Reuters Health News Summary

Following is a summary of current health news briefs. Even for insured women, having a baby in the U.S. is costly

In spite of protections baked into the Affordable Care Act, women who have health insurance through their employer may pay thousands of dollars out of pocket to have a baby in the United States, researchers reported this week. Although the Affordable Care Act requires large, company-based health plans to cover maternity services, these plans are free to pass along some of those costs to women in the form of copayments and deductibles. India reports H5N1 bird flu outbreak in Chhattisgarh state: OIE

India has reported an outbreak of the highly contagious H5N1 bird flu virus on a poultry farm in the central state of Chhattisgarh, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said on Wednesday, citing a report from India's fisheries and animal husbandry ministry. The virus killed 5,634 out of 21,060 birds on the farm in Baikunthpur and all of the remaining birds were slaughtered, the Paris-based OIE said in an website alert. Strides in lung cancer lead steep decline in U.S. cancer deaths

(Reuters Health) - Cancer deaths in the United States fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017 - the largest single-year drop ever recorded - fueled in large part by progress against lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death, the American Cancer Society (ACS) reported Wednesday. Overall, cancer death rates in the United States fell 29 percent from 1991 to 2017, driven by steady drops in deaths from lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers, according to the Society's annual report on cancer rates and trends published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Bird flu hits swans in China's Xinjiang region: ministry

China's agriculture ministry said an H5N6 avian flu virus outbreak has been detected in swans in the western region of Xinjiang. Fifteen out of a group of 150 swans had died from the virus and another 15 were ill in the waterfront of a park and pond in Yining county in Xinjiang, the ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. 'Hotspotting' patients with extensive needs fails to reduce hospital readmissions

As a method for reducing health costs and improving care for people with complex medical problems, an early effort at "hotspotting" patients to get extra attention has turned out to be not so hot. Researchers looked at so-called "superutilizer" patients who require a disproportionate amount of medical resources - in part because they're poor or don't have someone to look out for them when they leave the hospital. Their study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found these patients don't avoid rehospitalization even if nurses, social workers and community health workers are looking out for them after they've been discharged. China pneumonia outbreak may be linked to new virus: WHO

A cluster of more than 50 pneumonia cases in the central Chinese city of Wuhan may be due to a newly emerging member of the family of viruses that caused the deadly SARS and MERS outbreaks, World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. While the United Nations health agency said it needed more comprehensive information to confirm precisely the type of pathogen causing the infections, it said a new coronavirus was a possibility. Rural seniors sent to aftercare have higher mortality than urban peers

Rural seniors hospitalized for certain life-threatening conditions are more likely than city-dwelling peers to die within a month of being discharged to an aftercare facility, a new study suggests. In an analysis of data from more than 2 million U.S. elderly adults hospitalized for stroke, hip fracture, COPD, congestive heart failure or pneumonia, researchers determined that where you live may make the difference between life or death, according to the report in JAMA Network Open. Bulgaria to cull another 40,000 pigs in new African swine fever outbreak

Bulgarian veterinary authorities said on Wednesday they would cull 39,656 pigs after detecting an outbreak of African swine fever at a farm in the northeast, the second industrial farm in the country to be hit by the virus in the last five days. Last year the virus hit six breeding farms in the Balkan country, forcing the authorities to cull more than 130,000 pigs. Merck's Keytruda wins U.S. FDA approval for bladder cancer

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday it approved Merck & Co Inc's Keytruda for a hard-to-treat form of bladder cancer, making it the first new treatment for the cancer in more than two decades. The therapy was approved for patients with a high-risk, non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer who have undergone prior treatment and are ineligible for or have opted out of surgical removal of the bladder. China court jails founder of traditional medicine firm over pyramid scheme

A Chinese court jailed on Wednesday the founder of a local traditional Chinese medicine firm for running a pyramid scheme, after the death of a young girl with cancer was linked to the company in an online article that sparked anger on social media. Shu Yuhui, founder and chairman of Quanjian Nature Medicine Technology Development, was sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 50 million yuan ($7.2 million), according to the court. The company was fined 100 million yuan.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)