This Week in Medicine

www.thelancet.com Vol 382 August 31, 2013 i

G8 dementia summit The UK will host the first G8 global dementia summit in London on Dec 11. Health ministers from member countries will collaborate with experts to improve disease management and explore new treatment options. Dementia aff ects 35·6 million people worldwide, but WHO estimates this number will reach 70 million by 2020.

New CDC outpost In collaboration with the local Ministry of Health, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has launched the eighth Global Disease Detection Centre in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The regional centres were established to improve detection and control of infectious diseases, particularly in resource-poor settings.

Zambian drug rationing The Zambian Government has begun rationing some antiretroviral drugs in response to a national shortage. Although the Ministry of Health has claimed supplies are adequate to last until additional shipments arrive, activist groups are concerned the rationing system might lead to some patients not following their treatment regimen.

MDG plea UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appealed for renewed efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the end of 2015. Although many nations have made progress overall, rural areas and marginalised groups are falling behind. Ban outlined his vision for the post-2015 development agenda, emphasising the need for a sustainable development framework.

Power to prescribe New legislation in the UK means that physiotherapists and podiatrists can now prescribe medicines to their National Health Service (NHS) patients. The ruling will enable provision of more effective and expedient treatment to patients, thus reducing the number of visits to family doctors or hospitals, and costs for the NHS.

Lyme climb The US CDC have estimated that about 300 000 Americans are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year—a rate ten times higher than cases reported to them. The preliminary results are from three studies using data from medical claims, laboratories, and questionnaires. The agency has emphasised prevention strategies for the USA’s most prevalent tick-borne infection.

Olympics shame Eduardo Paes, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, which will host the 2016 Olympic Games, has called the games a shame because Brazil does not have a sports policy to ensure a lasting legacy. The Brazilian Government has been criticised for spending large sums on the Olympic Games and on the World Cup while many in the country still live in poverty.

Bexsero approval On Aug 15, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Adminis tration added Novartis’ meningo coccal B vaccine Bexsero to the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods. Bexsero is the fi rst and only broad coverage vaccine for use in all age groups. The vaccine was granted European licensure in January, 2013, but its addition to the UK childhood vaccine schedule was rejected.

US circumcisions According to the US National Center for Health Statistics, circumcisions of newborn infant boys have decreased by 6% in the past 30 years in the USA. The procedure was most common in 1981, at 65% of newborn boys, and dropped to 55·4% in 2007. Rates do not include circumcisions done in religious insti-tutions and those done later in life.

NTD drug approval WHO’s Pre-qualifi cation of Medicines Pro gramme has prequalifi ed diethyl carbamazine (DEC) for the treatment of lymphatic filariasis—the first for a neglected tropical disease. The pharmaceutical company Eisai has committed to donate more than 2 billion DEC tablets to be be used in large-scale prevention and treatment programmes.

Tobacco control in China According to a survey done by the Chinese Health Ministry of 144 restaurants and 140 hotels in the provinces Heilong jiang, Shandong, and Gansu, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, enforcement of the anti-smoking ban (enacted in May, 2011) over the past year has been poor. 6·1% of businesses have areas designated for smoking and 1·4% have anti-smoking warning signs.

Methadone fi x An independent review has recommended that Scotland con-tinue to use opioid replace ments such as methadone to treat heroin addiction. The review criticised the lack of recovery-oriented care for addicts, advised that reimburse ment arrangements for pharma cists should be reviewed, and called for the link between substance misuse and health inequality to be addressed.

For The Lancet News podcast see http://www.thelancet.com/lancet-news-audio/

For more on the G8 dementia summit see https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-host-g8-dementia-summit

For more on Americans with Lyme disease see http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2013/p0819-lyme-disease.html

For more on WHO’s approval of diethylcarbamazine see http://www.who.int/neglected_diseases/en/index.html

For more on the review of methadone see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/ 2013/08/9760

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