World Health Care Congress Middle East 2011, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Where: Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

When: 11-13 December, 2011

"(...) The Most Influential Health Care Event held in the Middle East to Determine Global Best Practices to Deliver the Best in Health Care.

The 2^nd Annual World Health Care Congress Middle East (WHCC ME), co-sponsored by the Health Authority Abu Dhabi and the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, is a global event in which over 600 health care, government and corporate leaders from over 25 countries come together to define objectives and frame solutionsto the challenges of health care reform, cost, quality and delivery.

The 2011 WHCC ME Congress will feature the top thought leaders and industry influencers including health ministers, leading government officials, viagra cialis online pharmacy pharmacy directors, health system and hospital providers, chief financial leaders, IT innovators, decision makers from public and private insurance funds, investment and venture capital principals, pharmaceutical and biotech executives, and health care industry suppliers.

The WHCC ME agenda will feature debates, case studies and best practices from all industry sectors to identify innovative strategies to improve the overall delivery of health care. This unparalleled networking event puts together senior executives to meet and strategize on the crucial steps necessary to adapt their health systems to operate more efficiently to decrease the cost of care,enhance the delivery of service and improve the patient experience.

Key Topics include:

• Global Ministers of Health Discussion - the Global Economic Crisis and Its Effect on Health Care


• Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) Health Authority Dialogue - Health Care Strategies for the Future


• What Innovation Means to Health Care


• Emerging Technologies for Patient Decision Making


• Patient Safety Innovation and Improvement


• Hospital/Health System CEO Debate on Global Health Care Models


• Transfer of Healthcare Knowledge and Best Practices


• Achieving Healthcare Greatness


• Future Pharmaceutical Business Models


• Building a Sustainable Health Care Workforce


• Innovative Financing Models for Global Health Care Challenges


• Health Care IT from Transaction to Communication


• How Provider Systems and Technology Companies are Responding to the Implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems


• Challenges and Solutions to Privatization of Health Care


• Building Strategic Public Private Partnerships


• Health Care Insurance Challenges in the Middle East


• Best Practices in Evidence Based Medicine


• Promising Advancements in Disease Detection and Treatment


• Exploring Sustainable Health through Health Care Prevention (...)

Videos:

http://www.worldcongress.com/events/HR11004/videos.cfm

Source: http://www.worldcongress.com/events/hr11004/

Sexual Health

The mechanism by which a herpes virus invades cells has remained a mystery to scientists seeking to thwart this family of viruses. New research funded by the National Institutes of online pharmacy viagra and published online in advance of print in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology reveals the unusual structure of the protein complex that allows a herpes virus to invade cells. This detailed map of a key piece of the herpes virus "cell-entry machinery" gives scientists a new target for antiviral drugs.
"Most viruses need cell-entry proteins called fusogens in order to invade cells. We have known that the herpes virus fusogen does not act alone and that a complex of two other viral cell-entry proteins is always required. We expected that this complex was also a fusogen, but after determining the structure of this key protein complex, we found that it does not resemble other known fusogens," said senior author Ekaterina Heldwein, PhD, assistant professor in the molecular biology and microbiology department at Tufts University School of Medicine.
"This unexpected result leads us to believe that this protein complex is not a fusogen itself but that it regulates the fusogen. We also found that certain antibodies interfere with the ability of this protein complex to bind to the fusogen, evidence that antiviral drugs that target this interaction could prevent viral infection," Heldwein continued. Heldwein is also a member of the biochemistry and molecular microbiology program faculties at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts.
"Katya Heldwein's work has resulted in a map of the protein complex needed to trigger herpes virus infection. The NIH Director's New Innovator Awards are designed to support such breakthroughs. This research not only adds to what we know about how herpes viruses infect mammalian cells, but also sets the stage for new therapeutics that restrict herpes virus's access to the cell," said Jeremy M. Berg, PhD, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the National Institutes of Health.
"We hope that determining the structure of this essential piece of the herpes virus cell-entry machinery will help us answer some of the many questions about how herpes virus initiates infection. Knowing the structures of cell-entry proteins will help us find the best strategy for interfering with this pervasive family of viruses," said first author Tirumala K. Chowdary, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in the department of molecular biology and microbiology at TUSM and member of Heldwein's lab.
Currently, there is no cure for herpes viruses. Upon infection, the viruses remain in the body for life and can stay inactive for long periods of time. When active, however, different herpes viruses can cause cold sores, blindness, encephalitis, or cancers. More than half of Americans are infected with herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), which causes cold sores, by the time they reach their 20s. Currently, about one in six Americans is infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2), the virus responsible for genital herpes. Complications of HSV-2, a sexually-transmitted disease, include recurrent painful genital sores, psychological distress, and, if transmitted from mother to child, potentially fatal infections in newborn infants.
Heldwein teamed up with colleagues at University of Pennsylvania and used x-ray crystallography along with cell microscopy techniques to study the structure and function of this cell-entry protein complex in HSV-2. Heldwein is currently developing a molecular movie that illustrates how herpes virus enters the cell.
Additional authors are Tina Cairns, PhD, a research specialist; Doina Atanasiu, a research associate; and Gary Cohen, PhD, professor and chair, all in the department of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine; and Roselyn Eisenberg, PhD, professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine.
This work was funded by the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, through a New Innovator Award in 2007 to Ekaterina Heldwein. The New Innovator Awards, part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiative, are awarded to support early-career scientists who take innovative -- and potentially transformative -- approaches to major challenges in biomedical research. The work was also funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Pew Scholar Program in Biomedical Sciences.

North Korea's Man-made Famine

See also: cheap cialis | cialis | 


NKZone's Andrei Lankov's latest article, Eating Away the Truth, in his "Another Korea" series for the Korea Times is about North Korea's long-running famine.

Few people would doubt that the famine of 1996-2000 was the worst disaster in the history of post-war Korea. However, nobody knows for sure how many people lost their lives.



Stalinist states have never been famous for openness, and important statistical data in North Korea has been classified from the early 1960s. Officialdom always insisted that the North is a "socialist paradise" where nothing could possibly go wrong.



In the mid-1990s, the North Korean officialdom grudgingly changed the pattern. It gradually dawned on Pyongyang that complaints are necessary to attract donors....



In 2001, Goodkind and West, two researchers from the International Center of the U.S. Census Bureau published what is, perhaps, the most reliable estimate available. They used both data released by the North Korean government and materials obtained from the refugees. Their initial estimates range from 200,000 to 3,000,000. To narrow the range, they also used the indirect evidence, including some Chinese materials from the era of Mao-made famines, and the WFP studies of the North’s nutritional situation. This indirect data allowed them to conclude that the Great Famine took between 600,000 and 1,000,000 lives.



The 600,000 or 900,000 do not sound as dramatic as the oft-cited "two million." But for a country with a population of some 23 million this is a huge number. Some 3-4 percent of the entire population perished in the disaster. For the U.S., it would be equivalent to wiping out some 10 million people--a far greater proportion than America lost in any war during the twentieth century. And the disaster was entirely man-made; the result of deliberate political decisions.



However, the outside world did not care much. The North Korean famine did not become the major news issue, and outside East Asia only a handful of people really took notice. This seemingly strange indifference reflected the silent but dramatic change in the perception of North Korea that took place in the 1990s. No major player in international politics wanted to attract too much public attention to the mistakes and crimes of the Pyongyang rulers. While people were dying, powers great and small were busy playing their political chess games.

The final blog Post ...

The fourth module provided a quick overview of methods and channels which can be used to disseminate/ introduce a campaign. The two main ones we covered in class were letters to the editor, policy/community support in agenda setting, and the modes (T.V., radio, etc) that can be used. The top three key insights for this module were the marketing concepts that can be applied to public cheap cialis, agenda setting, and media channels/ advocacy.

Last week I mentioned that I really enjoyed the reading by Grier & Bryant (2005). They explained in a very thorough way the meshing of public relations and public cialis. More specifically social marketing and it's possible use for public health interventions. This article made me think back to campaigns that had used branding. Such as the truth campaign, VERB, etc. all these campaigns adopted public relations concepts when developing their interventions/ programs.

Our two speakers highlighted agenda setting channels. Our first speaker discussed how we can use media to get our message across. The second speaker discussed agenda setting at a local and global level. I really enjoyed this lecture because agenda setting and community involvement, government, etc. were presented. This presentation put into perspective the role of different entities I could see how the ecological model could be used when discussing this.

Finally, the group presentations from this past week provided examples of the channels we could use to promote campaigns promoting a specific behavior change. I found it interesting that all of the groups had at least one video as their channel. I found the bone marrow and their twitter page and video to be a really good combination of channels. The red bull group and their use of ads was also very good. I felt like that was their ads were good but it might be a good idea to develop a video because a lot of Redbull's advertising of the product is through t.v. commercials. The drunk driving testimonial was really well produced and i also liked the bone marrow's video and the way they used it to empower/ encourage people to want to help those in need of bone marrow. I am excited to see the edits we will all do after we receive feedback. I can't believe that we are going to start the last module this week. The semester has gone by so quickly.