Word: chronical
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...timely in 2008 because a sudden increase in international food prices had pushed 100 million more people around the world into hunger, on top of the 850 million others–mostly in rural South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa–who were already suffering from chronic malnutrition before prices went up. Yet none of the invited speakers at Harvard’s session on food had much interest in this larger problem, or any academic standing to address it. One was a celebrity restaurant owner from San Francisco, the second led an organization called Slow Food...
...This lack represents a critical information vacuum in Africa, a continent being hit with a double dose of disease. Infections including tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS have been seen as Africa’s major health burden. But now, in addition to these, there is a rising epidemic of chronic, non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, mental illnesses, trauma, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Chronic diseases are projected to cause more deaths in the region than infectious diseases...
...American College of Physicians and others are calling for reform in health-care reimbursement, with the Federal Government and large insurance companies setting up "Patient Centered Medical Homes" in which a portion of doctors' pay will be linked to performance targets. As in Germany, these homes will target chronic diseases by allowing doctors, nurses, dietitians and therapists to educate all patients - especially chronic ones - on how to stay healthy. In 2007, Geisinger Health System began a pilot program in Pennsylvania, hiring nurses to check on patients with diabetes, heart disease and other chronic ailments, as well as linking...
Preventing these conditions from developing in the first place is helped by a holistic approach to preventive medicine that encourages changes in what people eat or how much exercise they get. But for those patients already battling a chronic illness, there are steps health-care providers can take to keep them stable and out of hospital - as Germany's experience shows. The solutions can be as simple as educating patients about their condition, having nurses call patients to make sure they are staying on top of their medication and allowing doctors to compare their success rate with other physicians...
Germany's "disease-management programs" began in 2002 and cover some 3 million chronic patients. The results are promising. One survey by the University of Heidelberg of some 11,000 patients in the Saxony Anhalt and Rhineland-Palatinate regions found that the death rate in older diabetics in the program was about 8% lower than among diabetics who received regular care. And when one of Germany's largest insurers tracked 20,000 coronary heart disease and diabetes patients enrolled in disease-management programs for 15 months, it found the percentage of patients requiring hospitalization dropped from...