Health | WPN World People News

Physicians at five U.S. medical centers are planning to enroll up to 400 children in a clinical trial to evaluate whether a shorter course of antibiotics — five days instead of 10 — is effective at treating community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in children who show improvement after the first few days of taking antibiotics.

While the rest of the United States makes major strides against cancer, a cancer crisis is taking hold in rural Appalachia.
A University of Virginia (UVA) team analyzed federal government data and found that between 1969 and 2011, cancer rates fell in every U.S. region except rural Appalachia.

The new device uses laser generated terahertz radiation instead of the usual radio-frequency fields to accelerate electrons from rest. As the wavelength of the terahertz radiation is much shorter than radio-frequency radiation, the device can shrink substantially. While state-of-the-art electron guns can have the size of a car, the new device measures just 34 by 24.5 by 16.8 millimetres.

Asia-Pacific countries should strengthen their health systems and sharply increase spending to deliver effective universal coverage in order to meet the changing needs of their fast ageing populations, according to a new OECD report.

Better public health and prevention policies as well as more effective health care could save hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of euros each year in Europe, according to a new joint OECD/European Commission report.