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Change4Life Corner Shops To Open Across The Country, UK
Corner shops nationwide will get help from Change4Life to sell fruit and veg - this will mean more people will get their 5 a day and shops will see an increase in profits, Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham said today.
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Vermont Legislature Passes Law Regulating All Drug/Device Company Marketing, Requiring Disclosure Of Gifts To Doctors
The Vermont Legislature has passed legislation (S 48) that bans nearly all gifts from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to health care providers, administrators and facilities in the state, the New York Times reports. The legislation specifically would prohibit drug and device makers from giving providers no-cost meals. Vermont"s legislation would go further than similar laws in other states like Massachusetts and Minnesota by requiring drug and medical device manufacturers who give gifts to health providers to publicly disclose recipients" names and dollar amounts of payments and gifts. The measure would not require manufacturers to disclose payments for clinical research of products undergoing FDA review, the Times reports. The legislation also would eliminate a loophole that allows manufacturers to conceal certain expenses by claiming them as trade secrets. In a recent report, the Vermont Office of the Attorney General said that medical product makers spent about $2.9 million on promotional efforts to the state"s health care providers in fiscal year 2008 and that nearly half of the state"s 4,573 licensed providers had received some type of incentive from drugmakers in the same year. The report, which was developed prior to passage of the new legislation, offers only aggregate data, as 83% of the manufacturer-declared payments were deemed to be trade secrets, the Times reports.Gov. Jim Douglas (R) is expected to sign the law, which would take effect July 1. Several state medical groups -- including the Vermont Association for Mental Health and the Vermont Medical Society -- have indicated support for the legislation.Marjorie Powell, a senior lawyer for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the requirements under the new law appear redundant with new voluntary guidelines the group has issued on physician gifting practices. She said, "We think this is unnecessary, and it is not going to improve patient care," adding, "It makes it onerous not only for the company but also for the physician in Vermont, because this is going to be on a Web site" (Singer, New York Times, 5/20).
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Facing Congressional Squabbling, President Pushes For Reform
The press for health care reform hit a snag this week as Congress sputtered to resolve its differences, but President Barack Obama continues his call, almost daily, to continue to try to change the system, The New York Times reports.
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Many U.S. Residents Test Positive For HIV Late In Illness, Few High School Students

Many people who test positive for HIV are diagnosed late in the course of their infection when treatment might be less effective, according to a report published Thursday in CDC"s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Reuters Health reports. The report looked at data on people who were diagnosed with HIV from 1996 to 2005 and found that 45 percent had developed AIDS within three years of their initial HIV diagnosis, 38.3 percent within one year and an additional 6.7 percent within the next two years (Reuters Health 6/25). R. Luke Shouse of CDC"s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention in the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD and TB Prevention, said, "This means that they may have unknowingly transmitted HIV. It also means that there is a time when they had HIV when they were not under appropriate medical care, so there are missed opportunities for prevention and care." A separate CDC report also published yesterday found that 22.3 percent of high school students who are sexually active and 12.9 percent of all students have been tested for HIV (Reinberg, HealthDay/KATC.com, 6/25). This information was reprinted from dailyreports.kff.org with kind permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily U.S. HIV/AIDS Report, search the archives and sign up for email delivery at dailyreports.kff.org. © Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.


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