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Tanzanian woman wins landmark case over childbirth operation

By Kizito Makoye DAR ES SALAAM (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A woman left unable to have children after a defective caesarian section operation in Tanzania has won a landmark case against a local hospital whose surgeon left a piece of cloth inside her. Mwamini Adam and her husband filed a lawsuit at the high court in western Tabora region against Urambo District Council’s hospital four years ago, demanding 500 million Tanzanian Shillings ($265,000) for physical and emotional distress. Adam, 37, accused Jacob Kamanda, a gynecologist and obstetrician at the district hospital, of professional negligence and misconduct after he left a piece of cloth in her stomach after performing a caesarian section operation. She said the defective operation meant she can no longer give birth because doctors performing a life-saving corrective operation decided to remove her uterus.

Boehner urges U.S. Senate to pass House’s Medicare doctor pay bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate should pass, without any amendments, legislation overwhelmingly approved by the House of Representatives to avert drastic cuts of payments to doctors treating Medicare patients, House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner warned on Tuesday. “Unless the Senate passes the House-passed ‘doc fix’ bill, significant cuts to physicians’ payments will begin tomorrow. …

India’s acid victims hope for new life after court orders free treatment

By Nita Bhalla and Suchitra Mohanty NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Rupa Saa was just 15 when her stepmother poured acid over her face as she slept, burning her skin and melting her cheeks, nose, mouth and chin. Like many of India’s acid victims, she was shunned due to her disfigurement and struggled to pay for the multiple reconstructive surgeries she needed – leaving her despondent and with little will to live. “I was devastated by the acid attack. Although the amount of compensation is very little, the order by the court will give us a better life and future,” Saa told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Agra, around 200 km (130 miles) south of New Delhi.

Wall St. gains, buoyed by GE divestment plan

The S&P Industrials was up 1.3 percent as the best performing of the 10 major S&P sectors, paced by GE's gain. General Electric jumped 8.7 percent to $27.96 as the most active stock on the New York Stock Exchange, with more than 120 million shares changing hands. “I expect buybacks to continue because a lot of major stocks, including Apple, are undervalued,” Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York. GE will sell the bulk of its $30 billion real estate portfolio over the next two years as it returns to its industrial roots, with Blackstone and Wells Fargo snapping up most of its assets.

Designer molecule lowers HIV levels: trial results

This meant the designer molecule dubbed 3BNC117 may be best used in combination with other drugs, said the team — while highlighting the promise of a new, immunotherapy-based approach to fighting HIV. “This represents potentially a new class of drugs with activity against HIV,” study co-author Marina Caskey of New York's Rockefeller University told AFP. So-called monoclonal antibodies like 3BNC117 which are cloned from a single parent immune cell, hold the promise of actually killing HIV-infected cells. The new agent, cloned from a cell taken from an HIV-positive person, was given to 12 uninfected volunteers and 17 infected with HIV.

Food safety focus of new health campaign

The United Nations launched a food safety campaign Tuesday for an era in which millions are dying of hunger or tainted produce even as more and more people fall ill from eating too much. The epidemic, which has claimed more than 10,000 lives since December 2013, has been blamed partly on people venturing ever deeper into the forest in search of resources.