NightBlogger

Xinhua
Updated: 2008-05-14 13:41
BEIJING - Beijing’s health authority on Wednesday confirmed the first child death of hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) in the capital. Deng Xiaohong, spokeswoman of the Beijing Health Bureau, said that the child, an unidentified resident of Chaoyang District, had died on the way to a hospital on May 11.

She said that the child had tested positive for enterovirus 71 (EV71), a virus that has caused the majority of HFMD deaths in China. The spokeswoman also confirmed that another child from north China’s Hebei Province had died of HFMD in a Beijing hospital. “Under the disease counting regulations of the Ministry of Health, the child from Hebei was not counted in Beijing’s disease toll,” said Deng. Hebei Province, which neighbors Beijing, had not previously reported any child death from HFMD.

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Photo courtesy of Circo de invierno

Surgeons have carried out the first operations in Britain using a pioneering “bionic eye” that could in future help to restore blind people’s sight. Two successful operations to implant the device into the eyes of two blind patients have been conducted at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The device — the first of its kind — incorporates a video camera and transmitter mounted on a pair of glasses. This is linked to an artificial retina, which transmits moving images along the optic nerve to the brain and enables the patient to discriminate rudimentary images of motion, light and dark.
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Pic courtesy of Pedro

In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation’s women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today. The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women’s life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
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