Richard Holbrooke — president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations — on Tuesday called on companies to increase their involvement in the global fight against HIV and other infectious diseases, the [click link for full article]

Cervical cancer is a major problem in Vanuatu and other developing nations but lack of funding prevents women from having routine PAP smears.Wesley Research Institute researchers, led by Chief Investigators Dr Margaret McAdam and Dr Scott Kitchener, are studying a rapid, low cost method of detection of cervical cancer in women from the island nation. This method is called VIA/VILI. [click link for full article]

Symptoms of allergic rhinitis, or hay fever, can affect your quality of life, ability to work or learn, and can worsen other diseases such as asthma and chronic sinusitis. Many…

Newspapers recently reported on developments in health care for children in Florida and Oregon. Summaries of the coverage appear below.Florida: Lawmakers likely will not discuss changes to KidCare, the state’s version of SCHIP, during a special legislative session that began on Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Crist (R) and legislative leaders said, the [click link for full article]

Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN) and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, a division of Wyeth (NYSE: WYE), have announced the presentation of additional data that showed that the safety profile of Enbrel® (etanercept) was maintained with long-term use in patients with moderate-to-severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) who completed up to eight years of therapy. JRA is a chronic autoimmune disease of childhood that is sometimes difficult to diagnose. [click link for full article]

Weill Cornell Medical College has announced that it is the recipient of $400 million, made up of several major gifts, bringing the prestigious Medical College to the halfway mark in just the first seven months of its $1.3 billion capital campaign — “Discoveries that Make a Difference” — launched in October 2006.These gifts also bring Cornell University’s comprehensive campaign, Far Above, the Campaign for Cornell, to $1.653 million. [click link for full article]

The United Nations Population Fund and Sudan’s Ministry of Health are conducting a month-long training session for health care workers in an effort to improve health services for obstetric fistula repair surgery and rehabilitation in the country, UN News Service reports. [click link for full article]

Medicare prescription drug plans can take as long as 45 days to reimburse pharmacies for medications dispensed, and the delays have caused three community pharmacies to close each day since the program began, according to groups that represent community pharmacies, CongressDaily reports. According to the [click link for full article]

A newly discovered transmembrane protein called “Wurst” (sausage) appears to play a decisive role in breathing - possibly in all animals, from flies to human beings. This insight is reported by scientists from the University of Bonn and the Gottingen-based Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in the online edition of the journal “Nature Cell Biology”. In the common fruit fly, Drosophila, the protein ensures the proper formation and functioning of the respiratory system. [click link for full article]

The effort in Congress to pass legislation to reauthorize SCHIP, which will expire on Sept. 30, “is not proceeding as quickly as some advocates would like, causing worries that the program might expire,” CQ HealthBeat reports (Wayne, CQ HealthBeat, 6/13). Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont. [click link for full article]