Performing surgical operations without leaving scars has ceased to be a chimera and has become a reality. This is demonstrated by the recent surgical advances made using NOTES (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopy Surgery), an innovative surgical approach that allows surgical access using the body’s natural orifices. The results are all advantageous for the patient: lack of scars, shorter hospital stay and faster recovery. Currently, this type of minimally-invasive surgery is still in the research and development stage. Surgery through the mouth and vagina has been successfully used, but the transanal route (through the anus) is less utilized.
Although progress is being made in reducing the number of child deaths each year, pneumonia still kills more children than any other disease.
Fight pneumonia, safe a child, is the motto for the World Pneumonia Day, a day for the world to focus on the disease that kills more children than any other, pneumonia.
A study published in the August 1 issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases has shown for the first time that RTS,S, the world’s most clinically advanced malaria vaccine candidate, maintains protection during a 45 month follow-up period. The study conducted in 2022 Mozambican children age 1-4 years demonstrates that the RTS,S/AS02 vaccine is capable of reducing clinical episodes of malaria by 30 percent and severe malaria cases by 38 percent for at least 45 months following its administration.
Dr. Antoni Trilla, Chief of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at Hospital Clínic and Public Health Professor at the University of Barcelona, explains in this video the normal evolution of a normal flu epidemic. Influenza A is expected to behave approximately as a seasonal flu.
A third (30%) of malaria cases can be avoided in African infants using a safe, affordable and simple tool called Intermittent Preventive Treatment of malaria in Infants (IPTi) with the medicine sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), which can be delivered alongside existing childhood vaccination programmes.
Results of a meta-analysis examining six clinical trials in Africa for the malaria intervention which the World Health Organization already recommends, are published in the medical journal, The Lancet. Authors of this study and CRESIB (Hospital Clínic-Universitat de Barcelona) researchers Drs. Clara Menéndez, John Aponte and Andrea Egan (from left to right in the picture), explained the results obtained in this global analysis during a press conference in Barcelona. Research experts say if IPTi-SP were expanded in other African countries, 6 million cases of malaria could be prevented each year in those most vulnerable to the disease.
