Jerusalem, Israel Arieh O’Sullivan / The Me – Descending the Tower, the imposing new state-of-the-art inpatient hospital at Hadassah’s Ein Kerem Medical Center, Joseph Mapa was impressed. The chief executive officer of Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital said he’s seen innovations he would like to bring back to Canada.

“It’s leading edge. Just the thinking behind it! Healing gardens, patient rooms, square feet, two beds per room, one bed per room, one window per patient…I mean these are huge developments,” Mapa told The Media Line. “It’s not something we wouldn’t do in the States, or in Canada, and it’s something you certainly want to see and showcased,” he adds.

Mapa was part of a first-ever delegation of CEOs from the top hospitals and medical centers across North America that were visiting Israel this week. This was the brainchild of Rafael Harpaz, director of the Economic Department for America and Africa at Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

“We think we have a lot to share with our friends and colleagues from the USA and Canada on medical technologies, cutting-edge technologies, readiness and preparedness and managing medical science through computers. I think these are areas where Israel has good experience,” Harpaz told The Media Line.

Israel’s life expectancy is much higher than the U.S. and its systems of socialized medicine ensures that everyone has access to basic healthcare while Israel spends a smaller percentage of its gross domestic product on health. There still are problems, most recently with doctors striking for higher wages last year. Its major hospitals are equipped with some of the latest medical technologies, which impressed the delegates.

“The American system has many great things, but also many things to learn from this country and I think that the level of medicine here and the level of training is every bit as good as medicine that I see now at the States,” Kevin Tabb, the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told The Media Line.

“In the States, for better or for worse, medicine in many ways is a business,” Tabb said. “It’s about making patients better, but it is also a financial business. But in Israel that really is not the case, and that is very interesting for people, especially for people from the United States, less so for Canada.”

Tabb said they shared data on costs and saw how care similar to that offered in the U.S. was extended with fewer resources in Israel.

“It’s amazing to see the relatively small budgets for an Israeli hospital, doing tremendous amount things, on what would be considered a pittance in the U.S. and that’s fascinating,” Tabb said.

The Tower at Hadassah is slated to be opened later this month and crews are busy scuttling around clearing away scaffolding and supplies. Not all of the floors are finished, but the fifth floor is spectacular with parquet floors and equipment still in plastic.

“This has been a tremendous exchange of North American healthcare leaders with Israeli healthcare leaders,” Amir Dan Rubin, president and CEO of Stanford University Medical Center. “While our political and reimbursement and systems are different, and the organization of our health systems are different, at the core we have common missions; taking care of patients and … research and education.”

“The challenges are similar here,” Rubin said. “We all have issues of how do we provide insurance coverage so there is the payment issue and there is the delivery system, there are access issues, there is improving quality and innovations and while our mechanisms are slightly different those themes are common.”

The group was briefed at Sheba Medical Center and is slated to visit Sourasky Medical Center, Beilinson Hospital — all in Tel Aviv — and Rambam Hospital in Haifa as well as the IDF Medical Forces center in Tzrifin where they will see the emergency unit that deploys at crises around the globe.

“We didn’t anticipate that so many of the CEOs of the big hospitals in North America would come and we are blessed with a delegation which is close to 50 top heads of hospitals and medical centers,” Harpaz said.

“We share the same challenges that we are facing in our medical treatment, and they appreciate that we are doing this, but on the other hand they are really impressed by all which Israel has to offer. And we have a lot to offer when it comes to medical technologies.”

At Sheba, the group observed a simulation of a mass casualty event, something that Israeli hospitals constantly drill for. Catherine Zahn, CEO of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, found the spirit of Israelis compelling.

“There is a societal receptivity to open mindedness and forward thinkingness,” Zahn told The Media Line. “Like Israel, Canadians believe health care is a basic right of a citizen, a basic human right, rather than a commodity to be bought and sold. There is definitely a kinship there, but I think we have a lot to learn from the perspective of the ‘innovation nation’,” Zahn said.

“It’s also interesting to see how the situation in the Middle East, and the involvement of the military in the country actually probably contributes to that resilience and the attitude that if this doesn’t work out let’s pick up and do something else,” she added. “Picking up on the advances from military science and translating them into health care advances. Those are all very remarkable.”

These sentiments were echoed by her fellow Canadian, Mapa.

“The Israeli system is spectacular — from clinical care to service, to IT in particular, clinical technology, to crisis management,” Mapa said. “It’s state-of-the-art, I mean, its fantastic. We’re excited, but I tell you this not because I am excited, but you see it is evidence based…and that’s what turn us on. Turns me on for sure.”

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Johannesburg, South Africa (IRIN) – The current droughts in Europe and floods in the USA threaten yet another rise in cereal prices in the next few weeks, and serve as a reminder of the changing dynamics of the global food supply system.

Aid agency Oxfam in its new report, Growing a Better Future, says the global food system is ” broken” and warns that we have entered “a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.”

It builds on projections by US-based think-tank International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to predict that food prices of staple grains will more than double in the next two decades.

Using economic modeling based on alternative future scenarios for agricultural supply and demand that take into account the potential impact of climate change, IFPRI has been projecting crop yields, food prices, and child malnutrition up to 2050 and beyond.

“Climate change, high and volatile food and energy prices, population and income growth, changing diets, and increased urbanization will put intense pressure on land and water and challenge global food security as never before,” said Mark Rosegrant, director of environment and production technology division at IFPRI.

“If agricultural production and policymaking continues down its present course, there could be severe consequences for many poor people in developing countries.”

In another 40 years traditional suppliers of certain cereals will change and so will food preferences in Asia as economic prosperity will wean people off a grain-rich to a more diversified diet.

“For Asian countries, we expect rice consumption to continue to decline – as it has been in Vietnam – from 168 kilograms per capita in 2000 to 119 kilograms per capita in 2050,” said Rosegrant.

Asian countries could end up exporting bigger quantities of rice mostly to African countries. The demand for staples will grow in least developed countries, but demand for maize and other coarse grains to produce biofuels will grow substantially in developed countries as well, the projections show.

But growing demand and limited potential to increase supply will force Asian economies, including India and China, to become net importers of grains and meat if there are no changes in the pressures on the food supply and policies, according to Rosegrant.

The USA, Canada and Russia will be able to sustain their production and remain big exporters. Australia’s performance depends on weather conditions which have affected yields dramatically in recent years. Brazil and Argentina will become increasingly important exporters. But food prices could go up 70 percent by 2050, he says.

Global prices are already high with a lot of uncertainties even over the next few months. “During the last food price crisis in 2007-2008, many of the major suppliers of staple grains were affected by environmental factors – as we have now,” cautioned Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Grains at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The last crisis pushed up the number of hungry by almost a billion.

So how do you repair the “broken” food system? Three experts give us their five top policy fixes:

Christopher Barrett, a food aid expert, who teaches development economics at Cornell University in the USA:

– More money for research: Substantial expansion of investment in agricultural research capacity, especially in low- and middle-income countries. “The food price crises of recent years are the bitter harvest of a generation’s underinvestment in agricultural research to ensure that productivity growth keeps pace with demand growth.”

– Investment in renewable energy: Spend more to power irrigation in Africa and parts of Asia and Latin America. Provide low-cost liquid fuels to reduce transport costs and food marketing margins in more remote rural areas: and reduce diversion of prime agricultural lands into fuel crop production. “The energy crisis is linked to the food crisis and will become more closely coupled in the years ahead.”

– Reduce bureaucratic red tape and investment restrictions: This will improve the flow of money in agricultural marketing systems that could reduce large post-harvest food losses. “The world produces ample food; it just cannot distribute and store it well so as to meet needs equitably and efficiently.”

– Diffusion of genetically modified crop varieties: Help low and middle-income countries enact appropriate bio-safety standards to expand the use of genetically modified (GM) varieties that have proved effective in reducing losses to pests, increasing yields, and/or reducing agro-chemicals use.

– Reform US food aid and improve coordination among donors: This will eliminate restrictions that add costs and impose delays which undermine the efficacy of the world’s emergency food assistance system.

Mark Rosegrant, IFPRI:

– Increase investments in agricultural research to improve crop and livestock productivity; promoting GM crop varieties which have proven effective and are considered safe.

– Greater spending on agricultural infrastructure, especially rural roads and irrigation.

– Improve access to diversified, nutritious food and safe drinking water with good service delivery and safety nets.

– Spending on girls’ education, which has a direct bearing on food security.

– Promote the manufacture of ethanol – biofuel from sugarcane rather than from staple grains. “This will not only reduce pressure on grain to be used as feed for biofuel but provide a cheaper and greener alternative to fossil fuel.”

Gonzalo Fanjul, Oxfam’s senior strategic adviser:

– Manage the food system better by regulating volatile commodity markets and making them more transparent; bolster regional and national food reserves; and put an end to biofuel policies which reward companies which divert food into fuel.

– Invest in small-scale producers and protect their rights to land and other natural resources. Five hundred million small-scale farms in developing countries already support one third of humanity and offer the greatest potential to sustainably boost global yields.

– Recognize the crucial role women play in feeding the world by ensuring women are in positions of leadership in institutions where agricultural, food security and climate change decisions are made.

– Deliver a global deal that will ensure the world avoids the worst impacts of climate change, and helps poor producers adapt to changes already in the system.

– Introduce national and international rules that will stop investors and corporations undertaking irresponsible large-scale land investments which undermine vulnerable people’s access to resources and food security.

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– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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A changing climate and a more settled lifestyle have removed any protection that Canada’s Inuit people may once have had from diabetes, according to a report published on Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – Newly resigned Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff has learned that his career path should be built on education, not politics. He learned his lesson the hard way through a humiliating defeat in the hands of the Tories and New Democratic Party on Monday.

Ignatieff announced Thursday he will go back to teaching. Prior to his political stint as MP for the Etobicoke-Lakeshore riding since 2006 and as Liberal Party leader since 2010, Ignatieff was a professor at prestigious universities in the U.S. and Britain such as Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.

This time he will teach at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, Department of Political Science, Munk School of Global Affairs and the School of Public Policy and Governance.

The teaching position was previously held by former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Liberal MP and former Ontario Premier Bob Rae and former Reform leader Preston Manning. It was offered to them by the school’s Massey College during a period of transition in their professional lives.

With his return to academia, Ignatieff said he ended his political career. He said he will use his political and personal experiences to teach students the lessons and mistakes he made in his career and life. Ignatieff said he loves teaching more than being a politician.

The 64-year old resigned Liberal leader, who lost his reelection bid, is returning to his alma mater. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto’s Trinity College and acquired a doctorate in history from Harvard.

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A Chinese student of a Toronto, Canada university was murdered in her dorm room while she was chatting with her boyfriend in Beijing, China.

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Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (AHN) – Public health experts favor the opening of a safe injection site in Toronto after studies showed that the number of drug overdose deaths in Vancouver drastically dipped because of the city’s operation of such a site.

Overdose deaths went down by 35 percent in the area near the safe injection facility, Insite, in the two years after Vancouver opened it in 2003. Other areas in the same city showed a smaller 9 percent reduction of OD deaths.

The study said from 2001 to 2005 there were 290 OD deaths in Vancouver, with 89 of the deaths occurring within 500 meters of Insite.

Thomas Kerr of the Urban Health Research Initiative said this is the first time a substantial reduction in OD deaths was linked to the establishment of a safe injection site. Kerr said the opening of the site reduces behaviors that lead to fatal infections such as HIV and Hepatitis C because of the presence of nurses who supervise IV drug use. He added that public disorder is also cut since the intravenous drug users are not loitering in the streets.

Ottawa, however, doubted the evidence of benefit and tried to close Insite. Despite the study, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford reiterated that he is not in favor of opening such a site in Ontario’s capital city.

The British Columbia Court of Appeals, in a January 2010 decision, decided that the province has jurisdiction over the facility because Insite provides a heath care service.

However, Ottawa elevated the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which will hold a hearing on the suit on May 12.

The study was published Monday in the online edition of the Lancet medical journal.

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Toronto, Canada (AHN) – According to a recent study elevated levels of a protein that helps regulate the body’s blood pressure may also predict a major cardiovascular event in high-risk patients.

By assessing the protein, known as plasma renin activity (PRA), in the blood stream may give doctors another tool to assess a patient’s risk and help prevent a heart attack or stroke.

“Conventional factors like genetics and environment do not always provide a complete patient story and an understanding of cardiovascular risk,” says Dr. Subodh Verma, senior author, researcher and cardiovascular surgeon at St. Michael’s Hospital.

Verma goes on to say, “The plasma renin activity blood marker allows us to identify people at a higher risk and that gives us the opportunity to introduce therapies that would work to lower a patient’s PRA levels.”

If further testing proves conclusive analysis levels of the protein would be another tool in a doctor’s arsenal to evaluate a patient’s risk for heart attack or stroke, thereby providing preventative measures.

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Ontario’s Bowmanville Zoo is Canada’s oldest privately owned zoo, set on 40 hectares of natural parkland. It is included on at least one Top 10 list of the best zoos in Canada for its …

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Canada could be the odd man out if the United States signals Thursday it will follow the European Union and toughen up its approach to artificial food colourings in response to research showing the dyes could affect behaviour in some children.

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Canada is pushing for a national child care program to ensure the country’s future economic prosperity.

The YWCA pointed out more women should be freed from child care duties as the Canadian workforce increasing relies on female workers who are educated and skilled.

The proposal is an alternative to men beginning to be more active in raising children, according to the YWCA report released Monday prior to the global celebration of International Women’s Day.

While many Canadian couples want to have both husband and wife working, the presence of young children forces women to either stay at home or seek only part-time employment. One alternative is to bring the children to child care facilities, which charge up to $60 a day and often have long waiting lists.

Despite the establishment of a national daycare program being one of the vital recommendations of the 1970 Royal Commission on the Status of Women, regulated child care in Canada is available for only 20 percent of children under 5 years old.

However, even with that limitation, employment of women with babies and toddlers grew to 64.4 percent in 2009 from 27.6 percent in 1976. For women with children with the ages 6 to 15, employment reached 79 percent.

Last year, Ontario introduced the full-day kindergarten with schools offering the service expected to reach 1,700 in 2012. YWCA Chief Executive Officer Paulette Senior welcomed the launch of the full-day kindergarten because it will permit the women to participate fully in the economic, social, cultural and political life of their communities.

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