black…MYstory

Africa may hold the hope for a vaccine to combat HIV/AIDS and this hope may lie with the Ugandan people.

Researchers there are saying that they may have encountered some Ugandans who actually show a resistance to HIV.

Though the research is still in its early stages, here’s what they are seeing:

“They have special white blood cells that can only be produced when the virus attacks the body. However, even with the most sophisticated tests, HIV could not be found in these individuals, implying that the virus had tried to infect them but the immune system kicked it out.

…

At the AIDS Information Centre in Kampala, the UVRI scientists are studying 70 discordant couples to see if some of them are indeed resistant to HIV. These are couples that have had unprotected sex for more than a year, one partner has had HIV for long while the other has not become infected.”

Again, this is all too early to tell.  However, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this research leads to a discovery of, at last, an HIV vaccine.

Popularity: 52% [?]

As I see here, after watching some of the coverage on Hurricane Gustav, I worry for the people who, once again, had to pack up their lives or risk death and abandonment at the hands of their government.  However, I also can’t help but remember something that I was always told growing up — “God don’t like ugly.”

I find it interesting, to say the least, that, on the day that the party behind the horrible response to Hurricane Katrina is to begin their convention, our attention is turned back to New Orleans, Louisiana.  We just commemorated 3 years since some roughly 1700 people in that city died from a combination of the immediate impact of Hurricane Katrina, subsequent flooding and sheer governmental neglect.

So, today, I see that FEMA, the agency that helped mismanage the response to Katrina, is now putting out press releases and talking points, saying everything from people remaining in the city will not be helped to there is a possibility that the levees may be breached.

Yes, if you don’t already know, the same levees that broke 3 years ago are still at risk for a breach.

So, as the Republicans convene in Minnesota, the irony of this day is not lost on me.  George Bush and Dick Cheney have already stated that they will not be attending because of Gustav, a stark contrast to Bush’s not cutting his vacation short as people were dying in the streets 3 years ago.  Now, there is talk that even the nominee himself, John McCain, may skip the convention, due to concerns of how a celebratory gathering might look in contrast to the potential devastation caused by Gustav.  However, McCain is planning on staging some photo ops in Louisiana, a move that could backfire should the levees fail.

Nonetheless, we shall see if the lessons of three years ago have been learned, in both the governmental and political response to such a disaster.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Last month, I posted a story about Esmin Green, a woman who died in a hospital waiting room on June 19th of this year after being left there unattended for nearly 24 hours. She had come to King County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York due to a psychiatric emergency.  Video cameras show that she was ignored by hospital staff for nearly a full day before she was discovered collapsed on the floor. By the time someone had checked on her, she was already dead.

Now, in an eerily similar set of circumstance, we know  a North Carolina man previously suffered the same fate. This past April, 50-year-old Steven Sabock was taken to Cherry Hospital, about 50 miles Southeast of Raleigh.  Sabock had a history of mental issues.

For 22 hours, nurses left Sabock unattended.  He was not fed or taken to a restroom in all of that time.

He was allowed to sit there through four shifts of nurses without anyone checking on him, despite the fact that, just a few feet away, hospital staff watched TV and played cards.  Sabock apparently died after choking on medication.

In the wake of this incident, Cherry Hospital is was put under investigation and the hospital has until August 23rd to adequately detail what reforms have been made or risk losing federal funding.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Better late than never, I guess.

More than 40 years after it finally began allowing black doctors into its membership, the American Medical Association (AMA) has issued a formal apology for its past racism and discrimination against black doctors.

This comes on the heels of the AMA seeking renewed relevance in medical circles.  One of its efforts is to reduce racial disparities in healthcare.  There is evidence to suggest that black patients tend to have better outcomes with black doctors.  However, currently, only 3% of the nation’s doctors and medical students are black.

Historically, the AMA may have had much to do with discouraging black participation in the field of medicine.  For more than a century, they denied membership to black doctors and, because they were not members of a recognized local medical body, many of these doctors were denied work at hospitals.

Today, roughly 2% of the AMA’s membership is black.

So while it’s nice that they chose this time to apologize, there is much they need to do to change their perception as a body that is open to black membership.

Popularity: 19% [?]

To those that knew Esmin Green, she was a devoted church member and an immigrant who, while many miles away from her children in Jamaica, worked to provide for them.

However, at the end of her life, she had been dealing with with pain of losing her job and her apartment.

Green had had a history of emotional problems and on June 18, 2008, she had another episode that landed her in King County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.  Green was admitted involutarily for “agitation and psychosis.”

This was a time when she needed care and compassion.  Esmin Green got neither and by the morning of June 19, she died on the floor of the psychiatric emergency department after nearly 24 hours without care.

It not as if no one noticed her on the floor.  Surveillance cameras captured her distress.  She collapsed to the floor aroud 5:30am on June 19.  Those cameras also show that she stopped moving a little over a half-hour later, while workers ignored her.  At 6:35, a worker came by and nudged Green with her foot and three minutes later, help was summoned.  However, it was too late.  Green had died.

To add insult to injury, her patient records were falsified to cover up the staff’s neglect.  The records were made to appear that Green had been conscious, saying that she went to the bathroom at 6am and that, at 6:20, she was observed ’sitting quietly in waiting room’.

King County Hospital, already the subject of one federal investigation and another federal lawsuit can now add this to its list of woes.

In response to this incident, seven staff members were either fired or suspended.  They included “the chief of psychiatry, chief of security, a doctor, two nurses and two security guards.”

Of course, as with incidents like this, the hospital has pledged to make reforms.  Sadly, it takes shocking deaths like this for some hospitals to take patient care seriously, regardless of the populations they are serving.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Time for real talk.

As the debate on whether or not abstinence-only education works wears on (here’s a hint — it doesn’t), we allow too many of our teenagers, particularly teen girls, to be put at risk.

The Center for Disease Control has issued a report and the results are alarming — as many as 1 in 4 teenage girls in the U.S. have a sexually-transmitted disease.

Even more alarming is how this breaks down along racial lines — as many as 48% of African American teenage girls vs. as many as 20% of white teenage girls have an STD.

I think, sometimes, we don’t think about what having an STD can really mean so, I found this part of the article particularly illuminating:

HPV and chlamydia are the most common STDs found among teenage girls, (Dr. Sara) Forhan said. “Almost one in five overall had a strain of HPV associated with cervical cancer or genital warts,” she said.

“We need to be screening adolescent girls who are sexually active and providing them with HPV vaccine,” (Dr. Elizabeth) Alderman said. “The recommendations are to screen sexually active girls, but many girls don’t disclose to their health-care provider that they are sexually active, even when asked,” she said.

As for chlamydia, 4 percent of teenaged girls had this STD, Forhan said. “The majority of chlamydia infections do not have symptoms. If left untreated, it can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, which leaves these young women at risk for atopic pregnancy, chronic pelvic pain or infertility,” she said.

In addition, the study found that 2.9 percent of young women had trichomoniasis, and 2 percent were infected with genital herpes, Forhan said.

So, this is no small matter. Let’s get real with our kids because so much of their futures depend on it.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Growing up, I knew, as a black person, I was going to have to fight harder for what I wanted. However, I never considered that it would include health care.

Strangely enough, I hadn’t given too much thought to racial disparities in medical treatment until very recently in life. Honestly, I don’t know why. If racial disparities can exist in other areas of life, why not health care delivery?

Nonetheless, I was floored to read the results of a recent study on cancer treatment. It states that many black cancer patients are not receiving health care any better than they had 10 years prior:

The researchers assessed the type of treatment given to more than 143,000 Americans over age 65 for lung, breast, colon, rectal and prostate cancer from 1992 to 2002 under the Medicare government health insurance program.

Black patients were consistently less likely than whites to receive the recommended types of treatment, the study found, and the problem was just as bad in 2002 as in 1992.

The solution? Fight for everything. Sadly, though I think that the last thing a sick person should have to do is fight for the same health care that other people get by virtue of skin color, this is just what seems necessary. Better yet, those of us who are still healthy need to stand up for those who are not because, without a doubt, some of us will be in those same shoes one day.

Popularity: 18% [?]

This is something that should cause us, as black people, to seriously consider issues of health.

A mutation BCRA1 gene is known to increase the likelihood of breast cancer in women. A study was recently done that look at the prevalence of this mutation and the results were enough to raise some eyebrows. The study looked at women of different ethnicities with breast cancer. What it was looking for was the percentage of women with breast cancer who also had this mutation. In Hispanic women, 3.5 percent of patients had this mutation. 8.3 percent of Ashkenazi Jewish women had this mutation. 2.2 percent of non-Hispanic white women and 0.5 percent of Asian-American women also had this mutation.

Overall, black women, right now, only comprise 1.3 percent of cancer patients with this mutation. However, among those diagnosed before age 35, 16.7 percent of those studied had the mutation. This clearly shows that there is real risk, of which black folks should be concerned.

This study also highlights the reality of medical racism. Consider the words of the following two researchers:

“Traditionally, studies have focused on white women,” said Esther John, a research scientist at the cancer center and lead author of the study. “There is a great need to study racial minorities in the United States.”

Although testing for the BRCA1 mutation has been available for a decade, it has not been applied much to minority populations, said Dr. Olufunmilayo Olopade, professor of medicine and human genetics at the University of Chicago.

“A lot of young women die of breast cancer because they’re not even aware that lump in their breast could be cancer,” said Olopade, who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association. “If you know you’re at high risk, you’ll get that evaluated.”

Honestly, the first woman I ever knew with breast cancer was a white woman who I considered the salt of the earth. So, at least viscerally, I know the toll this disease can take on women and their families (Note: men can develop breast cancer, too, and we need to be diligent, as well). However, it is clear that the research of this disease needs to be better funded and more comprehensive to be more inclusive of patients of all colors.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Just in time for Christmas, George Bush again proves that, while wasting hundreds of billions in Iraq, he thinks that spending money helping kids at home is too expensive:

The Bush administration yesterday eliminated about $700 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements to schools, sidestepping an attempt by Congress to block such a move.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expected to save the federal government $3.6 billion over five years, transferring those costs to school districts.

Lawmakers this week passed legislation to place a six-month moratorium on Medicaid implementing the rule change, but President Bush had not signed the bill.

A wide range of medical services, such as speech and physical therapy, are furnished to students in schools. Medicaid, the government’s health insurance program for the poor, will continue to pay for those services for low-income children.
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But the new rule will restrict when schools can bill the federal government for clerical work associated with providing health care. For example, schools can no longer expect Medicaid reimbursement for planning student immunizations. Schools also will not get paid for transporting students getting speech or physical therapy to school or back home.

So, while Republicans bemoan the fake “war on Christmas” and claim that people are forgetting the meaning of the holiday, here’s a prime example of what the holiday is not about and smacks of the very antithesis of what Jesus was about.

So much for good will toward men or, in this case, children.

Popularity: 28% [?]

One thing that the Bush era brought us was a big push for government-funded abstinence-only education. Ironically enough, what we also saw was a rise in teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases. You see, some kids, not wanting to be caught buying condoms (or just not knowing how to use them properly), still wanted to have sex, resulting in pregnancy. Even worse, some kids were left to believe that oral and anal sex were real sex so, they engaged in these activities and contracted venereal diseases.

Now that the numbers are more clear on this, a lot of states are waking up and either opting out of the funding or saying they’ll take the money but teach abstinence as a part a more comprehensive sex education program. They see the numbers and it’s clear — teaching abstinence only and kids abstaining do not appear to go hand-in-hand.

But, guess what — when kids are given more information, not less, they tend to delay engaging in sexual intercourse. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which tracked these statistics, helped kids under the age of 15 make much better decisions regarding sex:

Earlier last month, a study lead by Douglas Kirby of the ETR Associates revealed that two thirds of 48 comprehensive sex education programs have had a good impact on teenagers. They delayed the initiation of sex, reduced its frequency and the number of sexual partners.

“Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect,” said the report.

On the other hand, other studies made in November as well, have said that these abstinence programs have little effect on the teenage sexual behavior, because, as the report discovered, 47 percent of high school students have engaged in sex at least once and 63 percent have said that they have sex during the spring semester of their senior year.

This time, researchers found that teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15 and girls who had formal sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before the age 15. The researchers also discovered that sex education reduced by 91 percent the risk that African-American females in school would have sex before age 15.

Like I tell people when asked about my opinions on sexual education — I plan on telling my son everything I can in an age-appropriate way. I plan on telling him what my mother told me –my preference is that he abstain but, if he gives in to temptation, I want him to make sure that he uses protection because pregnancy and disease are real possibilities. I plan on doing so because I love my son so much that I am willing to be real with him on the issue of sex.

Popularity: 39% [?]