Commissioner for Senior Victorians, Gerard Mansour,  reflects on Dementia Awareness Month. September is Dementia Awareness Month and Sunday 21 September is World Alzheimer’s Awareness Day where organisations around the world concentrate their efforts on raising awareness about Alzheimer's and dementia. [ + ]

World Health Organisation’s (WHO) battle against polio has a new weapon after joining up with Vaxxas, the biotechnology company responsible for developing revolutionary vaccine delivery method the Nanopatch. [ + ]

New Brisbane service to help tackle chronic pain and pharmaceutical dependence [ + ]

A new report,  Geographic Variations in Health Care: What do we know and what can be done to improve health system performance?, examines regional variation in health care in 13 participating countries, including Australia [ + ]

The University of Sydney's professor Eddie Holmes is encouraging Australia to take up US-style centres for disease control, after warning that the number of disease epidemics will rise in the future. [ + ]

The Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) Action Group has launched its Imagine a Healthier Future Campaign to encourage public investment in health and medical research. [ + ]

GPs  now have easy access to a useful resource to help patients with chronic pain better understand and manage their condition. [ + ]

Cancer Council Australia has published new clinical guidelines which will help provide greater consistency in the management one of Australia’s fastest growing cancers and its known precursor, Barrett’s oesophagus. [ + ]

Lymphoma Australia and medical experts are using World Lymphoma Awareness Day (15 September) to ‘put lymphoma in the limelight’ and call for all Australians to better recognise the symptoms of a cancer that takes an Australian life every six hours. [ + ]

[hr]Internationally, we are seeing the emergence of new and old infectious diseases. Marija Juraja asks: Is there a risk, with the penchant for travels, that these infectious diseases could land on our doorstep?[hr] [ + ]

[hr]A study of the hand hygiene rates in some of Australia’s biggest hospitals has found patients could be routinely exposed to potentially deadly infectious bugs by doctors who are not following proper hygiene procedures, writes Narelle Shuh.[hr] [ + ]

[hr]Founding of WAIDID, the World Association for Infectious Diseases and Immunological Disorders was unveiled at the Infectious Diseases World Summit in Shanghai in July.[hr] [ + ]

Ambiguity - One of Our Greatest Infection Risks   [ + ]

[hr]Australians are a generous lot who believe in backing health and medical research. But there are some worrying trends emerging in this area of philanthropy. Misperceptions about the proposed Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) are a threat to Australia’s proud history of research firsts, writes Elizabeth Foley [hr] [ + ]

[ + ]