[Viva] FW: CTAC Daily Info - October 6

[Tami S.]

In this e-mail:
1.    Antibodies show promise for HIV vaccine
2.    Canada’s programs for disabled too complex, says OECD
3.    E-health drug data saves $436M: study
4.    Canada Health Act should be re-opened: CMA

1.
Antibodies show promise for HIV vaccine
Last Updated: Sunday, October 3, 2010 | 11:41 AM ET
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/10/01/hiv-vaccine-broadly-neutralizing-a
ntibodies.html
CBC News<http://www.cbc.ca/news/credit.html>

Researchers attending an AIDS vaccine conference in Atlanta this week are
abuzz about broadly neutralizing antibodies and their potential to prevent
HIV in monkeys.

Broadly neutralizing antibodies are a handful of recently discovered human
antibodies that can bind to the AIDS virus and prevent it from infecting
cells.
'People are actually capable of making antibodies that can neutralize most
strains of HIV around the world.'— Alan Bernstein

New technology is allowing scientists to isolate and study these areas of
the human immune system in people who have been infected for years, said
Galit Alter, a Canadian HIV researcher who works at the Ragon Institute in
Boston.

However, the antibodies develop too slowly to help these patients. Also, the
antibodies are only found among 10 and 30 per cent of people with
long-standing HIV infections.

Researchers are now trying to find a vaccine to make the immune system
produce the antibodies earlier.

Scientists have long thought a successful HIV vaccine would somehow have to
address all of the strains and mutations of the virus that exist in the
world or even within a single infected person.

Peter Kwong of the Vaccine Research Center at the U.S. National Institutes
of Health in Bethseda, Md., is one of the scientists who's helped isolate
and identify broadly neutralizing antibodies, starting with one called
VRC01.

"This antibody has the ability to neutralize over 90 per cent of circulating
HIV isolates," Kwong said. "So one antibody by itself is able to effectively
combat HIV1."

So far the research has been confined to the lab and in animal studies.

However, Alan Bernstein of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise in New York
said the research reflects important new knowledge about the immune system
and potential weaknesses of the virus.

"It says that people are actually capable of making antibodies that can
neutralize most strains of HIV around the world, thousand of strains of HIV.
The question then of course is how do we use this information to design a
vaccine?"

The conference ended Friday.

2.
Canada’s programs for disabled too complex, says OECD Published On Sun Oct
03 2010 Laurie Monsebraaten Social Justice Reporter
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/870059--canada-s-programs-for-dis
abled-too-complex-says-oecd

Canadians with disabilities or health problems are caught in a complex web
of federal and provincial programs that make it almost impossible for them
to join or remain in the workforce, says a new OECD report.

Few programs lift the disabled out of poverty and many seem to work at
cross-purposes, says the report by the Paris-based Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, which looked at the major disability benefits
and services offered by Ottawa and the provinces.

To improve programs and make it easier for the disabled to get help, the
report recommends better federal-provincial coordination and “one-stop
shopping” offices.

The 85-page report comes on the eve of a promised Ontario review of social
assistance and mirrors many of the recommendations of a provincial expert
panel that called for more coordination of federal and provincial programs
for vulnerable working-age people.

“Even with better coordination, there is considerable room for streamlining
by making provinces fully responsible for all employment measures and
programming,” says the OECD report, released this week.

Like many OECD countries, the report notes Canada’s benefits and services
are focused on what the sick and disabled cannot do rather than on what
meaningful work they are able to do.

Before the recession, just 60 per cent of Canadians with health problems or
disabilities were in the workforce and their unemployment rate of more than
16 per cent was twice as high as the general population, the report says.

A spokesperson for federal Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said the
Harper government has taken “unprecedented action to support Canadians with
disabilities” including the new Registered Disability Savings Program,
Employment Insurance sickness benefits for the self-employed, and the
Working Income Tax Benefit.

Mary Marrone, of Ontario’s Income Security Advocacy Centre, welcomed the
report’s recommendation that Canada and other countries need to focus on
people’s abilities, not their disabilities.

But she is concerned about the report’s suggestion that countries should tie
disability benefits to a person’s efforts to work, even part-time.

“We need to be providing real opportunities for people to work through
employment support and accommodation and not make work an obligation for
people with disabilities,” she said in an interview.

Michael Mendelson of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy said Canada
would be unwise to adopt one-stop-shopping for the disabled before reforming
the various federal and provincial programs.

“Creating an integrated service as a Band-Aid over a dis-integrated system
would just create one more layer of bureaucracy,” he said.

“The issue is the co-ordination of programs,” said Mendelson. “We need to
try to develop our income security system as a whole.”
¤¤¤

The full OECD report is available at:
http://www.oecd.org/document/36/0,3343,en_2649_33933_46060260_1_1_1_37457,00
.html



3.
E-health drug data saves $436M: study
Last Updated: Wednesday, October 6, 2010 | 9:11 AM ET

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/10/06/health-drug-records-ehealth-study.
html

Canada is seeing e-health gains in the area of medication, with an estimated
$436 million in cost savings and efficiencies this year, a report released
Wednesday says.
[cid:image003.jpg at 01CB657A.2F468F80]Electronic records of what medicines
patients are taking or are allergic to could save Canada $1 billion a year
in health costs, a new report says. (iStock)

Drug information systems, which are hooked up now mainly in the western
provinces and Prince Edward Island and to a lesser extent elsewhere, allow
pharmacists and health-care providers to electronically access records of a
patient's prescription medications.

And they provide a full and accurate medication history so that potential
drug interactions or allergies can be caught before they happen.

The $436-million tally and report were compiled by Deloitte for Canada
Health Infoway, a federally funded organization that was founded in 2001 and
charged with helping provinces and territories to adopt electronic
health-record projects.

"We expect that number to increase over time as drug information systems are
more widely used in the country, and we get more experienced with their
use," said Jennifer Zelmer, senior vice-president of clinical adoption and
innovation at Infoway.

Forecast: $1B in savings

It's the first such report to assess the estimated gains for this level —
Generation 2 — of drug information systems.

The report projects that once Generation 2 systems are more widely
implemented across the country, and people are more experienced in using
them, they will generate about $1 billion a year in benefits.

But Zelmer couldn't say when that would be.

"We're certainly moving as fast as we can."

Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island are at 100 per cent in terms
of implementing Generation 2 drug information systems, while British
Columbia and Alberta are about 90 per cent operational, she said.

In Ontario, hospital emergency programs have access to medication profiles
for seniors and others who have drugs provided through government programs.

About half the hospital emergency rooms in Canada are currently linked to
these drug information systems, Zelmer noted.

"If you come in and you're unconscious, or for whatever other reason can't
provide information about the medications you're on, authorized health-care
providers can still understand your medication profile, and know whether
it's safe to prescribe any medication for you or not," she said.

Higher productivity

The report offered a breakdown of where the benefits and productivity gains
were realized.

It attributes 21 per cent of total benefits to better compliance, because
the computerized records helped pharmacists work with patients so that
medications were more likely to be taken as prescribed.

Another 32 per cent of benefits were related to increased pharmacist and
prescriber productivity, because fewer phone calls were needed to check
prescriptions.

Reduced adverse drug reactions accounted for 20 per cent of the financial
benefit, and reduced medication abuse for 16 per cent. Another 10 per cent
was in the area of improved drug cost management.

The findings are a result of a national survey of 750 pharmacists, benefit
evaluation studies completed in several provinces, a study of British
Columbia's experience with identification and reduction of adverse drug
events and P.E.I.'s study of how many more prescriptions can be processed
with the electronic records, compared to in the past.
As well, the study involved looking at international literature on the
topic, and there were key interviews with those who introduced and use the
systems.


4.
Canada Health Act should be re-opened: CMA Delegates pass motions to add
‘sustainability’ as sixth principle and for act to be ‘re-interpreted’
Written by Colin Leslie on September 27, 2010 for The Medical
Post<http://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/physicians/magazines/the-medica
l-post/>
http://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/healthcaremanagers/news/government/c
anada-health-act-should-be-re-opened-cma-5921?utm_source=EmailMarketing&
utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Physician_Newsletter
Is ‘sustainable’ right-wing code?

DR. DANIELLE MARTIN, chairwoman of Canadian Doctors for Medicare, said the
public thinks “sustainable” is all to the good but she suggests adding this
tenet to health laws could be used as a legislative mandate to control
costs. After all, in British Columbia it was the provincial Liberals (a
right-of-centre party in that province) that added sustainability to B.C.’s
Medicare Protection Act recently, Dr. Martin said.

“In the wrong hands, that becomes code for keeping the government system
sustainable. And that could mean delisting,” she said. “Are we talking about
overall sustainability or ‘government sustainability’?”


The time has come to re-open the Canada Health Act (CHA).

That is what Canadian Medical Association General Council delegates said.
They passed two motions supporting:

• adding “sustainability” to the five current principles of the act
(universality, accessibility, portability, comprehensiveness and public
administration).

• “re-interpreting” the principles of the CHA “in light of the evolution in
the delivery of health-care services.”

Outgoing CMA president Dr. Anne Doig said both of these motions are partly
about asking Canadians to engage in the debate over the future of medicare.

“(So far) it has been political suicide for any government to touch health
care,” she said. “A groundswell of public opinion recently has suggested
they need to deal with this.”

Provincial violations

Meanwhile, it isn’t clear how well the current version of the CHA is
followed.

After federal Auditor-General Sheila Fraser’s speech, a CMA delegate if her
office had examined how well Ottawa does in monitoring the provinces’
compliance with the act.

‘Strong reluctance’

Fraser said her office has done such an audit but, “my sense is there is a
very strong reluctance of the federal government to deal with these issues.”

When asked about the possibility of another audit of provincial violations
of the CHA, Fraser was non-committal and said she wasn’t sure anything would
be done after another report.





Béatrice Cardin
Organizational Development and Communications Manager Canadian Treatment
Action Council (CTAC)
Phone/Fax:  (416) 410-6538
ctac at ctac.ca<mailto:ctac at bellnet.ca>
www.ctac.ca<http://www.ctac.ca/>

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