NowMyNews

Participating in a teen relationship abuse prevention program may equip and encourage high school coaches to intervene when they witness abusive behavior among athletes, according to a new study. Researchers previously showed that the program had a positive influence on male high school athletes, who showed reductions in perpetration of dating violence and increased intention to intervene and stop violence among peers. The program, called Coaching Boys Into Men (CBIM), trains coaches to deliver 15-minute scripted discussions once a week during the athletic season. The lessons highlight respect, nonviolence, sexual consent and interrupting abusive behaviors among peers. “The coaches gained as much from delivering the program as the athletes who received it,” said Maria Catrina D. Jaime, the study’s lead author from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. “After the CBIM program, they were more confident addressing abusive behaviors among their athletes and

Sierra Leone has declared a state of emergency and called in troops to quarantine Ebola victims, joining neighboring Liberia in imposing controls as the death toll from the outbreak of the virus hit 729 in West Africa. The World Health Organisation said it would launch a $100 million response plan on Friday during a meeting with the affected nations in Guinea. It is in urgent talks with donors and international agencies to send more medical staff and resources to the region, it said. The WHO on Thursday reported 57 new deaths in the four days to July 27 in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, raising the death toll to 729. It said the number of Ebola cases had topped 1,300. "The scale of the Ebola outbreak, and the persistent threat it poses, requires WHO and Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to take the response to a new level, and this will require increased resources," WHO Director General Margaret Chan said. Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Bai Koroma, anno

West African leaders agreed on Friday to take stronger measures to try to bring the worst outbreak of Ebola under control and prevent it spreading outside the region, including steps to isolate rural communities ravaged by the disease. The World Health Organization and medical charity Medicins Sans Frontieres said on Friday the outbreak, which has killed 729 people in four West African countries, was out of control and more resources were urgently needed to deal with it. WHO chief Margaret Chan told a meeting of the presidents of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone - the countries worst affected - that the epidemic was outpacing efforts to contain it and warned of catastrophic consequences in lost lives and economic disruption if the situation were allowed to deteriorate. "The presidents recognize the serious nature of the Ebola outbreak in their countries," Chan said after the meeting. "They are determined to take extraordinary measures to stop Ebola in their countrie

Express Scripts Holding Co, the largest U.S. pharmacy benefit manager, on Friday said it will remove 25 products from its 2015 list of preferred drugs, including anemia treatments Epogen and Aranesp, both sold by Amgen Inc. _0"> The company will continue to include Procrit, a similar anemia drug sold by Johnson & Johnson, on its list of preferred drugs, or formulary. "The products we have chosen to exclude from our formulary are those that cost significantly more than other available options but that fail to provide additional health benefit," the company said in an emailed statement. Express Scripts, which like other pharmacy benefit managers administers prescription drug benefits for employers and health plans and runs large mail-order pharmacies, said that patients who fill a prescription for an excluded drug will pay the full retail price. Epogen, and second-generation drug Aranesp, have been hugely profitable for Amgen, although their use has waned in r

Two American aid workers, both seriously ill after being infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia, will be flown to the United States and treated in isolation at an Atlanta hospital, officials said on Friday. A plane equipped to transport Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol can carry only one patient back at a time, and Christian relief group Samaritan's Purse said it did not know who would return first. Both medical evacuations are due to be completed by early next week, said North Carolina-based Samaritan's Purse, as officials said bringing the stricken aid workers to the United States would not put the American public at risk. The two will be treated at Emory University Hospital primarily by a team of four infectious disease physicians. They will be able to see loved ones through a plate glass window and speak to those outside their rooms by phone or intercom. The patients are aid workers from Samaritan's Purse and missionary group SIM USA who we

U.S. laboratory inspectors charged with protecting the public from the release of deadly pathogens were repeatedly criticized by a federal watchdog for overlooking biosafety lapses long before this year's anthrax scare at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).     Newly released federal documents show that oversight gaps at the CDC Division of Select Agents and Toxins (DSAT) may have contributed to biosafety lapses at six laboratories handling pathogens including smallpox, influenza and monkeypox. As a result, the inspectors may have put public safety at risk.     "We found that DSAT did not effectively monitor and enforce certain federal select agent regulations at the laboratories," Daniel Levinson, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a July 2011 report sent with a letter to CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden.     "These weaknesses may have contributed to the laboratories not being in full compliance

The first of two American aid workers infected with the deadly Ebola virus while in Liberia is set to arrive in the United States on Saturday to begin treatment in isolation at an Atlanta hospital, officials said. A plane equipped to transport Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol back to the country can carry only one patient back at a time and it was unclear early on Saturday which of the two would be arriving first. "We have learned that we will be receiving a patient with Ebola at Emory University Hospital on Saturday," Holly Korschun, spokeswoman for the facility where they will be treated, said late on Friday. "The second patient was going to follow in the next few days," she added. Despite alarm by some in the United States over the transport, health officials have said bringing the sickened aid workers into the country would not put the American public at risk. The patients were helping respond to the worst West African Ebola outbreak on recor