Americans fared poorly compared with people in other advanced countries. The survey covered 20,000 adults in the United States and 10 other industrial nations — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain, all of which put in place universal or near-universal health coverage decades ago. The United States spends far more than any of these countries on a per capita basis and as a percent of the national economy. For that, it gets meager results. Some 37 percent of American adults went without recommended care, did not see a doctor when sick or failed to fill prescriptions in the past year because of costs, compared with 4 percent in Britain and 6 percent in Sweden. Nearly a quarter of American adults could not pay medical bills or had serious problems paying them compared with less than 13 percent in France and 7 percent or less in five other countries. Even Americans who were insured for the entire year were more likely than adults abroad to forgo care because of costs, an indication of how skimpy some insurance policies are. When Americans got sick, they had to wait longer than people in...

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Why the French are Fighting Over Work Hours

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.newyorker.com

It’s telling that in France, where several stores are fighting an order requiring them to close on Sundays, retail employees showed up at work last month wearing T-shirts that read, “YES WEEK END.” It was a play on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan, and a symbol of the fact that some in France—where shops have been barred from opening on Sundays, with some exceptions, since 1906—have lately been eyeing a more American approach to work. In September, a French tribunal de commerce said that two big home-improvement stores, Castorama and Leroy Merlin, would face daily fines of a hundred and twenty thousand euros per store (about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars) if they continue to operate on Sunday. The retailers have said they will open despite the fines, the result of a lawsuit. People in France like to work on home improvement on Sundays, which makes it one of the busiest days for do-it-yourself stores, accounting for between fifteen and twenty per cent of their sales.  Closing on Sunday could jeopardize the jobs of some twelve hundred employees, according to the Fédération des Magasins de Bricolage, which translates, roughly, as the Federation of Do-It-Yourself Stores. “I really don ’t understand,” said one customer, quoted in the Catholic daily La Croix. “If everyone has agreed to work, why can’t you open the store?” For an American coming from the world of 24/7...

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