South Asia is experiencing a health crisis because of increasing incidents of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. The region is also facing rising poverty as patients use their own money to pay for hospital expenses and other medical treatment, according to the World Bank’s statement on Wednesday.

The Bank reported that while the region’s economy is getting better and most people are living a longer life, poor people have had virtually no benefit from the rising incomes, healthier nutrition, improved conditions and access to efficient healthcare.

The report covered 8 countries mainly, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. According to the report, South Asians are likely to experience their first heart attack by the age of 53. That is, six years ahead than people elsewhere in the world.

Today, heart disease is the leading cause of death among South Asians 15 to 69 years old. The non-communicable disease accounts for about 55 percent of the total disease burden in the entire region. Infectious diseases like tuberculosis make up the remaining percentage, including issues of child and mother health and nutrition.

Michael Engelgau, senior public health specialist of World Bank and one of the authors of the report said that the unjust burden is particularly rough on poor people.

After thier first heart attack, the poor will face life-long illnesses and pay for their treatment with their own money or by putting their properties up for sale. Soon after, they find themselves trapped in poverty where they can’t work and get better.

The report mentioned a study made in India that was published last year. It found that some non-communicable diseases leave patients not capable of working for about 50 to 70 days.

The Vatican will hold an international conference in May regarding prevention of AIDS and care of those afflicted with it. The event will take place amid sustained confusion over its position pertaining to use of condoms as a way to avoid HIV transmission.

The Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers of Vatican also informed last Thursday that it was working on a set of guidelines for Catholic nurses, doctors and others who care for people with HIV and AIDS.

Pope Benedict XVI made headlines late last year when he mentioned in a book interview that someone who utilizes a condom to prevent transmission of HIV, such as a male prostitute, might be showing a first sign of a more moral sexuality since he is watching out for the welfare of another person.

The comments delivered an outbreak of confusion about whether the pope was validating the use of condoms, which contradicts the church doctrine against use of contraception. However, the Vatican firmly said he was not approving the use of condoms.

Undersecretary in the Vatican health office, Monsignor Jean-Marie Mpendawatu Mate Musivi informed reporters last Thursday that the position of the Vatican would be explained at the conference.

The head of UNAIDS and other significant AIDS researchers have been invited in the conference, which will be held on May 28.

Although UNAIDS said it was interested in attending, its executive director Michel Sidibi could not commit yet.

Mate Musivi pointed out that the position of the church on how to fight AIDS goes beyond the question of condoms and centers on prevention programs at the school, community and family levels. The church has been pointing out that abstinence and monogamous marriages are the best ways to avoid transmission of HIV.

Pollution in the Mongolian capital immensely exceeds Mongolian air quality standards and World Health Organization guidelines, according to a research carried out by the National University of Mongolia.

Ulan Bator, Mongolian’s capital, is a city where average winter temperatures linger at a penalizing 20 degrees Celsius. For families living in felt huts or gers in the city, the stoves that use black coal and wood to sustain fire is their only source of heat.

However, families are not aware why the city is covered in thick smog and how they have become part of the problem. Narantuya, a housewife, burns two bags of coal and half bag of wood per day to keep her family warm. She said her kids constantly get sick with colds and cough in winter.

Although Ulan Bator’s population consists of just one million people, it is one of the most polluted cities in the world. This elicits increasing concern over escalating health care costs and criticisms over a government scrambling to respond.

Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj admitted last month that the situation of the city had already reached a ‘disaster’ status. In fact, their pollution levels are among the highest in any urban area in the world, the World Bank said.

Tens of thousands of families living in the ger districts of Ulan Bator have no access to the central heating grid that warms expensive flats downtown.

Narantuya spends 2,500 tugrik a day to warm her felt home. She explained that coal keeps the fire going longer, thus it is cheaper and better to use.

International organizations such as the Asian Development Bank and development agency GTZ of Germany are teaming with local bodies and researchers to build energy-saving ger stoves and make them largely available. However, it is not a simple task.

Program officer for biodiversity conversation at the UN Development Programme, Onno van den Heuvel warns that the effect of the pollution may not be known for decades.

North Carolina researchers report new results from their investigation on black women and breast cancer in an effort to gather latest information on racial differences in breast cancer prognosis.

According to previous research, breast cancer in younger black women in the United States appears to be more of the aggressive basal-like subtype, which is a triple-negative cancer, that could help explain why black women have an increased chance to die from breast cancer in comparison to other women.

Data in the new study showed basal-like breast cancer is an equally aggressive disease in both African-American women and white women, co-author of the study Charles M. Perou said in a university news release. The study can be found at the recent issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

The researchers examined tissue from 518 black women and 631 white women who were enrolled in the Carolina Breast Cancer Study. The women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.

Perou is a professor of genetics and pathology at the Universe of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine. He also added based on the results of their study that Africam-American women had worse outcomes no matter what type of breast cancer they developed.

This suggests other factors such as differences in access to care and treatment and the more common subtypes of breast cancer like luminal A breast cancer could lead to the higher breast cancer mortality rate in African-American women.

On the other hand, based on study-co author Dr. Lisa Carey during the news release, the data imply that it may not be possible to identify a truly good prognosis of a breast cancer subtype in African-American women and that they need to find out why.

Adolescents require booster shots to protect them from meningococcal meningitis, a life-threatening infection of the tissue around the brain, while all children should have up to date whooping cough vaccines in line of the recent outbreaks. This is according to new recommendations given by pediatric experts.

The American Academy of Pediatrics releases updated guidelines for vaccinations every year. Its new issue released on Feb.1 in the journal Pediatrics, is very similar to their recommendations from last year.

However, even without major changes, pediatricians said the new issue is a good chance to remind parents to check that their children’s vaccines are up to date.

Immunizations have been the most efficient medical preventive measure ever developed. But right now, some people living in United States do not appreciate how protected  they have been because of vaccines, informed Dr. Michael Brady, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious disease.

He added that there are still children all over the world that are dying from polio and measles. The schedules of vaccination are designed to get vaccines to the child before they are at risk.

This year’s recommendations include that all children aged 6 months to 18 should get an annual flu shot. Children aged 6 months to 8 years who only had one dose of a previous flu vaccine need two doses of the 2010-2011 seasonal flu vaccine.

Children who didn’t get their pneumococcal vaccinations on time, and are age 5 or under, should get vaccinated with a newer formulation of the vaccine called Prevnar.

All of these and many other recommendations are listed on the AAP guidelines, which were approved by the American Academy of Family Physicians and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

A dishonored Air Force sergeant was sentenced up to eight years in prison for putting several sex partners at swinger parties at risk for HIV.

Tech Sgt. David Gutierrez was also ordered by the court martial judge on Wednesday that he be detestably discharged and put to the lowest recruitment rank while he serves out of his military imprisonment.

Earlier in the day, Lt. Col William Muldoon found him guilty on seven of eight counts of aggravated assault, including the violations he made when his commander ordered him to inform his partners about his HIV status and use condoms.

For having sex in front of others, Gutierrez was also convicted by the judge with indecent acts, as well as eight counts of adultery.

The airman, 43-years old, looked dejected when the judge handed down the sentence that will cost him his military medical benefits. Defense attorneys begged with the judge not to push through the punitive discharge that would remove his benefits.

Gutierrez said the possibility of a future without medical assistance scares him. He added that the cost of medicine is very expensive and he does not know if he can afford it.

The cost of HIV medication usually ranges from $1,700 to $1,800 per month, and patients infected with HIV spend $28,000 to $30,000 per year for their medical care, Dr. Donna Sweet testified.

She also added that without medical care, patients infected with the disease can die within 10 years. However, a 20-year-old person with HIV can live up to age 70 as long as they receive proper care and medical intervention.

But, Captain Sam Kidd said the sentence that the judge will hand down would “speak volumes” to the community. They hope that it will send the message that the military gives importance to the integrity of their service crews.

Almost 26 million Americans of all ages now have diabetes and 79 million people have what doctors call “prediabetes.” This is according to 2011 estimates released by the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday.

Prediabetes affects 35 percent of the adult population. According to CDC, it is a condition where blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but it is not high enough to be considered as diabetes. Prediabetes increases a person’s risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

The large majority of diabetes cases are type 2. This occurs when the cells in the body gradually lose sensitivity to insulin.

Experts believe that weight gain is one major reason why type-2 diabetes is continually rising among Americans. Dr. Christine Resta, an expert on diabetes said that the increasing rates of obesity are linked to the increasing rates of diabetes.

But, another expert said that changes in the way doctors diagnose the illness may have also played a role in the increasing cases of diabetes. This is because American Diabetes Association lowered the guidelines for diabetes diagnosis, said Dr. Jacob Warman, the chief of endocrinology at The Brooklyn Hospital Center in New York City.

The CDC agreed in their report that the shift to hemoglobin A1c testing could help explain for at least some of the increasing numbers. The test measures the sugar levels of a person for a period of two to three months.

The CDC’s National Diabetes Fact Sheet for 2011 also noted that about 27 percent of diabetic Americans, or about 7 million people, still do not know that they have the diseases.

Some hearing loss in children may be caused by a virus that mothers contract while they are still pregnant, a new study stated.

In children that have a certain degree of hearing loss, 9 percent of them had acquired cytomegalovirus or CMV during birth. This report is stated in a new study in the Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Cytomegalovirus is a common virus that causes harmless infection. However, people with weak immune system can get sick from it. Infections can be prevented if one does proper hand washing, especially if dealing with sick people, as well as toddlers who oftentimes carry the disease.

Mothers who had contracted the disease before pregnancy have relatively small risks to pass it on their children. However, mothers who have acquired the disease during pregnancy have higher chances according to the study; but, it is still quite improbable that their children will get the CMV-related hearing problem.

An average of 1,000 children experiences some severe kind of hearing loss. This means they can not hear usual conversations. This is according to the American Speech Language Hearing Association. In fact, they said that half of the cases are often hereditary.

Nearly 25% of women acquire CMV when they are pregnant, during the time it is very dangerous for the baby. CMV is also associated with some developmental issues in children such as mental retardation, as well as cerebral palsy. But, hearing loss is the most common problem.

The study examined 354 children who were tested for CMV at birth. The kids were around 4 years and older. All of them had hearing loss, but 34 of them had experienced CMV through their mothers.

Researchers do not know the reason why exposure to CMV in utero can cause hearing problems in children later, but the virus might be doing some kind of damage, said Karen Flower, who studies childhood infections at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.

Several drinking water wells in the highly populated Red River delta area of Vietnam contain dangerous levels of arsenic. This can lead to several health problems such as cancer, neurological problems and hypertension, researchers informed on Tuesday.

They also said in a paper published in a journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that 44 percent of the wells in the delta contain levels of manganese that go beyond World Health Organization guidelines.

Around 7 million people are at huge risk of chronic arsenic poisoning. In an email written to Reuters, main author Michael Berg explained that this is certainly disturbing since groundwater is the main source of drinking water in the entire delta.

The delta is home to 16.6 million people. It includes eight provinces and two municipalities which are the capital Hanoi and Hai Phong port. About eleven million residents have no access to the public water supply and only rely to other sources such as the tube wells.

The researchers collected samples from 512 private wells throughout the delta and examined them for presence of arsenic, manganese, as well as other toxins such as selenium and barium.

They found out that sixty-five percent of the groundwater wells in Red River delta contain levels of naturally-occurring toxic elements that exceed the safety standards from World Health Organization, Berg, a senior scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, wrote in the journal.

He also informed that the most health threatening are arsenic and manganese. Arsenic is above WHO guidelines at 27 percent of the wells and manganese at 44 percent.

Berg and his colleagues alleged that the extensive contamination is owed to a long history of groundwater exploitation around the delta.

People living in affluent nations with “free-market” economies are more prone to become obese, according to a study made in Oxford University. Study showed money concerns and financial insecurity are the reasons why some countries have increased rates in obesity.

The study was made under the subject matter, Economic and Human Biology. It sought to compare obesity in 11 wealthy countries from year 1994 to 2004.

The researchers particularly wanted to find out why most of the people living in UK and US countries weigh more than the residents of Norway and Sweden.

Based on the results of the study, the researchers said that obesity had certain social causes. The Oxford researchers thought that stress might be a factor that could lead people to overeat. This concept is based on the research based on animal behavior that showed how animals increase their food consumption when faced with uncertainty.

Researchers used 96 national surveys to collect and analyze data on obesity levels. The survey was carried out in a number of different countries for over 10 years.

They included the “free-market” countries such as US, UK, Australia and Canada, and compared them against countries that offer better social protection and economic security such as Finland, France, Italy, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Spain.

The study found out that more open market countries appear to have high levels of obesity and higher rates of obesity growth. The results showed that there is more than one-third obesity on average seen on affluent countries.

Professor Avner Offer, the lead study author from Oxford University said that the economic benefits of flexible and open markets are counteracted by its negative effects to personal and public health, which in turn, are often neglected.