| 3M donates health care supplies for Ecuador trip
FOREST CITY - Nursing students at Riverland College in Austin, Minn., who will be studying abroad and doing mission work in Ecuador, will be armed with health care supplies donated by the 3M Distribution Center in Forest City.Seven first and second year nursing students will depart from Minneapolis on May 27 for a 15-day trip. They will spend one week working in the clinic and hospital in Quito before heading into villages located within the Rain Forest. .
Area hospitals mixed on infection report
Area hospitals had mixed scores on the latest state report on hospital-acquired infections.Somerset Hospital had a lower infection rate than other similar-sized hospitals, while Memorial Medical Center's rate was above average among the state's largest hospitals.Windber, Miners and Meyersdale medical centers' infection rates were close to the average for small hospitals.Overall, 2006 infection rates were much higher than in 2005 – up 60 percent – but that was largely attributed to expanded reporting categories and better infection tracking, said Joe Martin, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.Across the state, about 30,000 patients who were hospitalized in 2006 contracted infections during their hospital stays."Pennsylvania hospitals should be commended for their commitment to the reporting process and for their improved reports," said David Wilderman, acting council director.
US aims to grow ears, skin in 5 years
WASHINGTON: Teams of university scientists backed by US government funds hope to grow new skin, ears, muscles and other body tissue for troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US defense department said on Thursday.
The $250 million effort aims to address the Pentagon's unprecedented challenge of caring for troops returning from the war zones with multiple traumatic injuries.
"We've had just over 900 people, men, some women with amputations of some kind or another since the start of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Ward Casscells, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. Many have also suffered burns, spinal cord injuries and vision loss.
"Getting these people up to where they are functioning and reintegrated, employed, able to help their families and be fully participating members of society, this is our task," he said.
German couple on trial for murder of daughter who starved
Schwerin, Germany - A German couple went on trial Tuesday for the murder of their 5-year-old daughter, who died last year of starvation after months of neglect in her room in the family apartment. The death last November of Lea-Sophie in the northern city of Schwerin prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel to appeal to Germans to check up on how their neighbours were treating their children. The mother, 24, and father, 26, are accused of murder by omission and of abusing a person in care. The mother declined to testify, but a statement from the father, read to the court by his lawyer, said, "I failed as a father." He said he had hoped the situation would come right by doing nothing. Prosecutors say Lea-Sophie was unloved and already undernourished when the couple had a male baby in September 2007.
'I'm 47. Unlike most actresses I don't lie about my age'
Post-divorce from her fertility doctor husband, Kristin Scott Thomas has emerged a different woman. She's still a luminous beauty, of course, but now more open and independent. Here, the Paris-based actress talks about the pain of parting, being single and learning to please herself
Louise France
Sunday February 3, 2008
The Observer
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