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

Lack of Money Thwarts U.N. Effort to Combat AIDS

Ambitious plans to combat AIDS in poor countries are failing due to shortages of money and patent fights that have prevented antiretroviral drugs from reaching more than 90 percent of the people who need them, The New York Times reports.

That assessment comes three years after the United Nations announced a worldwide offensive against AIDS, the newspaper says.

The drugs have helped to dramatically cut death rates in the United States and other Western countries. But the campaign to distribute the medicines to needy nations has been hampered by a lack of financial contributions from wealthier nations, including the United States, to the U.N. fund created to finance the effort, the Times says.

The result: Only an estimated 300,000 people in the world's poorest countries are getting the drugs, while six million people need them, the Times says, citing World Health Organization figures.

The delays are likely to continue unless wealthy nations contribute much more money to the fund, the paper says.

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Texas Girl is 1st to Get New Child Heart Pump

A 6-year-old Houston girl has become the first child in the world to receive a DeBakey child heart pump, named after famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey.

Surgeons at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston implanted the tiny pump on Friday into Ann Grudziecke. She was recovering but still in critical condition on Friday night, the Houston Chronicle reports.

"The idea of having an implantable pump for children is really a giant step forward," said Dr. Charles D. Fraser Jr., chief of cardiovascular surgery at Texas Children's Heart Center. "We hope this is the first step for developing even smaller devices for children."

The 45-pound girl needed the pump to help circulate blood through her heart. She will remain hospitalized until she receives a heart transplant, a wait that could last several months, according to the newspaper.

The pump is manufactured by MicroMed Technology of Houston. It is a smaller version of the company's regular heart pump, which measures 1 inch by 3 inches and weighs just 4 ounces, the paper says.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this month gave heart transplant centers the option to use the DeBakey children's device on an emergency basis, the Chronicle reports.

Until the arrival of the DeBakey pump, surgeons were limited to pumps that worked outside the body, the newspaper says.

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Federal Courts Block Release of Abortion Records

A federal appeals court refused on Friday to act on a U.S. Justice Department request for abortion records from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Also Friday, a federal judge in Philadelphia prevented the Justice Department from obtaining the medical records of patients who underwent a type of late-term abortion at Hahnemann University Hospital in that city.

In both cases, the Justice Department was seeking the records to see if the hospitals were adhering to the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which Congress passed last year.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, ruled that releasing the records would compromise the privacy of women who had abortions at the hospital, The New York Times reports.

The decision marked the first time an appeals court had issued an opinion on whether the federal government has a right to demand abortion records in its defense of the controversial Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the newspaper says.

In a statement, the Justice Department said it "has made every attempt to ensure that sensitive patient information remains private" and that it planned to continue defending the partial-birth abortion ban.

But abortion-rights proponents called the ruling an affirmation of the privacy rights of women, the Times says.

In the Philadelphia case, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner, siding with Hahnemann University Hospital, also ruled that releasing the subpoenaed records would violate patients' privacy, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

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Study Casts Doubt on Eye Injury/Shaken Baby Link

The belief that bleeding behind the eyes likely indicates a baby has been shaken violently may not be accurate, according to Wake Forest University researchers.

Writing in the new issue of the British Medical Journal, the Wake Forest team says there's little scientific evidence to prove that bleeding behind the eyes alone proves a baby has suffered abuse.

The researchers searched the medical literature on this type of eye injury and found no proof that it could only result from shaken baby syndrome. Their finding supports the conclusion of another recent study, BBC News Online reports.

"If some doctors believe that this eye injury can only result from shaking and haven't critically reviewed the medical literature, false allegations of child abuse could exist," lead researcher Dr. Patrick Lantz told BBC News Online.

An editorial in the same issue of the British Medical Journal suggests that experts need to re-assess the criteria used to diagnose shaken baby syndrome.

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Groups Launch Global Headache-Awareness Campaign

An effort to increase global awareness about headache disorders was launched Friday by the World Health Organization (WHO) and international non-governmental groups.

While headaches don't kill people, they cause long-term disability problems for nations, companies and families all over the world, Benedetto Saraceno, head of the WHO's Mental Health and Substance Abuse department, told the Associated Press.

Tension-related headaches, which include migraines, cluster headaches and chronic daily headache syndromes, are the most common, according to the WHO. Headaches affect people of all ages and levels of society in developing and developed countries.

"There is a common belief that headache is more burdensome in the industrialized countries. In poor countries, the headache problem isn't ranked high because there are other and more serious diseases that kill people," Saraceno told the AP.

This new campaign, called "Lifting the Burden," aims to map the extent of headaches globally and to increase headache awareness among government and health care authorities.

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Intense Aerobic Exercise Bad for Unfit People

Intense, sporadic exercise can cause serious harm to people who are unfit, warn University of Ulster researchers.

They found that infrequent aerobic exercise causes the body to release dangerous free radicals that can negatively affect normal function in people who aren't in shape, BBC News Online reports.

The release of these free radicals occurs when unfit people do exercise that takes their heart rate to about 85 percent of its maximum for more than 10 minutes. Only trained athletes, who seem to be protected from any adverse effects, should push their bodies to that level of exercise on a regular basis, the researchers say.

If you do perform strenuous aerobic exercise, you should work your way up gradually and also ensure that your diet is rich in antioxidants, the researchers recommend. Think broccoli, spinach and berries, to name a few examples.

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