Friday, Feb. 21, 1986
University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
9
Flu, pneumonia seize states
United Press International
ATLANTA — More than 800 people across the country died from influenza and pneumonia last week. Physicians saw more patients with respiratory illnesses than at any time since 1981, federal health officials said yesterday.
Kansas was one of 19 states that reported many cases of the flu.
Karl Kappus, physician at the national Centers for Disease Control's influenza surveillance branch, said all three indexes used by the CDC to measure flu activity across the country pointed upward.
Flu and pneumonia deaths in 121
U. S. cities accounted for 6.2 percent of deaths for the week that ended Saturday. The 830 pneumonia-fu fatalities last week represented the seventh straight week of increased mortality from those two ailments.
"All states have now either identified flu viruses or are currently reporting outbreaks of influenza-like illness," Kappus said.
The numbers of influenza viruses are increasing. Eighty-three percent of the viruses are listed as type-B flu, the agent that strikes many young adults.
The CDC's "sentinel" physicians — the network of family doctors who kept tabs on the flu — reported a national average of 11.5 cases for the week ending Feb. 5 compared with the 10.8 average for the preceding week.
The other 17 percent were identified as type A(H3N2), the same virus that caused numerous epidemics in the United States and overseas.
Before the flu outbreaks started in early January, the physicians were seeing an average of three to four cases of flu per week, Kappus said.
Kappus said 37 states reported widespread or regional outbreaks
last week, the most in any week since the beginning of 1801.
He said the influenza infections, which are so prevalent, might be causing other health problems — secondary infections that strike after the flu virus weakens the body's defenses.
The other states that reported widespread cases of the flu are Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Company health programs aid employee performance
United Press International
CHICAGO — Company-sponsored health programs can have a dramatic effect on employee fitness and can more than double the amount of exercise workers get, an exercise researcher reported yesterday.
Such programs, which combine health screening, exercise rooms and education, often pay for themselves with the savings from reduced hospitalization and absenteeism, according to Steven Blair of the Institute of Aerobics Research in Dallas.
"That is the key question, after all," Blair said. "Exercise changes, smoking changes, fitness changes, those are all good and fine, but you also have to see how that impacts on the company."
Blair studied Johnson & Johnson's "Live for Life" program, in which several companies under its corporate wing instituted wellness programs in the late 1970s.
The company arranged exercise and aerobics classes and offered programs in smoking cessation, weight control, stress management, nutrition education and blood pressure intervention.
Comparing 1,399 employees in four of the company's subsidiaries using the full program with 748 employees in three companies that had only the health screening. Blair found employees in the full program had a 104 percent increase in daily exercise over a 24 month period, while the other employees showed only a 33 percent increase.
Fitness measurements such as lung capacity also showed dramatic improvements for the full program group, Blair said.
Blair said his study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, was important because it was the first involving company-sponsored health programs that instituted proper scientific controls for comparison purposes.
“It’s definitely been cost effective,” he said. “It has had an enormous effect on morale. Whenever we take employee attitude surveys, it is considered the top benefit or one of very top ones.”
Melvin Benjamin, director of Johnson & Johnson's "Live for Life," called the program one of the most successful the company has ever offered.
Benjamin said company figures indicated that the money the company saved on hospitalization and absenteeism more than paid for the program. The program costs between $170 to $200 per employee.
Midwives in Massachusetts open clinics during obstetrician strike
BOSTON — Midwives hung posters in supermarkets and Laundromats yesterday advertising a free makeshift clinic to serve pregnant women rebuffed by obstetricians protesting high malpractice insurance rates.
United Press International
"We want to make sure women get all the care they need," said Peggy Spindel, spokeswoman for the midwives, who plan to open their clinic tomorrow in Gloucester. Mass.
A majority of Massachusetts obstetricians have carried their
refusal to accept new patients into a fourth week.
Spindel said the midwives wanted to provide care. She denied that they were trying to take advantage of the obstetricians' protest against soaring insurance premiums.
"That would be a slimy thing to do," she said.
The midwives, licensed by the Massachusetts Midwife's Association, plan to add more clinics in other areas.
Protesting doctors said they were upset to learn the state attorney general's office sent civil investigative demands, which are orders to provide information on physicians' activities, to many hospitals.
Spindel said midwives were bringing their own supplies, such as blood
The attorney general wants to know whether the actions constitute an illegal boycott.
pressure cuffs, stethoscopes and fetuscopes.
The obstetricians insist the move to curtail services represents individual decisions rather than illegal action.
Tylenol makers say they rejected new capsule type
United Press International
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - Tytlenl maker Johnson & Johnson said yesterday that it had considered but rejected using a new capsule in 1984 after seven people died in Chicago from cyanide-poisoning and before a New York woman died from similar poisoning this month.
The company said the capsule would not adequately prevent tampering and decided against using it.
After seven people died in 1982 in Chicago from cyanide-laced Tylonel, Johnson & Johnson put tamper-resistant seals on its bottles.
Johnson & Johnson announced Monday it would no longer produce non-prescription drugs in capsule form because of the Feb. 8 death of Diane Elsbroth in New York from cyanide-tainted Extra Strength Tylenol cansules.
Elsrösh's death still is under investigation. No new leads were reported in the case or in the case of a second bottle of contaminated Tylenol found in a Bronxville store last week.
Millard Hyland, Westchester County medical examiner, continued examining reports on 165 deaths in Westchester this year in a search for links to evanide-laced Tylolen.
The issue of capsule technology centered on R.P. Scherer Corp., a Troy, Mich., supplier of capsules to Johnson & Johnson.
Scherer had developed "Soniseal," a process that the company claimed made capsules more tamper resistant by using sound waves to lock together the two pieces of gelatin.
"We looked at all new technologies quarterly since 1982, and we have never seen one that we thought was any better than the triple seal system we have been using," said Johnson & Johnson spokesman Jim Murray.
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841-4599
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