Indian scientists design morphine replacement for pain therapy
India – Indo-Asian News Service
Indian scientists have designed a potential morphine replacement, sans the side effects of addiction, but loaded with pain-killing power. They have applied for a patent and are now studying other properties, including effects in the nervous system.
Transplant first: Organ donation from UK newborn
UK – BBC News
Doctors have performed the first organ transplants from a newborn in the UK.
Where the terminally ill die without palliative care
Croatia – Welfare Society Territory
For the terminally ill in Croatia, there is no public healthcare. TheCroatian Association for Palliative Medicine is calling for a drastic sea change. The Balkan country is the only one in the EU that does not provide palliative care and specific drugs for patients suffering from rare and terminal diseases.
Reforms needed to improve end-of-life care
Australia – Nursing Careers Allied Health
A Grattan Institute perspective published in the Medical Journal of Australia, based on its earlier Dying Well report, states that dying has become highly institutionalised in Australia, with 54 per cent of people dying in hospitals and 32 per cent in aged care.
Non-communicable diseases prematurely take 16 million lives annually, WHO urges more action
WHO
Urgent government action is needed to meet global targets to reduce the burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and prevent the annual toll of 16 million people dying prematurely – before the age of 70 – from heart and lung diseases, stroke, cancer and diabetes, according to a new WHO report.
Mali – Aljazeera
Mali’s government and the United Nations have declared the West African nation free of Ebola following a 42 day period without a new case of the deadly virus.
MSF slams expensive vaccines, urges GSK and Pfizer to cut prices
Reuters
In a report on vaccine prices ahead of an international donor conference in Berlin at the end of January, MSF slammed Big Pharma companies and said the cost of vaccinating a child in the world’s poorest countries was now 68 times higher than in 2001.
Portraits of fatally ill newborns help heal parents’ heartbreak
US – Today
Cheryl Haggard started ‘Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep’, a company that takes portrait photographs of newborn babies not expected to survive, after losing her own son, Maddox, to a rare genetic condition called myotubular myopathy that left him unable to breathe unassisted.
Complexities of Choosing an End Game for Dementia
US – The New York Times
VSED, short for “voluntarily stopping eating and drinking,” is not unheard-of as an end-of-life strategy, typically used by older adults who hope to hasten their decline from terminal conditions. But now ethicists, lawyers and older adults themselves have begun a quiet debate about whether people who develop dementia can use VSED to end their lives by including such instructions in an advance directive.
Medical student volunteers at Hospice
ehospice South Africa
It was only when his granny passed away from cancer in October last year that second year medical student, Jason Vermaak from Verwoerdpark, decided that he wanted to learn more about palliative care and the services a hospice offers.
Comfort Capsules help families of terminally ill children build and treasure memories
ehospice UK
A new free service to help families with terminally ill children build and treasure memories has been launched by national charity Newlife Foundation.
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