By The Survivors Club Staff
Updated October 25, 2009

President Barack Obama has declared the H1N1 swine flu outbreak a national emergency.  The move allows health officials to bypass some federal regulations and paperwork as they take measures to combat the outbreak and deliver scarce vaccine supplies across the country.

More than 1,000 people have died from so-called flu in the US, including nearly 100 children, and 20,000 have been treated in hospital. Health authorities expect the figure to increase markedly as the regular flu season starts.

With so much fear and misinformation about the swine flu, here are the three things you need to know about the new H1N1 vaccine:

By The Survivors Club Staff
October 18, 2009

The Survivors Club scours the world in search of the most remarkable, enlightening, inspiring survival stories.

Once in a while, we come across a story that stuns us in its power and profundity. 

Today, we heartily recommend David' Rodhe's story in The New York Times of surviving seven months and 10 days after being kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The article is the first of seven parts detailing Rohde's experience as Taliban hostage.  Despite being threatened with machine guns and beheading, Rohde managed to keep his wits.  "I told myself we would survive," he told himself.

By The Survivors Club Team
October 13, 2009

A husband and wife in Ohio are proof that breast cancer can strike both sexes.  Barbara and Mike Welsh of Monroe, Ohio, each underwent surgery this year after separate diagnoses with a disease that will afflict 192,000 women this year and 1,900 men.

After surgery in July, her 62-year-old husband is determining the next step in his recovery, which may include chemotherapy and radiation.

Mike Welsh iwants other men to know that breast cancer can strike them too.

"If I could help 10 people or 100, that's a start," Welsh, a retired AK Steel bricklayer, told the AP.

By The Survivors Club Staff
October 9, 2010

The quality of your health care depends largely on where you live, according to a new national scorecard from the Commonwealth Fund.  Insurance coverage, access to preventive medicine and disease treatment vary widely from state to state.

"Where you live matters," said the foundation's Vice President Cathy Schoen, who co-authored the study for the private research group.  "And it shouldn't."

Where is the best health care in the US? And where does your state rank?

By The Survivors Club Staff
October 1, 2009

It appears that geese in the northeast are taking the day off and staying out of the skies....

That's because the two pilots who landed US Air Flight 1549 safely on the Hudson River in January reunited in the cockpit today for their first flights together since the so-called miracle.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Sullenberger," the hero pilot of US Air 1549 said today, according to a New York Daily News reporter on the flight.

By The Survivors Club Staff
September 30, 2009

One American dies every 12 minutes because they don't have health insurance, according to a new Harvard study in the American Journal of Public Health.  That's 44,789 preventable - or "excess" - deaths every year because people don't have affordable health insurance.

"Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease," according to the study which was conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance.