Health | WPN World People News

13 September 2019: Millions of patients are harmed each year due to unsafe health care worldwide resulting in 2.6 million deaths annually in low-and middle-income countries alone. Most of these deaths are avoidable. The personal, social and economic impact of patient harm leads to losses of trillions of US dollars worldwide. The World Health Organization is focusing global attention on the issue of patient safety and launching a campaign in solidarity with patients on the very first World Patient Safety Day on 17 September.

A bowl of peanuts.

Pregnant women who are exposed to higher air pollution levels during their second pregnancy, compared to their first one, may be at greater risk of preterm birth, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.

Uveitis is inflammation of the eye originating in the uvea, which includes the iris, ciliary body, and the choroid.

The National Institutes of Health, Apple, and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health announced their research partnership for a major long-term study of women’s health. The collaboration will permit researchers to study conditions including pregnancy, infertility, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), menopausal transition, and osteoporosis. Apple’s new Research App will help users participate in the study and will be a free download in the App Store later this year.

A portrait of a patient at a mental health hospital in Monrovia, Liberia.

The Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) is focusing on clinical care to save the lives of persons who survived the hurricane and keeping people safe, with three Emergency Medical Teams arriving in the Bahamas, according to Dr. Esther de Gourville, PAHO/WHO’s Representative in the Bahamas.

The number of countries with national suicide prevention strategies has increased in the five years since the publication of WHO’s first global report on suicide, said the World Health Organization in the lead-up to World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September. But the total number of countries with strategies, at just 38, is still far too few and governments need to commit to establishing them.

Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, which causes gonorrhea.

Scientists have greatly extended the amount of time human livers can be stored for transplantation by modifying a previous protocol to extend the viability of rat livers. Previously, human livers were only viable for an average of nine hours, but the new method of preservation maintains liver tissue for up to 27 hours, giving transplant doctors and patients a much longer timeframe to work with.