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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Recent SARS Cases Called Milder

The three cases of SARS recently identified in China appear to represent a milder strain of the virus than the one responsible for the initial global outbreak that began in late 2002, a World Health Organization spokesman says.

Each of the recent patients was feverish for only eight to 12 days, did not require breathing ventilators, and did not appear to infect anyone with whom they had close contact, Dr. Robert Breiman tells The New York Times.

Breiman leads the WHO team that has been investigating the recent cases in China. Even with this positive news, however, he cautions that the cases so far could represent "the luck of the draw." Some cases documented during the first epidemic were also on the milder side, he says.

Even if a more severe strain were to re-emerge, Breiman says, China and other Asian nations are much better prepared to deal with a possible second surge than they were last year. In particular, he says, the national health systems would be better able to quickly isolate and treat victims to prevent the virus's spread.

"The lessons of 2003 were taken very much to heart," he tells the Times.

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U.S. Wants Changes in WHO Obesity Plan

The Bush Administration says it wants significant changes to the World Health Organization's plan to fight global obesity, the Washington Post reports.

The Administration says the plan goes too far in suggesting how governments can help stem one of the world's biggest health problems. William Steiger, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, says the Administration wants to place much more emphasis on "personal responsibility" instead of government regulation, the Post reports.

The WHO plan is opposed by some food manufacturers and the sugar industry for its controversial proposals, including restricting junk food advertising aimed at children and raising taxes on less-healthy food. Proponents of the WHO plan say the just-announced U.S. opposition is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to placate the food manufacturers, the Post reports.

Steiger, echoing other administration officials, denies those accusations, saying portions of the WHO plan aren't "based on the best practices and the best science."

The WHO's governing board will take up the proposal at a meeting next week in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Scientists: Underfunded Malaria Effort Causing Deaths

International efforts to combat malaria are being stymied and causing unnecessary deaths, chiefly because less-expensive treatments are being used in an effort to save money, a group of scientists alleges in this week's issue of The Lancet medical journal.

The authors, led by Amir Attaran from Great Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs, says malaria has developed a resistance to older, conventional treatments like chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. A newer treatment known as artemisinin-class combination therapy (ACT) offers a far better solution for people with the resistant strains.

And while the World Health Organization and other international health agencies have advocated the use of ACT in these cases, "most African countries reluctantly cling to [the older, less effective treatments] because ACT is 10 times more expensive, and therefore unaffordable to them," the authors write.

"When those same countries seek financial aid to purchase ACT, they are forcefully pressured out of it by governments such as the U.S.A., whose aid officials say that ACT is too expensive and 'not ready for prime time,' " the authors allege.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement saying it "has never pressured any nation to use the drugs cited in the article as less effective, in place of the more expensive ACT drugs."

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Bird Flu Could Be Worse Than SARS, Experts Warn

The World Health Organization says the human cases of avian (bird) flu that have stricken several Asian countries could pose more of a threat to the region than SARS, the Associated Press reports.

The WHO's warning came as Vietnam Thursday reported four more suspected human cases, bringing its tally to 14 suspected cases and 12 deaths. Bird flu has infected millions of chickens in Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, prompting the slaughter of tens of thousands of birds at poultry farms across the three nations.

The virus is highly contagious among chickens, and is believed passed to people through contact with live infected birds. There have been no confirmed cases of person-to-person transmission, the AP reports. Health officials also doubt there is any danger from people eating properly cooked eggs and poultry meat.

The same strain of bird flu killed six people in Hong Kong seven years ago, leading to the preventive slaughter of more than 1 million chicken and ducks, the wire service says.

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Six Nations Declare War on Last Vestiges of Polio

The health ministers of Nigeria, Afghanistan, India, Egypt, Niger, and Pakistan have signed on to a World Health Organization plan to vaccinate more than 250 million children against polio by year's end, BBC News Online reports.

The six nations represent the last known areas on earth where polio is considered endemic. The new effort became necessary when an initial plan to eradicate the world of polio by the year 2000 failed to achieve its mark.

Still, there has been much progress since the $3 billion Global Polio Eradication Campaign was launched in 1988. At that time, more than 125 countries were significantly affected. By last year, there were fewer than 700 cases of polio tallied worldwide, the BBC reports.

WHO says if polio is not eradicated soon, it could begin spreading again since many countries declared free of the disease no longer require vaccinations.

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