White House Seeks More Money For Swine Flu.

The White House requested new funding for swine flu from Congress late Tuesday and also sought an additional $3.1 billion from the unspent stimulus funds in case of a pandemic emergency, according to various news s. The Wall Street Journal reports that "President Barack Obama requested $2 billion to prepare for a possible resurgence of the H1N1 swine flu this fall. But he also asked for the authority to take a 1% across-the-board cut to stimulus programs allocated at Congress"s discretion, or $3.1 billion out of the $311 billion in discretionary stimulus funds." The proposal to take stimulus money "immediately prompted criticism from Republicans that Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to turn the stimulus package into what Jennifer Hing, a spokeswoman for House Appropriations Committee Republicans, called an all-purpose "slush fund,"" The Wall Street Journal reports. It added, "With a budget deficit nearing $2 trillion, the stimulus plan is becoming an alluring pot of money. recover dbx

Combination Of Interventions Could Reduce Childhood Pneumonia Deaths By 90%, Study Says.

A combination of measures taken to improve nutrition, indoor air pollution, immunization and child pneumonia case management could reduce total child mortality worldwide by 17 percent and global pneumonia deaths by more than 90 percent, according to a study published in the June issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, UPI reports. Researchers said that the "most cost-effective interventions were programs to promote better community-based treatment of pneumonia, promotion of exclusive breastfeeding, zinc supplementation and vaccination for Hib and S. pneumoniae," UPI reports. According to the study, the burning of solid fuels like wood for cooking and heating, contributed at least 20 percent to the burden of childhood pneumonia (UPI, 6/3).

Three In Every One Thousand U.S. Children Diagnosed With Tourette Syndrome.

The first-ever national estimate among a nationally representative sample of U.S. children revealed that 3 out of every 1,000 children between the age of 6 and 17 in the United States have been diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome (TS), according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The study, "Prevalence of Diagnosed Tourette Syndrome in Children in the United States, 2007," found that a TS diagnosis is three times more common in boys than in girls, and approximately twice as common in children between 12-17 years as those aged 6-12 years.

Changes In Stair Design Could Help Fight Obesity.

Some simple changes in the design and location of staircases could help to make buildings more "physical activity friendly" and contribute to the fight against obesity, according to an article in the June Southern Medical Journal, official journal of the Southern Medical Association. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health, a leading provider of information and business intelligence for students, professionals, and institutions in medicine, nursing, allied health, pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry.