The Health News USA September 9 2017

Overview

• Babies who were dramatically airlifted out of a neonatal intensive care unit about one hundred twenty miles away in Beaumont, Texas, last week are expected to return Tuesday as the hospital now has access to clean water.
• According to a new study, PrEP pill that protects against HIV can be safely used by young men who have sex with men.
• State documents show that less than 30% of those enrolled in the Healthy Indiana Plan would be required to comply with Governor Eric Holcomb’s proposed work mandate.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 9th of  September 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/05/health/evacuated-nicu-babies-go-home/index.html

Babies who were dramatically airlifted out of a neonatal intensive care unit about one hundred twenty miles away in Beaumont, Texas, last week are expected to return Tuesday as the hospital now has access to clean water. “We’re really excited. Now her grandma and everyone else can see her,” said Martha Sifuentes, whose five-week-old daughter, Itzel, was one of the eight babies evacuated Friday to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

Sifuentes said she and her husband, Angel Gonzalez, were grateful to the doctors and nurses at UTMB and the Baptist Hospital in Beaumont.

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Baptist Hospital had plenty of food and staff last week, but had to close when the city’s water pump failed. The hospital still doesn’t have running water, but water is being shipped in from Nederland, Texas, about twelve miles away, according to hospital spokeswoman Mary Poole. Trucks are delivering about one hundred thousand gallons of water a day. Of the eight babies who were airlifted out of Baptist Hospital, five on helicopters and three on airplanes, two were discharged after they arrived in Galveston. Doctor Joan Richardson, chair of the department of pediatrics at UTMB, said the babies were in great shape when they arrived at her hospital.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-hiv-young-prep/anti-hiv-pill-safe-among-gay-bisexual-adolescent-boys-idUSKCN1BG31T

According to a new study, a pill that protects against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be safely used by young men who have sex with men. In a diverse group of teen boys at high risk for HIV infection, pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP in the form of a pill that combines the drugs emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate was well tolerated, researchers found.
“I do hope clinicians increase their comfort with being able to provide PrEP to adolescents,” said lead author Sybil Hosek, a clinical psychologist and HIV researcher at Cook County Health and Hospitals System’s Stroger Hospital in Chicago.She hopes the new data will be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and will encourage the agency to approve the pill for use by younger people. The pill is currently approved for HIV prevention in adults. The drug was first approved by the FDA in two thousand twelve as Truvada, which was marketed by Gilead. Trials found that the drug reduced the risk of HIV infection by over ninety percent.

But little evidence was collected on its use among gay and bisexual adolescent males, who are among those most at risk for HIV infection. For the study, researchers enrolled seventy eight gay and bisexual young men, ages fifteen to seventeen, from six U.S. cities. The participants all tested negative for HIV at the start of the study, but were at high risk for an infection.Participants received a counseling session about HIV risk, plus access to daily doses of PrEP for the next forty eight weeks. Overall, forty seven participants completed the study.

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The researchers also didn’t find an increase in sexually risky behaviors over the study period. Three young men did become infected with HIV, however. Blood samples suggest they were taking less than two doses of PrEP each week at the time of infection. The rate of HIV infection in the study was six point four cases per one hundred people per year, which is about twice as high as the rate seen among men ages eighteen to twenty two years enrolled in a similar trial, the researchers write in JAMA Pediatrics.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/article171322022.html

State documents show that less than thirty percent of those enrolled in the Healthy Indiana Plan would be required to comply with Governor Eric Holcomb’s proposed work mandate. Holcomb has proposed making able-bodied, low-income residents work at least twenty hours a week for eight months of the year in order to receive state-supported health care coverage through the plan, The Northwest Indiana Times reported. A third of the program’s participants already meet that work requirement, and most members qualify for at least one of fourteen exemptions and wouldn’t have to work. Exemptions apply to people who are medically frail, older than sixty, full- or part-time students, or primary caretakers for young or disabled children, among other qualifications.

Residents qualify for the Healthy Indiana Plan by having an income below the sixteen thousand four hundred dollar maximum to qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage, under the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.