Two cases of swine flu have been identified in San Diego and Imperial counties, leading to an investigation by state, local and federal health officials to find the source or sources.
A 9-year-old girl in Imperial County and a 10-year-old boy in San Diego County were identified as suffering from swine flu. Both have recovered, but health officials remain puzzled because neither had been in contact with pigs and the strain was one never identified in the U.S.
Officials were quick to assure the public that there is no indication that the virus is spreading. "We do not have an epidemic," said Dr. Wilma Wooten, San Diego County health officer.
Although it commonly causes respiratory problems in pigs, swine flu is rare in humans: only 12 cases of human infection have been detected since 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The most serious recent outbreak was in 1976 among soldiers at Ft. Dix, N.J., in which a soldier died and several became ill with influenza-like symptoms. Symptoms include fever, lethargy, coughing and lack of appetite.
Fifteen first ladies from Africa convened today at Skirball Cultural Center, where they met with various countries’ delegations, companies and organizations to discuss health issues and professional leadership development.
The two-day Leadership for Health summit was organized by the Los Angeles-based US Doctors for Africa and African Synergy, a nonprofit formed by 22 first ladies from Africa. The purpose of the closed sessions was to brainstorm how the first ladies could build alliances to improve their respective countries’ efforts in addressing issues such as maternal health, girls' education and HIV/AIDS.
"Empowering Africa's first ladies is an innovative approach to bettering the lives of millions of Africans," USDFA Chairman Ted Alemayhu said in a statement. "The summit will pair these leaders with U.S. experts, key political figures and important organizations to create ongoing partnerships."
The invitation-only conference continues Tuesday and will include a fundraiser, a celebrity-studded gala with a performance by Natalie Cole and a luncheon hosted by California's first lady, Maria Shriver.
Inmates and staff at the state prison in Lancaster will be tested and evaluated for tuberculosis after a case of the disease was confirmed at the facility, officials said Thursday.
“We take it very seriously,” said Lt. George Allen, a prison spokesman. “That’s why we’re in full lockdown.”
Testing was set to begin Thursday and will be conducted by the medical staff. It will continue for as long as necessary, “depending on what they are able to determine,” Allen said.
Details of how the disease was contracted were “not available for release,” Allen said.
He confirmed that the infected person was a staff member.
An investigation was underway to try to identify “staff and inmates who may have had close contact with the active TB case,” according to a statement issued by state prison officials.
The Lancaster facility houses nearly 4,600 inmates and employs about 1,900 people.
Inmate movement is being restricted and visitations have been suspended for this weekend, officials said.
The suspension could be extended.
No prisoners would be received or transferred out until testing was completed, officials said. Inmates were being notified and educated about the TB testing process on the institution’s television education channel.
The prison, which opened in February 1993, is both a reception center for short-term housing and provides secure long-term housing and services for minimum-, medium- and maximum-custody male felony offenders.
Visitor information is available at (661) 723-8333.
Anti-smoking advocates are celebrating today’s 20th anniversary of California’s groundbreaking tobacco-control effort by releasing a slew of new data showing that cigarette use is continuing its steep decline in the Golden State.
Data released by the state Department of Public Health show that smoking rates among adults have declined 41% since voters approved the California Tobacco Control Program (TobaccoFreeCA.com), which instituted a 25-cent-a-pack tax on cigarettes that has funneled 5 cents a pack to tobacco control.
In 1988, nearly 23% of the public smoked, compared to 13% last year.
Last year also saw youth smoking decline to 14.6%, one of the lowest rates in the nation, state health officials say.
Meanwhile, telephone calls to the “1 800 No Butts” help line are up 25% over last year, data show. Kimberly Belshé, secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency, said in an announcement that authorities estimate the program has over the last two decades saved 1 million lives and $86 billion in healthcare costs.
State inspectors from Cal/OSHA have fined Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center $560 for violating state workplace rules, according to documentation released to The Times this week.
The penalty was assessed after investigators confirmed employee complaints that helicopter exhaust fumes were entering the hospital’s air ventilation system from the rooftop landing pad.
The fine from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health -- which hospital officials are appealing -- stemmed from a January inspection of the $1.02-billion facility that opened its doors in November.
Almost immediately after its opening, helicopter fumes became an issue. Landings on the roof initially triggered fire alarms and caused fire protective doors to automatically close. Months later, hospital workers continued complaining of inhaling exhaust odors every time a helicopter landed.
By the time the Cal/Osha fine was issued Feb. 19, County-USC officials had already shut down the rooftop helicopter pad for nearly two weeks. Since the diversion, which came after The Times inquired about chronic issues with the fumes, helicopters have been diverted to the hospital’s old, ground-based helipad, which requires ambulances to transport patients to the emergency room.
Hospital officials said this week that they may be close to reopening the rooftop to helicopter landings.
About 500 people were evacuated from the area around the USC School of Cinematic Arts this afternoon when a heavy equipment operator ruptured a gas line, authorities said.
After firefighters were unable to turn off the gas when the line ruptured about 12:30 p.m., they began evacuating faculty and staff in the 900 block of West 34th Street, said d'Lisa Davies, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Officials from the Southern California Gas Co. have been called to turn off the gas. No injuries have been reported, Davies said.
Updated, 2:10 p.m.: Gas company crews have closed the gas leak that forced the evacuation. Students and faculty members were allowed back into their buildings at about 2 p.m, said Raul Gordillo, a spokesman for the company. At least one building remained without power, and the gas line was being repaired, he said.
Federal food safety officials are warning people not to eat food containing pistachios because of possible salmonella contamination at a Central California-based plant. Read more about the possible contamination.
The Times found that vaccine exemptions for kindergartners -- which allow them to enroll without having state-mandated immunizations -- had more than doubled in the last decade, leaving hundreds of schools in the state vulnerable to outbreaks.
The rise in unvaccinated children appears to be driven by affluent parents choosing not to immunize. Many do so because they fear the shots could trigger autism, a concern widely discredited in medical research.
The report sparked intense reactions both from those who believe vaccines are harmful and from others upset that a rising number of parents are opting out of immunizations. Check out your local schools using The Times schools database and use our interactive map to see which Southern California school might be at risk.
Keep reading to see answers to:
"What are autism rates among immunized versus non-immunized children?"
"I don't understand why an 'outbreak' is being 'triggered' if the vast majority of students (and others) HAVE been vaccinated."
"Can you please explain what risk the kids without the shots are to the kids that have had all their shots?"
"If people choose to immunize their own children, what is it that they are worried about?"
"What do medical professionals say about advising pregnant women not to eat food high in mercury and then giving babies vaccines that contain mercury?"
Macy’s department store has refused turn over to prosecutors the names of customers who purchased children’s jewelry made with potentially toxic lead, according to a district attorney official.
The department store’s lack of cooperation comes nearly six months after the Los Angeles district attorney’s office filed misdemeanor charges against Macy’s, alleging that it falsely advertised necklaces as “lead nickel free” when they contained a significant amount of lead.
Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Wright said he subpoenaed the customer information from Macy’s in January, but the company has balked at turning it over. He said he believed Macy’s customers could easily be tracked using records from credit cards and checks.
“We want a list of the people that bought the lead-contaminated items so that they can be notified,” Wright said.
The district attorney’s office also charged Pecoware Co. Inc., the Chino-based company that imported the jewelry from China.
The companies face a maximum penalty of $2,500 for each violation. A judge could consider the sale of each piece of jewelry a violation.
County health officials are warning fishermen (and women) not to eat fish caught in the lakes of Earvin "Magic" Johnson County Park in Willowbrook after testing showed that the fish may be contaminated.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued the health advisory to residents Friday after the samples suggested that the fish may contain contaminants above the levels considered safe for human consumption.
"Although the data is preliminary, I advise all residents to refrain from eating fish caught in these lakes until all further testing is completed," said Jonathan E. Fielding, director of public health.
UPDATED, 9:20 p.m.: Preliminary tests showed levels of mercury and PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, to be in excess of federal guidelines, said Joe Mendoza, deputy director of the South Agency of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation. Officials did not know the source of the contamination, Mendoza said.
The parks and recreation department stocks the lake with catfish, but tests showed that some bass were also in the lake, most likely added by the general public, Mendoza said. Preliminary reports pointed to the bass fish as being the problem, but Mendoza said the public should avoid any fish caught in the lake.
"I think they're being very proactive and cautious," Mendoza said. "We're going to do more testing to see what the actual problem is, as far as the contamination of the fish."
Samples taken from the park are part of a joint investigation headed by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Exxon Mobil and the L.A. County Department of Parks and Recreation. Officials are scheduled to gather next week to determine the nature and extent of the contamination of the lakes and fish.
The Children's Institute Inc., a nonprofit organization that aids families plagued by violence, received a $6-million gift from the Booth Foundation that will help fund the development of a new center in Filipino Town, near downtown Los Angeles, officials announced today.
"How stunning and wonderful this is, considering the economic times," said Nina Revoyr, the institute's vice president for external relations and director of its capital campaign.
The donation secures $15 million of the $20 million the agency sought for the project and is the largest sum it has received so far, Revoyr said. The new center will be named after the foundation's founder, philanthropist Franklin Otis Booth Jr., who was the great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, former owner and publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Booth died in June.
About 170 students and staff at Wilson High School will be tested for possible exposure to tuberculosis, according to the Long Beach Unified School District. The screening, which parents will be notified about on Monday, is prompted by an infected individual at the school and will be conducted in early April.
The announcement came on the same day that state health officials reported that California cases of the disease had fallen to the lowest level on record.
Long Beach school officials said people who had contact with the infected person will have a substance injected under the skin of a forearm. The area will be checked a few days later, and if signs of exposure are present, the person’s chest will be X-rayed by the city’s health department or his or her personal physician, said Robert Tagorda, assistant to the superintendent.
Tuberculosis is caused by bacteria and usually infects the lungs, but it can also infect the kidneys, spine, brain and other parts of the body. The disease is spread through the air, when a person infected with TB coughs, sneezes or spits. Though potentially fatal, tuberculosis is treatable with medication.
Wilson High experienced a similar scare in September, when 400 students and staff were tested. Tagorda said the latest potential exposure is not connected with that incident.
California is seeking to recover hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly “approaching a billion,” from private medical laboratories that allegedly bilked the state Medi-Cal program by drastically overcharging for various tests, Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown said today.
Under a scheme involving “massive Medi-Cal fraud and kickbacks,” seven companies, including five based in Los Angeles County, charged the state for services such as urine analysis and blood count tests up to six times higher than what they charged some of their other customers for the same services, Brown said.
The Medi-Cal program provides healthcare services to the poor and is entitled to the deepest possible discounts whenever available.
“What it all means is a lot of money is being ripped off [from] the state,” Brown said at a news conference in Los Angeles. “In the face of declining state revenues, these medical laboratories have been ripping off our medical program for our most vulnerable people.”
Tuberculosis cases
in California have fallen to the lowest level on record, but the state's rate
remains one of the highest in the country, state health officials announced
today.
The tuberculosis
case rate dropped to seven cases per 100,000 people in 2008, down from the previous year's rate, when 7.2 cases were reported for every 100,000 people.
In raw numbers,
California recorded 2,696 tuberculosis cases in 2008, a decline of 1% from the
previous year.
Tuberculosis is a
disease caused by a bacterium that is most well-known for being spread by
coughing and infecting the lungs. The bacteria can also infect other parts of
the body, including the spine, brain and gastrointestinal area. Medication is
available to treat tuberculosis.
California's
tuberculosis rate remains substantially higher than the national
rate, which was 4.2 cases per 100,000 people in 2008, according to the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
University of California regents expressed a mixture of support and financial trepidation Thursday about a proposal that the university play a key role in reopening Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital near Watts in 2012.
Several regents said they wanted ironclad assurances from Los Angeles County supervisors and state officials that UC would not be held responsible for any costs or liabilities for what is expected to be a 120-bed facility with an emergency room. The hospital was shut down in August 2007 after repeated failures in patient care including some that led to deaths.
UC President Mark G. Yudof said he hoped the details could be worked out by the fall, when the regents are expected to review and vote on a final contract for the hospital plan. "I think they’d like to move forward, but there is nervousness," he said of the governing board, which was meeting at UC Riverside.
Under the plan, UC and the county would create a new nonprofit agency to run the hospital. UC is to provide physician services and medical oversight but no financial support, and UC’s name would not be part of the hospital's name, according to the plan presented to the regents Thursday.
The flu season in California this winter is turning out to be one of the mildest in recent years.
The number of severe influenza cases resulting in deaths in children is also down. There have been three pediatric influenza-associated deaths so far this winter, with deaths reported in Riverside, Fresno and Alameda counties; in the same time period last winter there were five pediatric influenza-associated deaths. In Los Angeles County, data released this week showed the number of positive influenza tests declined last week compared to the previous week.
At Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood, doctors there have seen “dramatically less influenza than normal,” said Dr. Larry Baraff, an emergency physician.
“It looks like the main peak is over. ... It’s burning its way out,” said Dr. Elizabeth Bancroft, a Los Angeles County medical epidemiologist. She did not rule out a secondary spike in flu cases later this spring, but such second humps have historically been less intense than the main surge.
A tentative agreement has been reached to reopen the emergency room and other inpatient services at Martin Luther King-Harbor Medical Center near Watts by 2012, a move that would dramatically improve access to care in one of the most underserved areas of the country, according to state and county officials.
Under the plan, the hospital would be operated by a newly founded nonprofit entity governed by a board equally controlled by Los Angeles County and the University of California.
The county would pay all the costs and the university would assume no financial risk, but would instead provide physician services and take primary responsibility for restoring confidence in the facility’s standards for patient care.
The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously today to suspend a county contract with Planned Parenthood to provide health education for thousands of teens and preteens because the nonprofit organization offers abortions.
“I personally have a problem with government funding of an organization that provides abortion services,” said Supervisor John Moorlach, who placed the item on the agenda.
The decision to suspend the $291,788 education grant came after nearly two hours of impassioned public and board member discussion. Planned Parenthood's curriculum includes discussions about birth control alternatives, such as types of contraception and abstinence, as well as about sexually transmitted disease.
None of the Orange County money is used to fund abortions, said Jon Dunn, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood for Orange and San Bernandino counties.
“It’s clear to me that the agenda of Supervisor Moorlach and the other supervisors willingness to go along with him, are driven more by a religious ideology than an articulate health policy that benefits the people of Orange County,” Dunn said.
An outbreak of MRSA skin infections at the San Diego Zoo last year began when a zookeeper infected an elephant calf that was being hand-raised because its mother couldn’t care for it, according to an investigation. The calf, in turn, infected as many as 20 of its human caretakers.
Those most likely to be infected were zookeepers with such close contact as bottle-feeding the calf, playing with it, laying alongside it and using their mouths to blow into its trunk -- a technique to encourage the calf to take milk from a bottle. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the results of the investigation today in its Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, described the case as the first known instance of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, in a zoo elephant and the first known transmission of the superbug from a zoo animal to a human.
Brittney Peters, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Norco Intermediate School, died last month from complications of the flu, according to health officials.
The Riverside County Health Department confirmed Peters was one of two children who died from influenza-related complications in California this flu season.
Peters, who was a youth football cheerleader, died of complications of pneumonia on Feb. 20 after having influenza type B, according to her family.
California public health officials issued $25,000 fines in administrative fines to 10 hospitals throughout the state, including three facilities in Orange County and two in Ventura County, for failing to comply with licensing requirements, authorities said today.
Among the hospitals cited was Anaheim General Hospital, which has received two previous fines and was faulted a third time for “potentially hazardous food-handling practices.”
Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, which has received one previous fine, was penalized for failing to ensure “safe and accurate administration of medications.”
And in Santa Ana, Western Medical Center received its first administrative penalty for failing to investigate an alleged assault “in a timely manner.”
Facilities are allowed by law to appeal the administrative penalties.
-- Rong-Gong Lin II
According to federal regulators, Anaheim General Hospital is one of the hospitals that could lose it's funding and close down. Karen Tapia-Andersen
An Anaheim nursing home has been fined $75,000 for reporting that an elderly man died of heart attack when he actually choked to death on a tuna sandwich.
California Health and Human Services documents show that the Anaheim Crest Nursing Center resident suffered from dementia and was supposed to be given only pureed food.
The man choked on the sandwich Sept. 9, 2008, but the nursing home reported he died of a heart attack. The facility didn't disclose that the tuna sandwich was to blame until the coroner concluded the man choked to death.
Anaheim Crest lawyer Kathy Hurst says the nursing home conducted a second investigation after the autopsy and learned the resident had grabbed a sandwich from a food tray. The facility is appealing the fine.
Nearly a month after she gave birth to octuplets, the story of Nadya Suleman continues to take on soap opera-like twists.
The latest chapter came today on "Good Morning America," in which a man who says he "might" be the father of the octuplets said he donated sperm to Suleman a decade ago when they were dating. He now wants a DNA test to see if he is the father.
Denis Beaudoin told ABC News he had a three-year relationship with Suleman and found it "out of the ordinary" when she asked him to donate sperm.
"But I cared about her so much. And I mean, we were, we were in love. I mean, I loved Nadya very much," he said. "She really had a really infectious laugh. You know, just her laugh would, it would make you crack up. It's kind of like she had a real high-pitch, squeaky cartoon voice. And, you know, she was a lot of fun to be around. Just her whole bubbly outward personality was really, really cool."
Suleman has not identified the father of the octuplets and denied to ABC News that Beaudoin is the father.
A Costa Mesa woman pleaded guilty today to recruiting people for unnecessary surgeries as part of a $154-million medical insurance fraud case spanning 39 states.
Sue Nanda, 40, pleaded guilty to 22 felony counts, including conspiracy, grand theft, failing to file income taxes and capping, which means recruiting patients for fraudulent medical procedures, the Orange County district attorney’s office said.
Nanda and others involved in the scheme were “ripping off the healthcare system and the public,” Orange County District Atty. Tony Rackauckas said in a statement. “These types of crimes cannot occur without these cappers.”
In all, 19 defendants have been charged in the case, including doctors, an accountant and an attorney. Six people have pleaded guilty and been sentenced, the district attorney’s office said.
Nanda recruited more than 170 phony patients from 16 states, officials said. In exchange for cooperating, the patients would receive a cash payment of $300 to $1,000 per surgery or a credit toward a free or discounted cosmetic surgery. Insurance carriers were then billed for the surgeries.
Brittney Peters, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Norco Intermediate School, died last month from complications of the flu, according to health officials.
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