Pneumonia

The woman, a Nigerian mother named Busayo, fought back tears as she recalled going into debt in a futile attempt to treat her infant son's pneumonia. After Busayo spent all of her family's savings — she even sold the family cell phone — the 2-month-old died. Speaking just above a whisper, the woman was sitting in a small rural church in Nigeria talking with Dr. Orin Levine, who was being featured in the British documentary "Kill or Cure?" "That really stuck with me," said Levine, the 44-year-old executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC)

News item: Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts had to delay his return to baseball activities again because of a case of pneumonia that forced him into the hospital on Wednesday. My take: I used to laugh at the notion of an Orioles Curse, but Oriole Park at Camden Yards was built on the site of the tavern run by Babe Ruth's father, and you know what the Babe did to the Red Sox for 86 years. Mark your calendars for the next Orioles World Series in 2059. News item: The Orioles are in Washington to play the Nationals in the first series of the Battle of the Beltways.

News item: Orioles second baseman Brian Roberts had to delay his return to baseball activities again because of a case of pneumonia that forced him into the hospital Wednesday. My take: I used to laugh at the notion of an Orioles Curse, but Oriole Park at Camden Yards was built on the site of the tavern run by Babe Ruth's father, and you know what the Babe did to the Red Sox for 86 years. Mark your calendars for the next Orioles World Series in 2069. News item: The Orioles are in Washington to play the Nationals in the first series of the Battle of the Beltways.

While a nationwide push for vaccination against swine and seasonal flu has led to long lines for shots, another vaccine against a common and deadly flu complication - pneumonia - hasn't gotten to many of the people most at risk. Most babies get the pneumococcal vaccine, but only two-thirds of seniors, who generally are the hardest hit by flu each year, get their recommended dose. And vaccines get to only one-third of older children and adults with health problems such as heart or lung disease or diabetes who have had a hard time with swine flu, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Like many 42-year-old fathers of two, Orin Levine was periodically distracted during our Sunday phone conversation by his playful daughters, Abby and Jessie. It's difficult to talk uninterrupted when your 6-year-old and 4-year-old are giggling and scurrying about, petitioning for your attentions. Orin Levine is happy to be distracted, however. He knows better - indeed, firsthand - what the devastating alternatives look like for certain parents in less fortunate corners of the globe. Dr. Levine is an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a leading expert on pneumococcal disease - which, like some mysterious and frightening force in a Will Smith movie, is the relatively overlooked killer of up to 1 million children annually worldwide.

"Tired, beleaguered and battered" is how Dr. David del Rosario described himself yesterday as he hustled to care for the rising tide of patients streaming into his Patient First clinic in Glen Burnie with symptoms of the flu. "We started seeing the trickle in mid-January," he said, "and literally by the first week of February, that's when the tsunami hit." Since then, del Rosario's life has been a blur of 10-hour days in a succession of Patient First sites in suburban Maryland and a parade of patient misery.

Christine Maggiore Skeptic of AIDS research Christine Maggiore, an activist who vehemently denied that HIV causes AIDS, declined to take anti-AIDS drugs and sued Los Angeles County for stating that her 3-year-old daughter succumbed to AIDS-related pneumonia, has died. She was 52. Ms. Maggiore died at her Van Nuys home on Saturday. She had been treated for pneumonia in the past six months, but her official cause of death was pending, county coroner assistant chief Ed Winter said Tuesday.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are urging doctors to use caution when prescribing steroid inhalers to treat a common - and sometimes fatal - lung disease after a study found they increased the risk of pneumonia in some patients by 34 percent. About half of all patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, use steroid inhalers to ease the wheezing and breathlessness caused by the condition. Although medical experts have known for years that inhalers are effective in treating symptoms, doctors have raised questions about side effects and whether they help people live longer, said Dr. M. Bradley Drummond, a pulmonologist at the Hopkins School of Medicine and the study's lead author.

Andrea Wilson felt sick to her stomach when she heard comedian Bernie Mac had died Saturday in a Chicago hospital. Her private fear - the fear of sudden death - was suddenly splashed across the news. Like Mac, Wilson has sarcoidosis, a mysterious and sometimes devastating immune system disorder that causes cells to cluster and can damage organs throughout the body. Last year, the disease jumped to her brain and started causing strokelike symptoms - vision changes, numbness in her left side, tingling in her face and mouth - as well as extreme pain.