A round-up of today's other stories in brief
Phone app allows tracking of shots
A NEW PHONE APP which allows parents to track their children's immunisations has been launched to coincide with European Immunisation Week. Developed by Irishhealth.com and Aptamil, the tracker gives reminders when vaccinations are due and news alerts about children's health. There are also text alerts and online support.
The app has been endorsed by the Minister for Health James Reilly who said it would simplify the process for parents.
Medical charity urges change in malaria drug
UP TO 200,000 DEATHS from severe malaria could be averted each year if malarial countries were to switch to a more expensive but more effective drug, the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said.
In a report on the mosquito-borne disease, MSF said data from recent trials in Africa had shown that the drug, called artesunate, was more effective and easier to use than quinine, a cheaper malaria medicine often used in poorer countries.
There are about 240 million malaria cases across the world every year and the disease kills more than 850,000 people annually, many of them children, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. Most malaria cases are in Africa.
MSF said about eight million simple malaria cases progress every year to severe malaria, where patients show clinical signs of organ damage which may involve the brain, lungs, kidneys or blood vessels.
“For decades, quinine has been used in severe malaria. But it can be both difficult to use and dangerous, so it’s time to bid it farewell,” said Veronique De Clerck, an MSF medical co-ordinator in Uganda.
“With artesunate, we now have a drug that saves more lives from severe malaria, and is safer, easier and more effective than quinine.”
MSF called on African governments, the WHO and international aid donors to back an immediate global switch to artesunate for severe malaria.
While artesunate is three times more expensive than quinine, MSF said the difference in cost of $31 million (€21 million) each year for a global switch would be “very little for the nearly 200,000 lives that . . . could be saved.”
Crying infants prone to behavioural issues later
INFANTS WHO HAVE problems with persistent crying, sleeping and/or feeding – known as regulatory problems – are far more likely to develop significant behavioural problems, reveals research published ahead of print in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.
About one in five infants shows symptoms of excessive crying, sleeping difficulties and/or feeding problems in their first year of life and this can lead to disruption for families and costs for health services.
Previous research has suggested these problems can have an adverse effect on behavioural or cognitive development later in childhood, but findings have been inconclusive.
Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland, the University of Warwick in the UK and the University of Bochum in Germany wanted to find out the nature and strength of any link between regulatory problems in early infancy and childhood behavioural problems.
They carried out an analysis of 22 studies from 1987 to 2006. Of these, 10 studies reported on the consequences of excessive crying, four on sleeping problems, three on feeding problems, and five on multiple regulatory problems.
The researchers found that infants with previous regulatory problems were more likely to have behavioural problems as children than infants without such problems.
The most likely outcomes for children who had had regulatory problems as infants were externalising problems and ADHD. The more types of problems an infant had (cumulative problems), the more likely this was to increase the risk of behavioural issues as a child.