World Bank to invest $700 mln on women, children’s health
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced Monday that at least $700 million would be invested by 2015 to help developing countries reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for women and children’s health. The funding will come from the International Development Association (IDA), the Bank group’s fund for the poorest countries, Xinhua reported citing a statement from the World Bank president. It will enable national scale-ups of successful pilot projects that were made possible by support from the World Bank’s Health Results Innovation Trust Fund (HRITF) and IDA, the statement said. “We need to inject greater urgency into our collective efforts to save more women and children’s lives, and evidence shows that results-based financing has significant impact,” said Kim at a high-level forum at the United Nations. “The World Bank Group is committed to using evidence-based approaches to help ensure that every woman and every child can get the affordable, quality health care necessary to survive and live a healthy, productive life,” he added. (IANS)
Soon, spring-like fibres to mend broken hearts
Researchers have fabricated spring-like fibers to help repair damaged heart tissue. Doctoral students Sharon Fleischer and Ron Feiner — under the supervision of Dr. Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology — have fabricated fibers shaped like springs that allow engineered cardiac tissue to pump more like the real thing. Dvir said that until now, when scientists have tried to engineer cardiac tissue, they’ve used straight fibers to support the contracting cells. He said that but these fibers prevent the contraction of the engineered tissue and what they did was mimic the spring-like fibers that promote contraction and relaxation of the heart muscle. Dvir asserted that they found that by growing tissues on these fibers, they got more functional tissues. (IANS)
Alzheimer’s may be predicted
Many of the biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease that could potentially predict which patients will develop the disorder later in life have already been identified. Now, studying spinal fluid samples and health data from 201 research participants at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown the markers are accurate predictors of Alzheimer’s years before symptoms develop. The researchers evaluated markers such as the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain, newly visible thanks to an imaging agent developed in the last decade; levels of various proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid, such as the amyloid fragments that are the principal ingredient of brain plaques; and the ratios of one protein to another in the cerebrospinal fluid, such as different forms of the brain cell structural protein tau. (ANI)