Lawmakers to hold Walter Reed hearings

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 11:43:15 GMT
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - As several House committees prepared to delve into the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, outraged lawmakers vowed quick action and called for an independent commission to examine poor conditions for soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's national security panel, headed by Rep. John Tierney , D-N.Y., scheduled a hearing at the hospital's auditorium Monday morning. The list of Army officials, hospital staff and patients invited to speak includes the medical center's previous commander, Maj. Gen. George Weightman.

The defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee also scheduled a hearing on Walter Reed for Monday.

In a letter Sunday to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., asked for an independent commission, possibly headed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, to investigate all post-combat medical facilities and recommend changes.

"To think that men and women are serving their country in the most honorable and courageous way possible and all we give them is a dilapidated, rat-infested, run-down building to recover is a disgrace," Schumer wrote. "My fear is that Walter Reed is just the tip of the iceberg, and merely highlights the pervasive and systemic mistreatment of our service members."

President Bush last week ordered a comprehensive review of conditions at the nation's network of military and veteran hospitals. They have been overwhelmed by injured troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The White House said the president would name a bipartisan commission to assess whether the problems at Walter Reed exist at other facilities. Last week, Gates created an outside panel to review the situation at Walter Reed and the other major military hospital in the Washington area, the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Md.

Gates also dismissed Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who had fired Weightman and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the Army's surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed. Gates said Harvey's response was not aggressive enough.

The Army announced that Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker will be the new commander of Walter Reed, which is in Washington. In addition, the Army took disciplinary action against several lower-level soldiers at Walter Reed.

The moves came in response to a series of Washington Post reports about substandard conditions and bureaucratic problems affecting the care of injured soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to Walter Reed, one of the military's highest-profile and busiest medical facilities, and its outpatient facilities.

Sen. Carl Levin , D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Sunday the scandal is emblematic of the Bush administration's "lack of accountability" and "overoptimism" about the war in Iraq.

Sen. Trent Lott , R-Miss., said he probably would support a commission such as what Schumer proposes. "Investigations are not always the best way to go, but I think we ought to do whatever's necessary," he said.

Schumer and Lott spoke on ABC's "This Week." Levin was interviewed on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Aid sanctions threaten West Bank health

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:37:26 GMT
By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer
YATA, West Bank - One slip, and Issa Abu Shakr's 5-year-old nephew plunged into the fetid stream of sewage that flows outside the family's West Bank home.
The contact with the filthy water required multiple blood transfusions and a 10-day hospital stay, Abu Shakr says.

A few miles away, Maisoun Seidat picked up a blue bucket for one of her three daily trips to a communal cistern. People shouldn't have to fret about something as elemental as water, Seidat says, but in the parched West Bank, it's a constant worry.

These are the human face of the toll exacted by U.S. sanctions following the rise to power of the militant Islamic Hamas group.

U.S. projects were to have dried up the toxic flow that threatens the Abu Shakrs and bring more water to the Seidats. But the money has disappeared into the morass of Mideast politics.

Projects meant to make sweeping changes in the Palestinians' quality of life — like the sewage treatment plant that was to have been built near Issa Abu Shakr's home in Yata village near Hebron — have been put on hold.

Meanwhile, the Abu Shakr family complains of asthma, burning throats and colds. The trunks of olive trees near their home are blackened by the squalid flow.

"The fact that they stopped the project is a disaster," Abu Shakr says.

Palestinians had hoped a power-sharing deal between Hamas and the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, would revive the aid, and a $250 million package of waste and wastewater programs the U.S. had planned for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice indicated in a recent visit to the region that this won't happen unless Hamas moderates its refusal to recognize Israel's existence.

Other major donors have continued their smaller-scale infrastructure projects. But it is the U.S. the Palestinians depend on for water and sewage treatment, says Naim El-Mani, senior technical adviser at the Palestinian Water Authority.

More than 80 percent of communities in the West Bank aren't hooked up to a sewer network, and much of their waste ends up in riverbeds, some of it running into Israel, water experts said.

The suspension of the wastewater project "is like a time bomb," he said.

The U.S. poured $468 million into the Palestinian territories in 2006 — the year Hamas rose to power — compared with $400 million approved the previous year. But Howard Sumka, director for the West Bank and Gaza operations of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said his agency's mission has shifted toward "health care, food assistance and education" — the things most threatened by the international aid boycott.

A sign outside a new water reservoir in Seidat's village of Bani Naim in the rocky hills near Hebron marks a USAID project designed to increase the hourly flow to the area by more than 260,000 gallons.

But the reservoir is empty, as are two others built for the project. Dozens of enormous concrete pipes that were to carry water from the reservoir to the surrounding area are stacked by the road, and the only workers present are guards keeping away thieves.

Of the West Bank's 2.4 million people, about 120,000 living in small communities do not have piped water, and those who do receive it only once every 10 days on average, says Ihab Barghouti, economic adviser to the Palestinian Water Authority.

So West Bankers rely heavily on purchased water — sometimes from untreated springs and wells — and rainwater collected in cisterns, Barghouti says.
Average daily water consumption, for drinking and bathing, is still only 8 to 10 gallons a day, about one-third the World Health Organization's recommended minimum, and some people shower monthly, El-Mani said.
"Sometimes, before I go to sleep, I think, what shall I do in the morning in order to have water," said Seidat, a 29-year-old schoolteacher and mother of three. "Am I going to have water in the morning or not? What shall I do? Where do I have to go? These are big questions in my mind."
Water consumes about one-fourth of her family's monthly income of less than $600, she says. In the past seven months, she has received just $700 of the $4,000 owed to her because international sanctions leave the Hamas government unable to pay full salaries.
The U.S. government is penalizing the Palestinian people for exercising their democratic right to vote, says Seidat's brother-in-law, Ahmed Seidat. "They talk about choice, but punish our people," he fumed.
In Gaza, the revised U.S. aid policy means nearly 3,000 illegally drilled wells are depleting Gaza's Coastal Aquifer and letting in seawater, Barghouti says.
At a municipal water distribution center in the southern town of Khan Younis, children fill bottles while adults fill 260-gallon storage tanks on donkey-drawn wagons.
Sometimes the donkeys drink from the same source.
To save the aquifer, USAID was going to build a desalination plant and a pipeline to deliver the water to Gaza, but those plans were suspended after three U.S. government contractors were killed by unidentified assailants in October 2003. Moves to resuscitate the project were cut short after Hamas' rise.
"USAID was doing big projects that no other donor could do," said El-Mani.

Nudists sweat it out at Dutch gym

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:48:35 GMT
By TOBY STERLING, Associated Press Writer
HETEREN, Netherlands - A dozen middle-age and elderly men were game enough for a Dutch gym's invitation to work out nude. But they were vastly outnumbered by the dozens of journalists watching them lift, row and cycle in the buff.
Fitworld owner Patrick de Man allowed the media in for the first session of "Naked Sunday" after receiving inquiries from as far away as Russia and Australia.

The response from nudists was more lukewarm.

A smattering of men trickled in and out throughout the day at the gym in the small town of Heteren, 60 miles east of Amsterdam. They found the exercise room packed with photographers, TV crews and reporters who jostled for interviews and pictures while the nudists hit the machines and free weights.

"We already had naked swimming ... but a gym, that's unique," said one white-haired bespectacled man, who gave only his first name, Henk.

"It's spectacular!" he said, as he pedaled away.

A few local politicians and a nudist tourism company also watched. There was no group aerobics or naked instructors. Staffers wore aprons with a nude body painted on.

De Man thought there might be interest in nude exercising after two of his regular customers asked why he had separate dressing rooms for men and women. He said he expected a bigger turnout next Sunday, especially after all the publicity.

Although the Dutch Federation of Naturists endorsed the idea, most of its 70,000 members said in a poll they would rather hike or garden than go the gym in the nude.

No women showed up for "Naked Sunday," even though eight were among the 100 people who had signed up for the event.

"It's always the same — the first ones to shy away are the women. You see that at nudist camps too," said Henk.

The Netherlands is known for its relaxed sexual attitude. Women often go topless on beaches, nudity is common on television. Prostitution is legal in designated areas.

But some people in the town of 5,100 were upset by "Naked Sunday," and some gym members worried about sanitation.

"Unbelievable that you guys came up with this idea," wrote one visitor to the club's Web site who said he would be switching gyms. "Okay that there are people who want to exercise bare naked, but do it at home and not in a public place."

Councilman Frits Witjes, who cut a ribbon for the event, said the town government supported the idea because it promoted fitness and nudists have a right to freedom of expression.

"Some people are happier about it than others," Witjes said.

Nude exercisers were required to put towels down on weight machines, use disposable seat covers while riding bikes and disinfect the equipment.

"There are things that you like to do, and for a nudist, it just feels better to do them with your clothes off," said Ron van der Putten, who drove for more than an hour for the event. "You feel more free."
___
On the Net:
http://www.fitworld-heteren.nl/

Mass. health care plan moving forward

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:49:25 GMT
By STEVE LeBLANC, Associated Press Writer
BOSTON - The average uninsured Massachusetts resident could obtain health care coverage for as little as $175 a month under the state's insurance law, less than half of earlier estimates, officials said Saturday.
The plans are a critical piece of the state's landmark insurance initiative, which requires all state residents to have health coverage by July 1 or face tax penalties. Some insurers had suggested earlier that the premium would be $380 a month.

"This is a big improvement from the first round of bids and a big step forward for health care reform," Gov. Deval Patrick said as he released the results of negotiations with health insurers in the state. "The health security that was the point of health care reform will be delivered at an affordable price."

The panel charged with overseeing the law is expected to give its seal of approval Wednesday to the seven health care plans that met the affordability goals. On March 20, the board is scheduled to vote on whether the insurers will be able to offer lower cost versions without drug coverage.

The minimum plan detailed by Patrick would cover the average uninsured Massachusetts resident, who is typically around 37 years old. It includes prescription drug coverage and covers basic medical care, such as emergency room visits and outpatient medical care.

Lower cost plans would be available to young adults. Prices would also rise and fall depending on the age of the person seeking insurance and where they live.

The plans must include coverage for preventive doctor visits and an out-of-pocket limit, after which the plan would pay everything else, said the board's executive director, Jon Kingsdale. They must also include coverage for emergencies, mental health, substance abuse, rehabilitation, hospice and vision.

Childhood obesity triggers early puberty study

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:56:56 GMT

CHICAGO - Childhood obesity in the United States appears to be causing girls to reach puberty at an earlier age, for reasons that are not clear, a study said on Monday.
The report from the University of Michigan's Mott Children's Hospital said a multiyear study following a group of 354 girls found that those who were fatter at age 3 and who gained weight during the next three years reached puberty, as defined by breast development, by age 9.

"Our finding that increased body fatness is associated with the earlier onset of puberty provides additional evidence that growing rates of obesity among children in this country may be contributing to the trend of early maturation in girls," said Dr. Joyce Lee, the lead author.

"Previous studies had found that girls who have earlier puberty tend to have higher body mass index, but it was unclear whether puberty led to the weight gain or weight gain led to the earlier onset of puberty," she added.

"Our study offers evidence that it is the latter," Lee said.

Earlier studies have found that U.S. girls are reaching puberty earlier than was the case 30 years ago, a time span during which rates of childhood obesity also increased, the study said.

In the study girls were classified as at risk for being overweight if their body mass index (a measurement of weight related to age and height) was between the 85th and 95th percentiles, and defined as overweight if the measurement was greater than the 95th percentile.

The researchers said that 168 of the girls were classified as being "in puberty" by the age of 9 and nearly two dozen reported having their first menstrual period by two years later.

Higher body mass index scores at all ages had a "strong association with earlier onset of puberty, the authors said.

The study was published in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Earlier onset of puberty in girls has been associated with a number of adverse outcomes, including psychiatric disorders and deficits in psychosocial functioning, earlier initiation of alcohol use, sexual intercourse and teenage pregnancy and increased rates of adult obesity and reproductive cancers," the study said.

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