Word: treatments
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...been the main treatment--in many places the only one--since the early 1970s, when U.N. officials first distributed sachets of sugar and salt to refugees in South Asia in an attempt to reduce cholera deaths. Today, rehydration salts mixed with clean water are given to millions of poor people across Africa and Asia. It works: the glucose in the water slows the exit of fluids from the body, allowing electrolytes to be absorbed through the intestinal walls and thus halting potentially deadly dehydration...
...less than half the WHO's target. Until zinc arrived in Sogola, only about 1 in 10 village residents used the sachets when they or their children became ill. That number has soared since Traoré added zinc tablets to the prescription. "Mothers don't see ORT as real treatment," says Eric Swedberg, senior director of child health and nutrition at Save the Children U.S., in Westport, Conn. "But when you add the zinc, you really see the effects. This is quite dramatic...
Zinc could change that. Earlier this year, pilot zinc-treatment programs began in parts of Ethiopia and Tanzania, and several African governments are now looking at zinc programs. The treatment is already stirring interest among rich-country donors and drug companies: about 20 firms in countries from France to India have begun manufacturing zinc tablets during the past few years. "The private sector was never really interested in ORT," Fontaine says. "But zinc has totally taken off. It looks like real medicine and is not given out for free...
...younger women, and not every cancer is the same. Some tumors are indolent and slow-growing; others are aggressively malignant and blanket a body within months. Mammography is best at spotting the slowest-growing tumors, which are most common and generally do not spread beyond the breast or require treatment. Although these tumors are malignant, they rarely go on to cause clinical symptoms. But when detected, they are still treated as if they were potentially faster-growing--with a combination of chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and hormone therapy. "We can't figure out which is which," says Harris...
That calculus is precisely what drives comparative-effectiveness research, a strategy embraced by both the House and Senate health care reform bills: figuring out which tests and treatments work best--instead of using every available treatment just because it's there--while saving money without adversely affecting health. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to screen for breast cancer, for example, isn't necessary for the vast majority of women who are at low risk of the disease; because most tumors are not aggressive, most women will not benefit from finding the first signs of tiny tumors that...