Clinics

It's a question faced by countless travelers headed overseas: What's the best source for travel immunizations? Private physicians are one option. Private clinics specializing in travel medicine are another. But both can be expensive. For travelers flexible enough to make an appointment during somewhat limited business hours, a visit to one of the handful of county and city health clinics that offer immunizations could be the answer.

When Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell was put on trial for murder, activists seized on the case as a symbol of all that is wrong with abortion in America, and used it to call for tighter restrictions and stepped-up oversight. But though Gosnell's behavior was deplorable, macabre and unquestionably illegal, it was aberrational, not symbolic. He has now been convicted, and he will be punished. This does not weaken the case for safe, legal and accessible abortion. Gosnell, a 72-year-old doctor who was neither an obstetrician nor a gynecologist (having failed to complete a residency in those specialties, according to a grand jury report)

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved $44.8 million in extra funding for dozens of private clinics that treat the growing ranks of uninsured patients. The county has been reimbursing clinics for primary care, dental and specialty medical services for the last 13 years, and currently budgets $54 million annually for payments to clinics. The new funding, which will be paid over the next three years, includes $35.5 million in services for new patients, $7.8 million for equipment and construction, and $1.5 million to create a countywide Internet-based medical records system.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. - Army Sgt. John Russell opened fire on U.S. mental health workers at a combat stress center in Iraq out of revenge after doctors said he was not eligible to leave the Army, prosecutors said Monday at the opening of Russell's court-martial on charges of premeditated murder. Five U.S. servicemen were shot to death at the Camp Liberty clinic in 2009. The defense claims that Russell suffered from chronic stress and mental illness that flamed into a psychotic fury.

At the headquarters of Boston Medical Group in Costa Mesa, six salesmen were working the toll-free appointment line on a recent afternoon, fielding calls from men around the country enticed by newspaper and radio ads promising a "proven" solution to erectile dysfunction in "one office visit. " The results are visible "right there in the office," one sales representative told a caller. "It's amazing. " Following a script, he answered a few questions and offered to schedule a $195 consultation at one of the company's 21 U.S. clinics.

Hidden from view in a bucolic grove about 20 miles from Baton Rouge, La., the only operating leper colony in the continental United States has been Jose Azaharez's home for a quarter of a century. "This is all I have in the whole world," said Azaharez, a former welterweight boxer from Cuba who was diagnosed with the disease in the 1950s and is now marginally disfigured. "If I had to leave here, where would I go? Who would I stay with? This is the only home I know."

Federal and local law enforcement officials on Thursday raided four medical clinics in the San Fernando Valley suspected of operating as "prescription mills" that catered to addicts seeking heroin-like painkillers and other drugs. The investigation into the clinics was prompted by the apparent overdose death of a Ventura County man last month, officials said. Authorities closed the clinics — three in Reseda and one in Van Nuys — because of alleged labor code violations, they said.

Two clinics tied to 1-800-GET-THIN have temporarily halted Lap-Band weight-loss surgeries after the device's maker said it would no longer sell to companies affiliated with the massive advertising campaign. The two brothers identified in lawsuits as owners of the surgery centers also hired a top Los Angeles defense attorney to represent them in a flood of pending lawsuits. They retained John Hueston, a white-collar defense lawyer now at Irell & Manella who helped lead the Justice Department's criminal prosecution of Enron Corp.

Share Our Selves will be allowed to keep its dental clinic at the Rea Community Center at least until next January while the rest of the organization relocates, according to an agreement reached with the City Council this week. "That was a crucial point with us," said Jean Forbath, founder and executive director of SOS, which provides emergency food, clothing and financial assistance to about 5,000 Orange County families.

Rio drug traffickers have set up makeshift medical clinics in the slums they control so wounded gang members don't have to risk arrest by going to hospitals, police said Thursday. "It's the first time we've found clinics like this," a police spokesman said. "We can't say how long they've been used -- we assume for some time." Officers discovered the first clinic Wednesday in the Manguinhos slum in northern Rio.

For more than two decades, Wanda Remo has battled one illness after another. Asthma, chronic lung disease, heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, depression, chronic pain, strokes. Specialists treat her lungs, her heart and her joints. Her litany of ailments brought her to emergency rooms six times last year, between numerous additional visits to a federally subsidized health clinic in South Los Angeles. "You are one of the million-dollar patients," her doctor, Derrick Butler, tells the 57-year-old as she leans on her walker during one appointment.

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's attorney general said Tuesday that seven people had been killed and 61 injured in post-presidential election clashes between police, supporters of newly elected President Nicolas Maduro and challenger Henrique Capriles, who has demanded a recount. Atty. Gen. Luisa Ortega Diaz also said that 135 people had been arrested since election results were announced late Sunday that gave Maduro a victory by 1.5 percentage points. Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, has charged that Maduro stole the election, citing 3,200 alleged irregularities in Sunday's balloting.

SHERMAN, Texas - Sgt. John Russell designed his new house here so there would be room for everyone: for him and his wife, Mandy, his wife's parents and his own. There was a doggie door for Louie and Queenie - "the little ones," he called them in his emails. It was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life when he got home from Iraq, he'd say as he shared photos of the latest construction. After a dispute with a co-worker, Russell fretted that he'd get demoted and would not be able to make the payments.

Alabama this week moved to tighten the regulation of clinics and of medical personnel who perform abortions, the latest step in what abortion rights advocates argue is a campaign to use the regulatory power of government to limit a woman's right to an abortion. The Alabama legislature on Tuesday gave final passage to a measure that places restrictions, including a requirement that doctors who perform abortions have hospital privileges. The House voted 68-21 to approve the bill, known as the Women's Health and Safety Act, hours after the Senate voted 20-10 to approve it. Republican Gov. Robert Bentley is expected to sign it. The bill also sets stricter building requirements, including wider halls and doors and better fire suppression systems.

RANTHAMBORE, India - The operating rooms are dark and gloomy, the power outages far too frequent; the layout is chaotic, and the recruitment of good doctors difficult. Running a rural hospital in India is a labor of love marked by shortages, budget deficits and stiff competition from witch doctors and superstition - a tiny slice of the challenge India faces as it tries to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Rupinder Kaur, executive director of Ranthambore Sevika Hospital in Rajasthan state, strides past villagers huddled on rickety benches into one of the four wards, her yellow scarf racing to keep up. The hospital is at the end of a steep, bad road beside Ranthambore National Park, one of India's most famous tiger reserves.

WICHITA, Kan. - Julie Burkhart's high heels click against freshly laid tiles as she tours the construction zone. Wires jut from walls waiting for connection, and the smell of new paint fills the air. With the countdown on, her walk and talk say crisp determination. Next week the newly remodeled South Wind Women's Center is scheduled to open. Under heavy security, doctors will perform abortions, as well as offering other gynecological services. Burkhart bought the unremarkable 1970s-era building last August through her foundation, Trust Women, for an undisclosed amount.

Treating skinned knees and stomachaches is part of the drill at any school nurse's office or school-based health center. But healthcare providers at these sites do much more than treat everyday aches and pains: They give checkups and vaccinations, make sure kids take their insulin shots and antidepressants on time, and teach them how to manage chronic conditions such as asthma. School-based health centers go beyond the services of a school nurse. They are clinics that provide primary care to students, and often mental health and dental care as well.

HOUSTON -- Oklahoma is withdrawing federal funding to three Planned Parenthood clinics in Tulsa following similar efforts by lawmakers in half a dozen other states. Oklahoma State Department of Health officials have notified Planned Parenthood of the Heartland that at the end of December they would be terminating their contracts, federally funded through the Women, Infants and Children program. This year, the clinics had received about $454,000 from the program. “It was a business decision,” said Leslea Bennett-Webb, a spokeswoman for the state's health department told the Los Angeles Times.

In an effort to get access to documents that could be used to suspend players for use of performance-enhancing drugs, Major League Baseball on Friday sued a Florida clinic alleged to have distributed such substances to multiple players, including Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees. The lawsuit, filed in civil court in Miami, alleges the now-defunct Biogenesis clinic and its representatives "knowingly, intentionally and maliciously interfered" with player contracts, which include a drug policy collectively bargained between MLB and the players' union.

Millions of uninsured Californians will gain medical coverage under the national healthcare overhaul beginning in January, but Guadalupe Luna won't be one of them. Luna, an illegal immigrant and tamale vendor in Los Angeles, doesn't qualify. So she will continue going to the clinic where she has received free care for more than 20 years: Los Angeles County's Hudson Comprehensive Health Center. There, publicly funded doctors will help manage her diabetes and high cholesterol. An estimated 3 million to 4 million Californians - about 10% of the state's population - could remain uninsured even after the healthcare overhaul law takes full effect.