内容摘要：California has the lowest maternal mortality in the nation — 10.5 per 100,000 live births, less than half the national rate. But that wasn’t the case before it created a “maternal quality care collaborative” in 2006.

California has the lowest maternal mortality in the nation — 10.5 per 100,000 live births, less than half the national rate. But that wasn’t the case before it created a “maternal quality care collaborative” in 2006.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.LONDON (AP) — If your pet alligator escapes, don’t call for an ambulance — unless it has sunk its teeth into someone.

That’s the message from the Welsh Ambulance Service in a plea to get people to stop phoning with non-emergencies.With public health services stretched thin in the U.K., there is no shortage of anecdotes about people suffering from true health emergencies who wait hours for medical care — whether from paramedics or a hospital doctor. But the ambulance service said 15% of its 426,000 calls last year — 175 a day — were not urgent. Some weren’t even health-related and were far from being matters of life and death.There was a call about a chipped tooth (“it’s starting to throb”), a bloody toe (“I’ve cut my little nail on the toe and I’ve nipped across the top of it.”) and a person who stuck their finger in an electrical socket who appeared to be fine (“I’m worried that I could be electrocuted”).

Then there was the call Emma Worrall took last year that she won’t soon forget.“I remember saying ‘alligator?’ and my call-taker supervisor just looked at me and was like, ‘What is going on in your call?’” Worrall said.

As a dispatcher in a busy call center in Wales, Worrall has to be unflappable, patient and able to efficiently handle the most stressful calls in which a delay of seconds or minutes could be the difference between life and death.

She understands that some people have a different gauge of what is life-threatening and an emergency. But it’s still frustrating when someone phones the emergency number to say they’re locked out of their house and cold or their dog jumped in a river and won’t swim back — calls she also fielded.“He always wanted to help people,” said Miller-Duffy, who struggled with the choice but is proud of her brother’s last act. “This tragic death, this fast short death — something good has come out of it.”

with one from a genetically modified pig on July 14. Then doctors and nurses cared for the deceased man like they would a living patient while anxiously ticking off the days.Remarkably, over a month later the new organ is performing all the bodily functions of a healthy kidney — the longest a pig kidney has ever worked in a person. Now the countdown is on to see if the kidney can last into September, a second month.

The Associated Press got an inside look at the challenges of experiments with the dead that may help bringGetting an organ transplant today is a long shot. More than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list, most who need a kidney. Thousands die waiting. Thousands more who could benefit aren’t even added to the list.