Medicare

Medicare refers to several publicly-funded health insurance programs that differ from place to place and country to country.

Medicare in United States

Medicare in United States is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over, or who meet other special criteria.
Medicare operates as a single-payer health care system.

Medicare in Australia

Medicare is Australia's publicly-funded universal health care system, operated by the government authority Medicare Australia. Medicare is intended to provide affordable treatment by doctors and in public hospitals for all resident citizens and permanent residents. Residents with a Medicare card can receive subsidized treatment from medical practitioners who have been issued a Medicare provider number, and fully subsidized treatment in public hospitals. Visitors from countries which have reciprocal arrangements with Australia have limited access to Medicare.


Medicare in Canada

The medicare in Canada is the universal publicly funded health insurance system.

Under the terms of the Canada Health Act, all insured persons are entitled to receive "insured services" without co-payment. Such services are defined as medically necessary services if provided in hospital, or by 'practitioners'.

Approximately 70% of Canadian health expenditures come from public sources, with the rest paid privately (both through private insurance, and through out-of-pocket payments). The extent of public financing varies considerably across services.

Swine Flu Research - Updates

• The H1N1 Swine Flu is believed to be most contagious and dangerous Flu according to the Researchers in Britain.It spreads to one among the three persons who comes in contact with the affected and in every 1000 people effected 4 people are supposed to die.
  

• The H1N1 Swine Flu virus is believed to have spread across 44 states out of 50 in United states and the registered cases going upto 5,251 worldwide.
  

• Swine Flu is rampant in Mexico where 56 people have died so far and 3 have died in America 1 in Canada and 1 in Costa Rica taking the death toll to 61 as said by World Health Organisation.

• A person from China who recently visited America is also believed to have effected with the Flu.

• In Asia Hongkong and Southkorea are the first places to be hit by this disease.

Swine Flu - H1N1 influenza virus

Swine influenza (also called swine flu, pigfluenza, hog flu, and pig flu) refers to influenza caused by those strains of influenza virus that usually infect pigs and are called swine influenza virus (SIV).Swine influenza is common in pigs in the midwestern United States, Mexico, Canada, South America, Europe (including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Italy), Kenya, Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan and other parts of eastern Asia.

The 2009 Flu outbreak in humans that is widely known as "Swine Flu" is due to an apparently virulent new strain of influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that is supposed to be derived from one strain of human influenza virus, one strain of avian influenza virus, and two separate strains of swine influenza. The origin of this new strain is unknown, and the World Organization for Animal Health reports that this strain has not been isolated in pigs.It passes with apparent ease from human to human, an ability attributed to an as-yet unidentified mutation.

Symptoms : In humans, the symptoms of swine flu are similar to those of influenza and of influenza-like illness in general, namely chills, fever, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, weakness and general discomfort.

The time and location of the outbreak is still unknown, but was first detected when flu cases were reported by officials in Mexico. Within days, hundreds more suspected cases were discovered in Mexico, with cases also showing up in the U.S. and several other countries like Spain, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Israel and even parts of Asia like Hongkong and Southkorea.
On April 28, 2009, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first official US death of swine flu. Tests confirmed that a 23-month old toddler from Mexico, who was probably infected there, died from the flu while visiting Texas.

As the swine influenza A H1N1 virus is a new virus, no swine flu vaccine is available to prevent infections. Experts are already working on a swine flu vaccine though. It is estimated that the swine flu vaccine won't be ready until sometime around September to November 2009.

visit... http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu for further details.