Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco Department of Health, announced that the Healthy San Francisco provider network will expand to include Brown & Toland Physicians and California Pacific Medical Center, and BAART Community HealthCare as providers of care to the uninsured.
BAART Community HealthCare will join the network on Oct. 1, 2010. Brown & Toland Physicians and California Pacifi c Medical Center (Brown & Toland and CPMC) will join the network on Dec. 1, 2010.
Healthy San Francisco provides accessible and affordable health care services to uninsured adult residents, regardless of a person’s employment status, immigration status or pre-existing medical condition. Residents with income at or below 500 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (for one person $54,150; for a family of four $110,250) are eligible to enroll into the program.
Consumer warning: frozen mamey fruit pulp possible source of typhoid fever
The San Francisco Department of Public Health is warning consumers and food retailers that Goya brand frozen mamey fruit pulp sold in San Francisco may contain a bacterium that causes typhoid fever and several mamey products are being voluntarily recalled.
The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA is investigating outbreaks of Salmonella Typhi, (the bacteria that causes typhoid fever) in California and Nevada. As of August 12, 2010, a total of seven confirmed and two probable cases of typhoid fever have been reported so far, including one probable case in a San Francisco resident.
Mamey, also called “zapote” or “sapote,” is a tropical fruit grown primarily in Central and South America and is popular among Latinos.
Typhoid fever is a very rare illness in the United States among non-international travelers and can cause serious symptoms, including fever, headache, and muscle aches, often times requiring hospitalization, and occasionally resulting in death. Typhoid fever is contracted when food and water are contaminated by an infected individual and are then consumed by other people.
Kindergarten readiness act passes legislature
Kindergarten is not what it used to be. Playing with blocks, learning to use scissors and coloring within the lines are now preschool activities. Times have changed as expectations for academic achievement beginning at age 5 have accelerated dramatically.
Kindergarten today, it turns out, is no place for 4- year-olds. Nor is it the halfday, fun-fi lled, no-pressure zone of yesteryear.
Realizing that the antiquated guidelines in the state’s education code are misaligned with the intensity of modern demands on young children, California legislators passed a bill on Aug. 31 called the Kindergarten Readiness Act of 2010 which advances the date by which children must turn 5 in order to attend kindergarten. The legislation, SB-1381, now goes before the governor who has until Sept. 30 to take action. If no action is taken, the bill will automatically become law.
Presently, children must be 5 by Dec. 2 to start kindergarten in California. This bill phases in the cutoff date by one month a year beginning in the year 2012 when the cutoff date would be Nov. 1. In 2013 the cutoff date for turning 5 would be Oct. 1, and in 2014 children would need to be 5 by Sept. 1, where it will remain thereafter.
Candidates debate is for good ‘ol boy’s, says thirdparty candidate.
