Birth Rate Declines for U.S. Teens, Climbs for Moms Over 40


A two-year climb in the rate for teenagers having babies ended in 2008, according to the latest government data that also confirmed the overall U.S. birth rate declined for the year.

A report issued today by the CDC found the teen birth rate dropped 2% in 2008 and the rate for Hispanic teens hit a two-decade [...]

NYC Health Dept. Buys Google Ads for Flu Searches


When the Health Blog Googled “flu” this morning, we were surprised to see an ad for the New York City Health Department show up at the top of the search results page. This is what it looked like:

So what’s a public-health agency doing buying search ads? We gave the health department a call to learn [...]

FDA Isn’t Ready to Approve J&J Anticlotting Drug


Despite a 15-2 vote by an advisory panel in favor of the experimental anticlotting drug rivaroxaban, the FDA isn’t approving the drug at this point. Johnson & Johnson, which would market the drug in the U.S., said it got a “complete response” letter from the FDA — in other words, a non-approval.

Bayer sells the drug [...]

It’s Official: Peggy Hamburg Will Lead FDA


Those keeping score at home can cross one more job off the list of long-unfilled federal health positions: By a voice vote, the Senate yesterday confirmed Margaret “Peggy” Hamburg to lead the FDA.

It’s been pretty clear for a while that the Senate would greenlight Hamburg for the job; some key Republicans piped up in her [...]

WHO Advisers: No Large-Scale H1N1 Vaccine Manufacturing Yet


For now, companies should keep cranking out vaccine against seasonal flu, while research continues into the best way to make a vaccine against the new strain of H1N1 flu.

That was the conclusion of a group of WHO advisers, who wrote that it would be “premature to recommend that commercial-scale production of influenza A (H1N1) [...]

WHO Chief: World Is in Midst of Flu ‘Grace Period’


Associated Press
Margaret Chan at the World Health Assembly, flanked by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the U.S. and Mexico Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos.

After wall-to-wall coverage of the swine-flu outbreak for nearly a month, things seemed to have calmed down recently, with many of the new cases less severe than had initially been expected. [...]

U.S. Reverses Course on Closing Schools to Thwart Flu


Some 400 U.S. schools with sick students have closed in the past week or so, largely following government guidelines intended to slow the spread of the H1N1 flu.

But today, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (pictured with acting CDC Director Richard Besser) said the government was dropping that recommendation. Instead, U.S. students and [...]

Live Blog: CDC Flu Update


CDC officials are talking to reporters about the flu outbreak. Here’s what they’re saying.

The officials are Anne Schuchat, of the agency’s science and public health program, and Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza division at the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

1:26 Schuchat: Here’s a case count by state, updated at 11 a.m. this [...]

Why Does the Flu Seem More Severe In Mexico? Here’s a Clue.


Why does the H1N1 flu appear more severe in Mexico than elsewhere? Maybe because there were many, many mild cases that went undetected there, skewing our sense of the severity of the disease. That possibility has been suggested for a while now, but a paper published late yesterday in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly [...]

Swine Flu? H1N1? What’s In a Name?


Not surprisingly, pork companies aren’t so keen on the term “swine flu.”

It’s true that you can’t get swine flu from eating cooked pork, and the disease is now passing from human to human. But the virus’s genetic signature does suggest that it originated in pigs.

President Obama and other federal officials this morning referred to [...]