Dengue vaccines are already being sold in private pharmacies in Costa Rica; however, the price is of around 70 thousand colones (approximately $130), and at least three doses are required to achieve a full protection against the four serotypes that are found in the country. The dengue vaccine can be applied to people between 9 and 45 years of age and cannot be applied to pregnant or breastfee...

(Reuters Health) - Just because social attitudes toward sex at older ages are more positive than in the past doesn’t mean all older women have positive feelings about sex, according to a new Australian study. Researchers found that nearly 90 percent of women over 70 in the study had low sexual desire and a much smaller proportion were distressed about it. The combination of low desire and relat...

A new radiotherapy technique already available in Costa Rica can help cure lung cancer without the need of surgery. The outpatient procedure is ideal for around a 30% of people diagnosed with this form of cancer but for whom surgery is not an option be it because of risks related to age, other health problems, or heart conditions. The application of the radiotherapy using this new technique ca...

Thomson Reuters Foundation / Sixty percent of the world's 5.9 million children who died before their fifth birthday last year were in 10 countries in Asia and Africa, said a study published on Friday, prompting calls for action to reduce the mortality. The study published in The Lancet medical journal said the latest data highlights the inequality in children's death among the 194 countries it ...

By Wendy Anders Gardasil, the controversial human papilloma virus vaccine that was tested in Costa Rica. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG’s Central America and Caribbean subsidiary (Roche CAC) reported US$116 million in exports from January to October 2015, reported El Financiero (EF), Costa Rica’s business daily. As part of this growth, the company invested US$5.5 million last year in its distri...

A new antibiotic with antifungal properties was discovered in Costa Rica by investigators of the University of Costa Rica (UCR), Harvard University and Wisconsin University. The investigation was conducted in the biological station La Selva in Sarapiquí, Heredia and the name given to this new molecule “Selvamicin” actually makes reference to this. La Selva receives close to 300 investigators ev...

Talamanca, Limón. By Wendy Anders Yesterday morning, Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security Gustavo Mata Vega together with Costa Rican police officials welcomed a humanitarian mission at the Limón International Airport on the country’s Atlantic coast. Helicopters from the US Southern Command based in Panama arrived with a 16-person medical team comprised of doctors, nurses, dentists, ...

Fatal motorcycle accident in Costa Rica, from the Facebook "Accidentes en carretera" group. By Wendy Anders “We can not accept that our families are dying on our streets,” exhorted Elian Villegas, Costa Rica’s National Insurance Institute (INS) president, in a public video statement issued Friday. By the end of this year, his agency estimates that 379 people will have died due to road-re...

By Wendy Anders Youth in Costa Rica, photo for illustrative purposes. The most recent data for adolescent mental health in Costa Rica paint a troublesome picture. An April 2014 study of 3,372 students from 32 public and private high schools in the greater San José metropolitan area shows that one in ten reported having been a victim of violence, and 13 percent had had suicidal thoughts. ...

When we hear about bullying we think about kids and teenagers making fun of a peer due to a number of different reasons, perhaps the way they dress, or the way they look, weight problems, acne, or different social problems; rarely do we link dental problems with bullying. But the fact is according to a study published by the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics that unat...

By Wendy Anders Source: Cool Mountain, photo for illustrative purposes. A proposal to levy a temporary 2 percent tax on non-alcoholic beverages has been introduced by Christian Socialist Legislator Rafael Ortiz Fábrega. The funds from the tax would finance the purchase of expensive drugs by the Costa Rican Social Security’s (CCSS) public health-care system. The proposed initiative would ...

By Wendy Anders La Carpio, an impoverished neighborhood in the San Jose metro area. (CRS Archive) The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in mid-October shared with the Costa Rican Ombudsman’s Office observations on health, safety, social issues, poverty, employment, and rights of vulnerable populations; and urged the government to undertake actions in these are...

By Wendy Anders A surgery in Costa Rica, Wikimedia Commons An interview with Pablo Guzman Stein, director of the private Medical Sciences University (Ucimed), located west of La Sabana Park in San José, Costa Rica, revealed the ways in which specialists in certain medical fields are actively maintaining a shortage in such areas to curtail competition, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s mainst...

Updated on Monday, October 24. By Wendy Anders Inside the clandestine abortion clinic raided by Costa Rican police Saturday. Saturday morning Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) police arrested a 38-year-old Costa Rican woman by the last name of Morales for allegedly participating in an illegal abortion clinic in Desamparados, a densely populated southern San José district, in Costa Rica...

By Wendy Anders A hammock that was improvised to cart an indigenous woman in the Limón province by foot to be treated for appendicitis. She died from complications. While tourists fly from around the world to San José, Costa Rica for top notch medical and dental services, entire towns in remote parts of the country still lack even the roads to reach the nearest under-staffed public health p...

Dental health is many times neglected and the reasons behind this are many, probably one of the most common reasons people don’t give the necessary importance to dental health is the fear of going to the dentist, many associate the dentist with pain and/or discomfort; and likely the second most common reason has to do with money, getting dental treatments depending on what you need can be pricey, ...

By Wendy Anders Colegio de Medicos location in Sabana Sur, San José. Members of the Costa Rican Professional Medical Association (Colegio de Médicos) are providing free medical consultations in eight specialties today, Monday the 10th, and tomorrow, Tuesday the 11th of October. The consultations will be held at the Costa Rican Medical Association headquarters in Sabana Sur adjacent to th...

By Wendy Anders A Long Line for Free Health Care at the Calderon Guardia Hospital One of San José, Costa Rica’s main public hospitals, the Hospital México, announced it has succeeded in reducing wait times for heart surgery by 652 percent. The wait time has been reduced from 745 days to 99 days, said Dr. Juan Antonio Ugalde, deputy director of the medical center, due to a special project...

(Reuters Health) - Women with early-stage breast cancer may have fewer treatment complications and lower costs when they don’t get a mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery, a U.S. study suggests. In recent years, reconstruction following a mastectomy has become more widely available, contributing to a sharp increase in the number of women who opt for this treatment even when less aggress...

(Reuters Health) - Men with prostate cancer may be more likely to have the most serious form of the disease if their diet contains a lot of fat from meat and dairy, a recent U.S. study suggests. The increased risk tied to saturated fat and cholesterol was greater for the prostate cancer patients who had not been taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, researchers report in the journal Prostat...

Clinica Bíblica’s new building in Pozos, Santa Ana involves an approximate investment of $19 million USD. The private clinic, bought the land since 2013 and began with the construction of the first phase in August of this year, the estimated time-frame to conclude the work is of around 18-24 months. The new building is located right at the entrance of Santa Ana, close to Forum 1. The medical ce...

Warsaw, Oct. 3  - Tens of thousands of black-clad women protested across Poland Monday against a proposed near-total abortion ban in the devoutly Catholic country, where the law is already among the most restrictive in Europe. Polish women take part in a nationwide demonstration against a proposed near-total abortion ban in the devoutly Catholic country in Warsaw on October 3, 2016. AFP Pro...

By Wendy Anders Since June, private in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments have been available in Costa Rica thanks to a ruling by the International Human Rights Court ordering Costa Rica to make the health service available. The country’s public Women’s Hospital in San José has been chosen as the site for publicly insured women to receive IVF treatments, reported Teletica, Costa Rica’s Cha...

(EFE).- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they will donate more than $3 billion over the next ten years for research into the cure and prevention of diseases. "Can we all together work to cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children's lifetime? We think it's possible and so do scientists,", they said in a message on Facebook, explaining that ...

/PRNewswire/ For the third time, Costa Rica will host the largest Latin American forum in the Life Sciences field: the Life Sciences Forum 2016, an event organized by the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency (CINDE). The forum will gather some 350 international and national participants who will analyze the main trends in the life sciences industry, and explore Costa Rica's potential in one ...

VANCOUVER, Canada — Health Canada will now allow doctors to prescribe heroin to people who are severely addicted to opioids as per a recent amendment of their regulations, reported The Canadian Press last week. Photo for illustrative purposes, Flickr. The amendment was included in light of the country’s opioid overdose crisis, stated the Canadian daily, and prescription heroin treatment all...

One of the questions that always arises when we touch on the topic of medical tourism is How to find the right doctor? Health is the one thing we certainly can’t, shouldn’t, play games with, doing the proper research is a must, and this usually involves checking on credentials, reviewing expertise, requesting referrals, and just in general asking a lot of questions  that will help you narrow down ...

By Wendy Anders The first steps towards using dogs for detecting cancer in humans are being taken by the Costa Rican Canine Association, a civic group working throughout the country to promote and educate on dog-related issues to “have a positive impact on society,” according to their website. The Teletica Channel 7 news station last week reported on their latest push to train dogs in detect...

By Wendy Anders Over the past 24 hours, two abandoned fetuses were discovered discarded in public streets in Costa Rica. Fetal abandonment is a more regular occurrence in Costa Rica than you might think. This year has seen its share of discarded fetuses in Costa Rica, which, Walter Espinoza, Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) director, said in a televised press statement today, is one of th...

Quito, Ecuador A quick response can save your life if you are bitten by a poisonous snake. But in some remote areas of Ecuador people are 6 - 7 hours away from medical care, and that wait for snakebite victims is often fatal. In this tropical, Andean country, which imports snake anti-venom from Costa Rica and Colombia, an estimated 9,000 - 10,000 people are bitten by snakes per year, and...

By Wendy Anders Barva, a small coffee-growing town north of Heredia, inaugurated a spacious new clinic last week. The Costa Rican Social Security Board (CCSS), the country’s public health services agency, said at the opening that the new facility expands their capacity to meet with health needs of Barva’s 42,464 residents. Outfitted with previously unavailable services such as a clinical ...

Wikimedia Commons By Tânia Esteves for EFE No one knows for certain the reason why human beings need several hours of sleep every day, but a Portuguese neuroscientist has discovered the protein responsible for the mechanism regulating sleep. Diogo Pimentel, part of an Oxford University team studying the intricacies of sleep, is one of the lead authors of a paper recently published in "Na...

Affordable healthcare isn’t a myth. In fact, healthcare systems in other countries can be equally as good—if not better—than that in the U.S.—and charge far less for their services. As more and more U.S. retirees learn that better and faster healthcare is available abroad at a fraction of the cost they’re accustomed to paying at home, a growing number of them are opting to take advantage of what’...

Wikimedia Commons By Andres Sanchez Braun Tokyo, Aug 14 (EFE).- Blood produced artificially is the simple formula proposed by a Japanese firm whose revolutionary project seeks to reduce the scarcity of donor banks, bring down the cost of blood preservation and avoid contaminated transfusions. "One tends to think that blood is always available when a transfusion is required, but the truth...

By Wendy Anders At ten this morning, the country’s public service regulator, Roberto Jiménez, received taxi sector leaders as they demanded to be heard one more time on the issue of Uber’s legality in the country. Jiménez reiterated that his agency, the Aresep, has done everything in its power to regulate public transportation services, and that any further decisions are pending court decisi...

By Wendy Anders Real Intercontinental Hotel San Jose, Costa Rica International Living announced it will hold its 2016 Fast–Track Costa Rica; Lifestyle and Opportunity Conference September 22-24 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Escazú, San José. This once-a-year opportunity will provide plenty of information about relocating to Costa Rica, and promises to “deliver everything you need to f...

Wikimedia Commons Dozens of people have died from an unknown disease in the northwestern Nagaland area of Myanmar over the last two months, an epa journalist reported. As of this morning, the sickness has claimed the lives of 40 people, marking an increase after Friday's death toll of 39, according to Shu Maung, Assistant General Secretary of the Council of Naga Affairs. Most victims of th...

A dental patient from the Greater Chicago area experienced one of the worst fears for anyone undergoing a surgical procedure. The incident occurred in 2014, and it was recently reported by Kristine Guerra of the Washington Post in an article published by the Chicago Tribune: Janus Pawlowicz was having root canal surgery his dentist told him that she had dropped an instrument somewhere and cou...

Flickr Commons By Hector Pereira A litter of five puppies has to go home from a veterinarian's office without getting the necessary vaccinations, because now pets in Venezuela suffer from the same shortage of medicines as people do as a result of the country's economic crisis. Briceida Niño, a mom in Caracas, took her five pups to one of the veterinarian centers assigned to the "Nevado M...

Cartoon by Clay Jones U.S. health authorities announced this week the start of the first safety trials for a vaccine against the Zika virus just as the disease has appeared in Florida with at least 15 people having been infected by locally-hatched mosquitoes. The National Institute of Health announced Wednesday that the first phase of the studies is aimed at establishing the safety of the e...