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Health Check: 16/05/2012

16/05/2012

BBC World Service - Health Check, 16/05/2012

Texting HIV results to save babies’ lives in Zambia

Reducing alcohol misuse; finding love online; texting HIV results to save babies’ lives in Zambia

STRATEGIES TO ENCOURAGE US TO CUT DOWN ON DRINKING
The government of Scotland has just announced that it will be setting a minimum price for alcohol of fifty pence per unit, which means that a cheap bottle of wine would cost the equivalent of more than seven dollars and a small bottle of vodka would be 22 dollars. 

The hope is that this will reduce drinking in Scotland and lead to a corresponding drop in hospital admissions of 1,600 a year.  But how much does price affect the amount we choose to drink and what have other countries tried to prevent alcohol misuse?  Claudia Hammond speaks to Dr Richard de Visser, lecturer in psychology at Sussex University in the UK.

ONLINE DATING
Long-term love, it seems, is good for your health.  A committed, supportive long-term relationship can help you live longer.  But what is the best way of finding love? Some turn to the internet, where you can scroll through screens of men or women and see who takes your fancy. It undoubtedly works for some, but how does it alter the psychological process of getting to know a new partner? 

A new extensive review of the psychological research on internet dating has just been published in journal Psychological Science and it asks whether the internet offers more than traditional dating. Ely Finkel, Associate Professor of Psychology from North Western University in the United States, is the author of the study.

FASTER HIV TEST RESULTS IN ZAMBIA
In Zambia 21% of people with HIV are children who have contracted the infection from their mothers, either during pregnancy, childbirth or through breastfeeding.  It is crucial for the survival of those babies that their HIV status is diagnosed as soon as possible, however with blood samples needing to be transported to laboratories more than 500km away from some villages, it can take many weeks for results to come back. SMS texting is now coming to the rescue. Dr Phil Seidenberg, from the Zambia Center for Applied Health Research and Development in Lusaka, explains how it works.

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