Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The rate of pregnancy-related strokes has increased significantly in the past dozen years, according to a report published online in Stroke.

"The quickly growing rate of stroke before and after delivery indicates that clinicians who take care of pregnant women with pre-existing heart disease and hypertensive disorders should be particularly vigilant for signs and symptoms potentially indicative of stroke during the antenatal and postpartum periods," Dr Elena V. Kuklina from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said.

"Physicians should also consider using a low threshold for initiating a diagnostic investigation to exclude this complication," she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), located in the USA, is an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission is to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability

LIKE ANY epidemic, AIDS has been sweeping in its lethal reach. Its victims have included gay males, hemophiliacs, injection-drug abusers, heterosexual men, heterosexual women, and the babies of infected women.

BAREILLY, India The cry went up the moment the polio vaccination team was spotted Hide your children!Some families slammed doors on the two volunteers going house to house with polio drops in this teeming city's decrepit maze of lanes, saying that they feared the vaccine would sicken or sterilize their children, or simply that they were fed up with the long drive to eradicate polio. We have a lot of other problems, and you don't care about those, shouted one woman from behind a locked door. All you have is drops. My children get other diseases, and we don't get help.

WASHINGTON - About 8 million children worldwide are born every year with serious birth defects, many of them dying before age 5 in a toll largely hidden from view, the March of Dimes says. Most birth defects occur in poor countries, where babies can languish with problems easily fixed or even prevented in wealthier nations, according to research released Monday by the organization. But the researchers said some innovative programs in Iran and Chile show that effective preventions don't have to be costly.

This flu season there's additional reason to make your little ones wash their hands and keep their noses off their sleeves. A new study in the American Journal of Epidemiology suggests that 3- and 4-year-olds drive flu epidemics -- and that flu symptoms in kids under 5, more than any other age group, are correlated with flu-related deaths in the general population.

A dangerous strain of the flu virus that caused a worldwide pandemic in 1957 was sent to thousands of laboratories in the United States and around the world, triggering a frantic effort to destroy the samples to prevent an outbreak, health officials revealed yesterday.

The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) will convene the HELINA 2003, the fourth HELINA conference in South Africa, focused on communication and information technologies (ICT) in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The International Medical Informatics Association and the South African Health Informatics Association will organize the conference, in partnership with Harvard Medical International (HMI) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in the United States, the South African Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States. The conference will bring together expert clinicians and researchers in HIV/AIDS together with regional and international experts in health informatics in a unique forum. The goal of this meeting is to introduce all participants to the broad range of issues of mutual concern facing those who develop and manage HIV/AIDS interventions, and the potential for information and communication technologies to further these aims. Venue: Sandton Convention Centre, Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa. Contact details of Organizing Committee Dr Sedick Isaacs, SAHIA Chair Tel.:+27-21-404-2058 mailto:Seisaacs@pawc.wcape.gov.za Dr Charles Safran, IMIA Co-Chair Tel.: +1-617-614-2600 x123. mailto:csafran@harvard.edu