| Superbugs spreading among urban poor
NEW YORK - The rate of skin and soft tissue infections that were resistant to most antibiotics, acquired in Chicago communities, increased rapidly between 2000 and 2005, researchers report. Specifically, these infections, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and as the name implies, did not respond to methicillin, which is normally active against a wide spectrum of bacteria. These difficult to treat infections are often acquired in the hospital, usually by individuals with a weaken immune system, such as patients with cancer or HIV infection or the elderly. “Community-associated MRSA infections have emerged among patients without health care-associated risk factors," Dr. Bala Hota, of Rush University Medical Center, and colleagues, write in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
A 21st Century Health Care System
I want to thank the University of Iowa for having us here, and I want to give a special thanks to Amy and Lane Chicos for joining me today to tell their story. A few hours north of here, in the small town of Decorah, Amy and Lane run a small business that offers internet service to their community. They were the very first company to provide broadband access in their remote corner of northeastern Iowa, and every day, hundreds of people count on the services they provide to do their jobs and live their lives. .
Changes under way to modernise local health care systemÿ
The local Health Ministry, in working with its technical assistance team, has concluded that a Commissioning Model, which utilises a business oriented approach based on the Purchaser/Provider Split, should be part of the changes to modernise the health care delivery system in Barbados. According to Health Minister, Jerome Walcott, the concept of splitting refers to the creation of separate agencies to purchase and provide services, through Service Level Agreements and/or Contracts, establishing expected outputs, rather than managing in the traditional way. This approach, he said, has already been approved by Cabinet and will be introduced on an incremental basis. It builds on a number of initiatives that my Ministry has been using for quite sometime. For example, the Alternative Care of the Elderly Programme, in which we contract private nursing homes to provide care for elderly clients; the outsourcing of Substance Abuse Services to private facilities and the Special Benefit Service, which utilises private pharmacies to provide drugs for clients under the Barbados Drug Service Programme. The Minister made these remarks yesterday, while speaking at the Barbados Health Sector Programme Policy Review Forum, held at the Sherbourne Conference Centre, Two Mile Hill, St.
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