The study recorded the bed times and wake times of 2,200 participants, aged nine to 16 years, and compared their weight and use of free time over four days.

Children who went to bed late and got up late were 1.5 times more likely to become obese than those who went to bed early and got up early, reports the journal SLEEP.

Late-night owls were almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and 2.9 times more likely to be glued to TV and computer screens or play video games for more hours than recommended guidelines.

‘The children who went to bed late and woke up late, and the children who went to bed early and woke up early got virtually the same amount of sleep in total,’ said co-author Carol Maher, postdoctoral fellow with the University of South Australia.

‘Scientists have realized in recent years that children who get less sleep tend to do worse on a variety of health outcomes, including the risk of being overweight and obese,’ said Maher, according to a South Australia statement.

Mornings are more conducive to physical activity for young people than nights, which offer prime-time TV programming and social networking opportunities, Maher said.

At a time when research is showing that teenagers have a natural tendency to stay up late and wake up late, the results of this study could stand as a warning, Maher said.

According to a poll, carried out by mobile phone firm Recombu, once revered for our good manners, Britain has become more ‘Rude Britannia’ since the introduction of smartphones. Almost two third of people — 63 percent — admitted leaving their iPhone or BlackBerry on the table while being out for dinner, Daily Mail reported.

As high as 68 percent would take a call on a dinner date, even if they knew it was not important or work-related, the study found.

The research also suggested that Britons cannot live being separated from their smartphones, with more than a third admitting they would struggle to live without their mobiles.

Around a third — 35 percent — said they couldn’t live without their television, 23 percent without their laptop, three percent would be at a loss if they did not have their iPod, and two percent would struggle without their tablet.

More than half — 59 percent — keep their phones on at all times, 16 percent continuously walking around with their mobile in their hands, one in seven of the 1,000 people polled even take their phone to the toilet.

A new University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose (fruit sugar) slows the brain, hampering memory and learning – and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption.

“Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, professor of neurosurgery at the UClA’s David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the Journal of Physiology reports.

“Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information. But ­adding omega-3 fatty acids to your meals can help minimize the damage,” adds Gomez-Pinilla, according to an UCLA statement.

While earlier research has revealed how fructose harms the body through its role in diabetes, obesity and fatty liver, this study is the first to uncover how the sweetener influences the brain.

The UCLA team zeroed in on high-fructose corn syrup, an inexpensive liquid six times sweeter than cane sugar, that is commonly added to processed foods, including soft drinks, condiments, apple sauce and baby food.

Gomez-Pinilla and study co-author Rahul Agrawal, studied two groups of rats that each consumed a fructose solution as drinking water for six weeks.

The second group also received omega-3 fatty acids in the form of flaxseed oil and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), which protects against damage to the synapses – the junctions between brain cells that enable memory and learning.

“DHA is essential for synaptic function – brain cells’ ability to transmit signals to one another,” Gomez-Pinilla said. “This is the mechanism that makes learning and memory possible. Our bodies can’t produce enough DHA, so it must be supplemented through our diet.”

Six weeks later, researchers tested the rats’ ability to recall the route and escape the maze. What they saw surprised them. “The second group of rats navigated the maze much faster than the rats that did not receive omega-3 fatty acids,” Gomez-Pinilla said.

“The DHA-deprived animals were slower, and their brains showed a decline in synaptic activity. Their brain cells had trouble signalling each other, disrupting the rats’ ability to think clearly and recall the route they’d learned six weeks earlier,” he concludes.

For every European, the social cost of alcohol abuse has been estimated to be 240 pounds a year, with the annual bill for the National Health Service (NHS) alone being 2.7 billion pounds, the Daily Mail reported.

A major conference of addiction specialists from across the world is meeting at Newcastle University. Organisers have called for England to follow Scotland and set a minimum price per unit and also sought a ban on advertising alcohol.

Eileen Kaner, a professor, cited new research which showed one in eight British deaths of people aged 15 to 64 was caused by alcohol.

In Europe, alcohol consumption is more than twice the global average and represents the biggest addiction in Britain, greater than any illegal drug or gambling.

The study, the largest scale investigation of its kind, discovered that young men who actively resisted the urge to adopt a “couch-potato” lifestyle in their late twenties seemed to gain the biggest bone benefit.

Load bearing sports are those that involve jumping, including soccer, basketball, volleyball and tennis, that increase the load on the body’s bones.

“Men who increased their load-bearing activity from age 19 to 24 not only developed more bone, but also had larger bones compared to men who were sedentary during the same period,” senior study co-author Mattias Lorentzon, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was quoted as saying in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Bigger bones with more mass are thought to offer a shield against osteoporosis, a disease that affects men and women alike, in which bones become porous and weak over time and start to fracture by age 50 or later, according to a university statement.

“Osteoporosis actually seems to get its start by age 25 when bones start to lose tissue. So this study sends an important message to young men,” Lorentzon said. “The more you move, the more bone you build.”

Lorentzon and colleagues found that basketball and volleyball seemed the best kinds of activities for building bone mass, followed by soccer and tennis. Such load-bearing sports seem to push the body to form new bone tissue.

Activities that do not put an increased load on the bones, like swimming and bicycling did not seem tied to the building of bigger bones or more bone mass, even though they offer other health benefits.

Osteoporosis affects more than 200 million people worldwide yet many are unaware that they are at risk. The disease has been called the silent epidemic because bone loss occurs without symptoms and the disease often is first diagnosed after a fracture.

Osteoporosis is more common in women, but men also develop it usually after age 65.

“Many neurological and psychiatric conditions are likely to involve problems with signalling in brain networks,” says study co-author Maurizio Corbetta, professor of neurology at Washington University.

“Examining the temporal structure of brain activity from this perspective may be especially helpful in understanding psychiatric conditions like depression and schizophrenia, where structural markers are scarce,” adds Corbetta, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.

Scientists usually study brain networks – areas of the brain that regularly work together – using magnetic resonance imaging, which tracks blood flow.

They assume that an increase in blood flow to part of the brain indicates increased activity in the brain cells of that region, according to a Washington University statement.

“Magnetic resonance imaging is a useful tool, but it does have limitations,” Corbetta says. “It only allows us to track brain cell activity indirectly, and it is unable to track activity that occurs at frequencies greater than 0.1 hertz, or once every 10 seconds. We know that some signals in the brain can cycle as high as 500 hertz, or 500 times per second.”

For the new study, conducted at the University Medical Centre (UMC) at Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, researchers used a technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG) to analyse brain activity in 43 healthy volunteers.

MEG detects miniscule changes in the brain’s magnetic fields caused by the simultaneous activity of many cells. It can detect these signals at rates up to 100 hertz.

“We found that different brain networks ticked at different frequencies, like clocks ticking at different speeds,” says Joerg Hipp of the UMC at Hamburg-Eppendorf.

For example, networks that included the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory formation, tended to be active at frequencies around five hertz. Networks constituting areas involved in the senses and movement were active between 32 hertz and 45 hertz.

Many other brain networks were active at frequencies between eight and 2 hertz. These “time-dependent” networks resemble different airline route maps, overlapping but each ticking at a different rate.

“MEG studies provide a window into a much richer ‘temporal’ structure. In the future, this might offer new diagnostic tests or ways to monitor the efficacy of interventions in these debilitating mental conditions,” Corbetta adds.

May 8 is globally celebrated as ‘International Thalassemia Day’. It is an inherited blood disorder in which the red blood cells contain a reduced amount of haemoglobin, or in severe cases, a lack of haemoglobin in the cells. Thalassemia can range from mild to life threatening and therefore should be monitored.

“Earlier, the numbers were limited to some portions of the country but now thalassemia has a pan India presence mainly because of cross marriages between people from different backgrounds,” Deepak Chopra, president of ‘Thalassemics India’ told IANS.

“Sadly, due to lack of awareness especially among couples who have not yet conceived a child, the numbers will rise further,” he added.

Amita Mahajan, Senior Consultant, Pediatric- Hematology at the Indraprastha Apollo hospital told IANS that every pregnant woman should be tested for thalassemia.

“More than 10,000 kids with thalassemia are born in the country every year just because there is not enough awareness among couples who are getting married,” she said.

The disorder which requires regular blood transfusion can be cured if the patient gets the right donor for a bone marrow transplant. However, the success rate remains awfully low at 3 to 5 percent.

“A patient should first get the right match then there should be advance medical equipments available at the medical centre near the patient and then he should be having deep pockets to get the transplant done,” said Mahajan.

“So, regular blood transfusion is the only option left for many,” she added.

However, with several reports of thalassemic patients given blood infected with HIV and Hepatitis, the experts unanimously agreed that the only the Nucleic Acid Test (NAT) could detect infection in a donor’s blood.

“But the present techniques for testing donated blood in the country are old and fail to detect infections properly,” J. S. Arora, General Secretaryof National Thalassemia Welfare Society told IANS.

“The problem of infected blood arises when a person is compelled to donate blood for money. Though it is banned and illegal but it goes on undercover. So, the chances of getting pure blood from a donor who is doing it for money are very low,” he added.

Chopra said that blood donation has to become a common practice and the dearth of blood makes blood donation a business for some.

“We want our water to be 100 percent pure and our gold jewellery to be 24 carat pure as well but strangely providing infected blood to thalassemic patients,” said Chopra.

A thalessemic patient between the age of one to five years needs one unit of blood every month, between the age of five to ten-two units every month are needed, between the age of 10 to 15-three units are needed every month and an adult thalassemic needs four units of blood every month.

The findings from the University of Edinburgh could also help explain why older men are more at risk of developing diabetes, because testosterone levels fall in men as they age.

Kerry McInnes, from the Edinburgh’s endocrinology unit, said: “This study shows that low testosterone is a risk factor for diabetes no matter how much a person weighs,” according to an university statement.

The study showed that mice, which did not have androgen receptors in fat tissue for testosterone to attach to, were more likely to show signs of insulin resistance than other mice and also became fatter than other mice and developed full insulin resistance when fed a high-fat diet.

Researchers found that levels of RBP4, a protein which plays a crucial role in regulating insulin resistance, were higher in mice in which the role of testosterone was impaired.

The Edinburgh team say that its findings could lead to the development of new treatments that regulate production of RBP4 and reduce the risk of diabetes in men with lower levels of testosterone.

According to World Health Statistics 2011 published by World Health Organization (WHO), the total expenditure on health as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008, for India is 4.2% as compared to expenditure on health in respect of some select developing countries, e.g. China 4.3%, Bangladesh 3.3%, Indonesia 2.3%, Malaysia 4.3%, Pakistan 2.6% , Sri Lanka 4.1% and Thailand 4.1%.

The above information was given by the Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad in the Rajya Sabha

The most common symptoms that occur during asthma attack among children include tightness in chest, shortness of breath recurring cough and wheezing. Because of narrow opening of the airway, children do have trouble breathing and this causes wheezing.

FOR MORE READING. . .

“Although some memory functions do tend to decline as we get older, several elderly show well preserved functioning and this is related to a well-preserved, youth-like brain,” says Lars Nyberg of the Umeå University in Sweden who led the study.

Education won’t save your brain – PhDs are as likely as high-school dropouts to experience memory loss with old age, says Nyberg, adding don’t count on your job either.

Those with a complex or demanding career may enjoy limited advantage, but those benefits quickly dwindle after retirement, the study said, the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences reports.

Engagement is the secret to success. Those who are socially, mentally and physically stimulated reliably show better cognitive performance with a brain that appears younger than its years, according to an Umeå statement.

“There is quite solid evidence that staying physically and mentally active is a way towards brain maintenance,” Nyberg says.

According to the research, this new take on successful ageing represents an important shift in focus for the field. Much attention in the past has gone instead to understanding ways in which the brain copes with or compensates for cognitive decline in aging.

Elderly people generally do have more trouble remembering meetings or names, Nyberg says. But those memory losses often happen later than many often think, after the age of 60. Older people also continue to accumulate knowledge and to use what they know effectively, often to very old ages, the researcher adds.

According to researchers, being worried about not having enough food to feed one’s family, a situation called food insecurity, is common in low-income families. These families too are often are overweight.

Food insecure mothers also were more concerned about their child becoming overweight than mothers who were not worried about having enough food for their families, the study said.

“Understanding the reasons why poverty puts families at greater risk of obesity is essential to addressing the epidemic,” said Rachel Gross, assistant professor of paediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York, who led the study, the journal Paediatrics reports.

Gross and colleagues at the New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital Centre interviewed 201 low-income mothers with infants younger than six months, according to an Einstein statement.

They were queried about their feeding styles (whether they tried to control how much the child ate), feeding practices (breastfeeding, adding cereal to bottles) and concerns about their child becoming overweight.

Researchers found that feeding patterns leading to obesity often begin in infancy. Results of their study showed that about one-third of the mothers, who were Hispanic, reported food insecurity.

“We found that food insecurity is related to controlling feeding practices, which have been shown to increase child obesity,” Gross said. It is believed that when mothers control what an infant eats, it may disrupt the child’s ability to regulate his or her own hunger and fullness, leading to overeating and inappropriate weight gain, Gross added.

“This work suggests that in addition to addressing hunger and malnutrition, it is critical that policy efforts be made to work with food insecure families to prevent the opposite problem – obesity,” Gross said.

These finding were presented Saturday at the Paediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston, US.

It happened after 41-year-old Jason Padgett’s brain was damaged in a brutal attack by muggers. He was left concussed after being ambushed outside a karaoke club and repeatedly kicked in the head, the Daily Mail reported.

Now, wherever Padegtt looks, he sees mathematical formulas and turns them into stunning, intricate diagrams he can draw by hand.

He is the only person in the world known to the skill, which experts say, was caused by his head injury. They believe the damage to Padgett’s brain has left him with a “remarkable gift” for figures.

To understand how Padgett’s brain works, neuroscientist and philosophy professor Berit Brogaard and her team flew Padgett to Finland to run a series of tests.

His brain scanning showed damage that was forcing his brain to overcompensate in certain areas that most people do not have access to.

Brogaard, who is based at the Centre for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said the result that Padgett is now an acquired savant, meaning brilliant in a specific area.

“Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person superhuman,” the professor added.

However, jurisdictions where alternative practices are sufficiently widespread should be licensed and regulated, they said at a conference organised by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM).

Alternative medicines are frequently grouped with complimentary or integrative medicines which refer to the same interventions when used in conjunction with mainstream techniques. More focus is required on validation of their process technologies and scientific evaluation, said Dr H.K. Chopra, co-chairman of ASSOCHAM Hospitals and Healthcare Committee.

“Research and development programmes in newly-emerging and challenging areas of science in Ayurveda need to be encouraged so that they can be marketed worldwide,” he said. A recent systematic review of studies in 13 countries concludes that about 31 per cent of cancer patients use some form of complimentary and alternative medicines.

Dr J.D. Sarangi, special secretary at the Delhi government’s department of health and family welfare, said the growing interest in alternative medicines is a positive symbol for the medical community which has started moving from a narrow approach to more holistic remedies.

However, the scientific community has to debate that in the era of evidence-based medicine, should official endorsement be given to remedies that cannot be scientifically proven.

Among those present during the inaugural session were Dr C.K. Katiyar, vice-president and head of ayurveda department at Dabur, Dr R.K. Khandal, director at Shriram Institute for Industrial Research, Dr Shikha Sharma, managing director of Nutri-Health Systems, Dr Lalit Verma, secretary at the Central Council of Homeopathy, and Mr Arun Kumar, deputy secretary general of ASSOCHAM.

India invests only one per cent of GDP in primary healthcare centres. The country has an average of 0.6 doctors per 1,000 people against the global average of 1.23. The country’s healthcare sector currently estimated at Rs 3.75 lakh crore is likely to double in volume over the next five years.

Researchers from the Harvard Medical School tracked blood flow to the brain while people drank iced water or lukewarm water. Both were drunk through a straw that was pressed against the roof of the mouth, and the volunteers signalled when the pain started and when it ended.

The results showed that the pain coincided with an artery, the anterior cerebral artery, opening up and flooding the brain with blood. It then constricted and pain receded, the Daily Mail reported.

Harvard researcher Jorge Serrador said the rush of blood could be a self-defence mechanism, designed to keep the brain warm and working. However, the sudden flood of blood likely raises pressure inside the skull and so causes pain.

To stop pressure reaching dangerous levels, the artery constricts, bringing pressure back down. Hopefully, a better understanding of the phenomenon, also known as brain freeze, will lead to better treatments for migraines and other types of headaches.

These findings were presented at the Experimental Biology conference in San Diego, US.

The figure was revealed as Prime Minister David Cameron Sunday signalled his support for a web clampdown on extreme images.

According to London’s Portman clinic, a National Health Survey (NHS) outpatient psychotherapy clinic, use of porn features in 26.5 percent of young patients. It has risen from less than one per cent in the late 90s, The Sun reported.

A Parliamentary report led by Tory MP Claire Perry has called for a web porn ban on all computers – unless adults “opt in”.

It found up to 27 percent of boys access it weekly.

Cameron told MPs that he had urged internet firms “to look at offering a choice of blocking adult content”.

Flavanols, compounds also found in grapes, berries and apples, counteract the role of rogue oxygen molecules known as free radicals which not only damage healthy cells, but also alter cellular DNA and are known to cause at least 60 different health problems, ranging from heart ailments to cancer.

A group of people was randomly assigned by researchers at the San Diego State University, US, to take either a daily serving (50 grams) of regular dark chocolate (70 percent cocoa) or its version that had been overheated or “bloomed,” or white chocolate (no cocoa), for a period of 15 days.

According to a university statement, blood pressure, forearm skin blood flow, circulating lipid profiles, and blood glucose levels of the subjects were recorded at the beginning and end of the study.

When compared to those assigned to the white chocolate group, those consuming dark chocolate had lower blood glucose and low-density of lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL or ‘bad’ cholesterol) levels coupled with higher high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL, the ‘good’ form), the study said.

Researchers thus concluded that dark chocolate may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by improving glucose levels and lipid profiles. However, they cautioned that it must be eaten in moderate quantity, as it can easily increase daily amounts of saturated fat and calories.

“We had great compliance with our study subjects because everybody wanted to eat chocolate. We actually had to tell them not to eat more than 50 grams a day,” a researcher said, adding that the university is planning follow-up studies involving more people and a longer duration of chocolate consumption.

These findings were presented at the Experimental Biology 2012 meeting in San Diego, US.

“Drug addiction persists as a major problem in the United States,” said Patricia Sue Grigson, professor of neural and behavioural Sciences, from Penn State College of Medicine, who led the study.

“Likewise, excessive food intake, like binge eating, has become problematic. Substance abuse and binge eating are both characterized by a loss of control over consumption,” said Grigson in his report in the journal Behavioural Neuroscience.

“Given the common characteristics of these two types of disorders, it is not surprising that the co-occurrence of eating disorders and substance use disorders is high. It is unknown, however, whether loss of control in one disorder predisposes an individual to loss of control in another,” said Grigson, according to a Penn statement.

Grigson and her colleagues found a link between bingeing on fat and the development of cocaine-seeking and -taking behaviours in rats, suggesting that conditions promoting excessive behaviour toward one substance can increase the probability of excessive behaviour toward another.

According to the report, nearly one-third of such adults were found to be seriously contemplating suicide. This was five times more than those adults who were not physically abused in childhood.

“This research provides important new knowledge about the enduring effects of abuse in childhood,” says Esme Fuller, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Toronto, who led the study, the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behaviour reports.

Investigators examined gender specific differences among a sample of 6,642 adults, of whom 7.7 percent reported that they had been physically abused before the age of 18.

Co-author Tobi Baker, former graduate student of Toronto, notes that “one important avenue for future research is to investigate the bio-psycho-social mechanisms through which childhood physical abuse may translate into suicidal behaviours.”

The announcement comes with the publication of new data using a state-of-the-art methodology showing that accelerated efforts to reduce measles deaths have resulted in a 74% reduction in global measles mortality, from an estimated 535 300 deaths in 2000 to 139 300 in 2010.

Progress in sub-Saharan Africa

Vaccination has been key to this progress. Through increased routine immunization coverage and large-scale immunization campaigns, sub-Saharan Africa made the most progress with an 85% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2010, according to a new study published in today’s Lancet.

Vaccinating over a billion children

Since 2001, the Measles Initiative has supported developing countries to vaccinate over one billion children against measles. Now, in keeping with the new Global Measles and Rubella Strategic Plan to control and eventually eliminate measles and rubella, the initiative is called the Measles & Rubella Initiative. Measles and rubella elimination naturally go hand-in-hand, as measles and rubella vaccines are routinely combined in a single shot.

“A three-quarters drop in measles deaths worldwide shows just how effective well-run vaccination programmes can be,” says Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization . “Now we need to take the next logical step and vaccinate children against rubella, too.”

Investment and political commitment are critical

The new data underscores that progress in reducing measles deaths was especially strong from 2001 to 2008. However, when investment and political commitment to measles control faltered in 2008 and 2009, many children were not immunized. Measles came roaring back and caused large outbreaks in Africa, Asia, Eastern Mediterranean and Europe. In 2010, an estimated 19 million infants – mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia – did not receive measles vaccine.

These outbreaks combined with a delayed start in intensifying measles control in India, meant that the goal of 90% reduction in measles mortality by end 2010 compared with 2000 levels was not met. India accounted for about 47% of global measles deaths in 2010. In addition, target dates for measles elimination goals in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean and European regions had to be revised.

“Recent measles outbreaks have affected children in the world unevenly, with the poorest and youngest children the most at risk of death or disability,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “This new Strategic Plan stresses that measles and rubella vaccinations must be delivered to children deep in the poorest and hardest to reach communities.”

Strategic Plan to cut deaths

The new Strategic Plan presents a five-pronged strategy to cut global measles deaths by at least 95% by 2015 compared with 2000 levels and to achieve measles and rubella elimination in at least five WHO regions by 2020. The strategies include:

• high vaccination coverage;
• monitoring spread of disease using laboratory-backed surveillance;
• outbreak preparedness and response and measles case management;
• communication and community engagement; and
• research and development.

“Measles continues to kill children around the world and rubella is the leading infectious cause of congenital malformations in newborn infants; these are avoidable tragedies,” says Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H, CDC Director. “This new plan outlines strategies we know work. It is time to partner with key countries to implement the plan in order to save our children from these terrible diseases.”

Under the new strategy, 62 countries currently not using rubella vaccine are encouraged to use their measles vaccination delivery system to introduce rubella vaccine into their national immunization schedule and protect families against both diseases with one combined shot . Many high-income countries already offer routine immunization for both measles and rubella through the use of combined measles-rubella or measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

Millions of volunteers join the combat

“The American Red Cross leverages the capacity of its partners in the Red Cross and Red Crescent network and their network of millions of volunteers to combat these two diseases,” said David Meltzer, Senior Vice President, International Services of the American Red Cross. “By working closely with these volunteers – trusted neighbors and community members – to literally go door-to-door, explaining the importance of receiving routine immunizations and participating in campaigns, we can continue to fight these deadly diseases.”

The newly-renamed Measles & Rubella Initiative has strong support from GAVI and is welcoming new partners including the American Academy of Pediatrics, International Pediatric Association, Lions Clubs International and Sabin Vaccine Institute.

Financial support for the vaccine

From 2012, developing countries can apply to GAVI for financial support with the combined measles-rubella vaccine, a low-cost and effective vaccine, deliverable through existing immunization structures. GAVI will also continue to offer the measles second dose vaccine.

“We’re delighted to strengthen our partnership with the renamed Measles & Rubella Initiative, which has done great work to reduce measles infections and reduce mortality,” GAVI CEO, Dr Seth Berkley MD, said. “With GAVI’s US$ 605 million investment for both the combined MR and measles second dose vaccines in developing countries, this is an historic moment for the reduction and hopefully eventual elimination of both diseases,” he said.

US$ 112 million still needed

According to Kathy Calvin, CEO of the United Nations Foundation, an additional US$ 112 million is needed to achieve the global measles and rubella goals for 2015. “We need significant commitments from governments and the private sector if we are going to stop measles and rubella, as well as the support of individuals worldwide because a small donation from the public can go a long way and help save many lives.”

The release of the new measles mortality data and the Strategic Plan coincides with WHO’s World Immunization Week, with over 180 countries worldwide rolling out various activities to raise awareness and take action on the importance of immunization.

About measles and rubella

Measles is one of the most infectious diseases known to humankind and an important cause of death and disability among children worldwide. Those unvaccinated against the disease are at risk of severe health complications such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, and encephalitis (a dangerous infection of the brain causing inflammation) and blindness. The disease can be fatal. The vast majority of measles deaths occur in developing countries.

Rubella, transmitted through airborne droplets, is generally a mild illness. But when a pregnant woman becomes infected, particularly during the first trimester of pregnancy, serious consequences can occur including miscarriages, still births, and infants born with birth defects known as Congenital Rubella Syndrome (CRS). The most common congenital defects include lifelong heart problems, deafness or blindness (cataracts). An estimated 112 000 cases of CRS occur each year and are preventable through vaccination.

Measles & Rubella Initiative

The Measles & Rubella Initiative is a global partnership committed to ensuring no child dies from measles or is born with congenital rubella syndrome. Founded originally as the Measles Initiative in 2001, it’s led by the American Red Cross, the United Nations Foundation, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Since 2001, the Initiative has supported 80 countries to deliver more than one billion doses of measles vaccine, helped to raise measles vaccination coverage to 85% globally, and reduced measles deaths by 74%. These efforts have contributed significantly to reducing child mortality as per Millennium Development Goal 4.

“We can see fat sequestered in the placentas of obese mothers when it should be going to the baby to support its growth. The nutrient supply region in the placenta of an obese mother is half the size of that of a normal-weight mother, even when both are eating the same healthy diet,” said Yuan-Xiang Pan, epigeneticist and professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois.

Pan, who co-authored the study with Rita Strakovsky, blames what he calls the ‘obesogenic’ environment of the mother, which includes increased triglycerides, high levels of the hormone leptin and elevated amounts of non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) circulating in the obese expectant mother’s body, the journal Biology of Reproduction reports.

Triglycerides are the primary fat in our bodies, the main constituent in our energy system. Leptin may play an important role in obesity-related cardiovascular disease while NEFAs are found in animal and vegetable fats and oils.

Triglyceride and NEFA levels are nearly twice as high in obese mothers, even when they consume healthy diets during pregnancy. “My advice is, lose weight well before you become pregnant,” Pan said, according to an Illinois statement.

Pan compared the placentas of obese rats fed a healthy diet throughout their pregnancies with the placentas of obesity-resistant rats fed the same diet.

Obese mothers gave birth to babies that were up to 17 percent smaller than they should have been. The consequences for those infants may be lifelong, making them more susceptible to disease, he noted.

The research, identified two types of women – one experiences more hot flashes after physical activity, while the other experiences fewer.

“The most consistent factor that seemed to differentiate the two groups was perceived control over hot flashes,” said Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology at the Penn State University, who led the study.

“These women have ways of dealing with (hot flashes) and they believe they can control or cope with them in an effective way on a daily basis,” added Elavasky, the journal Maturitas reported.

Women who experienced fewer hot flashes the day after participating in vigorous to moderate physical activity were more likely to be part of the group that felt they had control over their hot flashes, according to a university statement.

Women who had more hot flashes following exercise were likely to be those who felt they had very few ways of coping with their hot flashes, said Elavsky and her colleagues.

Elavsky suggested that cognitive behavioural therapy may help some women feel they have more control over their bodies and reactions to hot flashes.

“It’s not enough anymore to do a study and look at overall impact of an exercise programme on symptoms. It’s very clear that we need to look at the different responses that women might have, and try to understand these individual differences more,” said Elavsky.

According to the case study, when Irene Gatti de Leon slipped on the ice and bumped her head, she wasn’t too concerned. Two months later, she began to experience weakness in her right leg and right arm while she and her husband were visiting their daughter in suburban Chicago.

She made an urgent appointment with Loyola University Medical Centre neurology professor Jose Biller, a fellow native from Uruguay whom she has known for years.

Biller ordered an immediate MRI scan, which showed a large subdural hematoma — a mass of blood on the surface of the brain. With the hematoma compressing the brain, de Leon was in imminent danger of suffering permanent paralysis or cognitive deficits, similar to disabilities caused by strokes, said a university statement.

Biller referred de Leon to Loyola neurosurgeon Douglas Anderson, who stayed late to perform emergency surgery. Anderson drilled two holes in her skull and drained the hematoma, which was about two inches long and 1.5 inches thick. De Leon has made a full recovery.

Subdural hematomas are triggered by head injuries that cause blood vessels between the surface of the brain and its outer covering (the dura) to stretch and tear.

They usually are caused by severe head injuries that cause bleeding, which rapidly fills the brain area. But less severe head injuries can cause chronic subdural hematomas. These slow bleeds may not cause symptoms for days or weeks.

De Leon’s case “is an excellent illustration of why patients should not ignore neurological symptoms,” Biller said.

The scientists at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cancer Research have shown that overproduction of growth hormone, led by hormonal or metabolic disorders, greatly accelerated the development of tumour diseases and caused liver cancer, Xinhua reported.

The growth hormone, however, is very difficult to detect, they added.

Liver cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the world and the third most common cause of tumour-associated deaths. So far, viral infections such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and excessive alcohol consumption are considered the main culprits for causing liver cancer.

The scientists’ studies aimed to understand the mechanism of a signalling molecule, known as STAT 5, in the development of liver cancer due to the overproduction of growth hormone.

Through experiments on mice, the scientists were able to show that this signalling pathway protects the liver in a healthy condition and can regulate metabolic processes essentially.

The overproduction of the growth hormone can also lead to kidney diseases and organ failure, said the report.

World Health Organisation while declaring the Pandemic to be over in August 2010, had conveyed that the influenza H1N1 pandemic virus would take on the behaviour of seasonal influenza virus and continue to circulate for some years to come. Hence, in the post-pandemic period, localized outbreaks of varying magnitude with significant level of H1N1 transmission are expected.Subsequent to this declaration, our country had experienced major outbreaks during the period August to October, 2010 and again from May, 2011 to July 2011. Now, in March-April, 2012, there is increased number of cases of Pandemic Influenza A H1N1 reported from the State of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Small pockets of population who remained unexposed to the pandemic and susceptible would be affected. In first week of March almost 30% of referred samples were positive for H1N1 in Pune which has come down to approx. 10% now.

A large number of these cases would be presenting with mild influenza like illness and as such requires no testing or anti viral drug treatment. However, it is important to get oneself examined at the nearest hospital in the initial part of illness to detect moderate illness and other associated risk factors/ diseases that require hospitalization. The anti viral drug Oseltamivir is available free of cost through the State public health system. They are also available with retail chemists licensed to keep Schedule X drugs. A central stockpile of about 8 million doses of Oseltamivir is also maintained. As the virus is circulating with in the country, there is no need to impose any travel restrictions or screening at inter-state point of entry, railway stations etc.

With age, increasing weight and metabolic disease, the internal walls of our large arteries progressively thicken and become less elastic, contributing to atherosclerosis and high BP.

Marie Billaud and colleagues from the University of Virginia School of Medicine, reported these findings in mice, the Journal of Cardiovascular Translational Research reports.

At present, researchers and physicians tend to measure arterial compliance (a measure of arterial stiffness) in large arteries in rather advanced stages of disease. However, this may not provide the full picture of when a disease starts and how it develops, according to a Virginia statement.

Besides, previous work has suggested that changes in the walls of small arteries are the most potent indicators of cardiovascular diseases, suggesting that early identification of these changes is important.

Billaud and team compared the arterial compliance of two different sized arteries – carotid (large) and thoracodorsal (smaller) in two groups of mice: one fed a high-fat diet for six weeks, the other a control group on a traditional diet.

They found that the structural and mechanical properties of small arteries were rapidly altered after only six weeks of high fat feeding.

The authors conclude: “These results suggest that, at an early stage of obesity, the structural properties of small and large arteries are altered whereas arterial stiffness is only observed in small vessels.”

By examining the back of the eyes researchers could see the health of a person’s entire blood vessel system.

Researchers from Westmead Millennium Institute for Medical Research, the University of Sydney, found that these children consuming one of more soft drinks daily, had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes.

The study looked at around 2,000 12-year-old children in 21 high schools in Sydney, and is an extension of a study that last year found similar damage to children who watch too much TV. The damage does not affect their vision, said a university statement.

“Children with a high consumption of soft drinks and carbohydrates had a more adverse microvascular profile compared to those who did not drink so many soft drinks or eat so many carbs,” said Bamini Gopinath, senior research fellow at the Centre for Vision Research at the Millennium Institute, who led the study.

Howard Amital, professor at the Tel Aviv University’s (TAU) Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Centre, has discovered that the vitamin may also improve the well being of patients in intensive care.

In a six-month study, Amital and his colleagues found that patients with vitamin D deficiency lived an average of 8.9 days less than those who were found to have sufficient vitamin D. Vitamin D levels also co-related with the level of white blood cells which fight disease.

The study demonstrated that further research will only validate the efficacy of vitamin D in improving the patient’s survival outcomes, the journal QJM: An International Journal of Medicine reported.

To measure the impact of vitamin D levels on the survival of critically ill patients, the researchers designed an observational study, said a university statement.

Over six months, 130 patients over 18 years of age who were admitted to an intensive care unit of a TAU-affiliated hospital and requiring mechanical ventilation, were studied. Patients who had taken vitamin D supplements prior to admittance were excluded from the study population.

Findings indicate that while patients with sufficient vitamin D survived an average of 24.2 days, those who were deemed to be deficient in vitamin D survived an average of only 15.3 days. They were also found to have a better white blood count.

“Rubbing toothpaste on to your teeth (and gums) increases the flouride protection by 400 percent,” said Anna Nordstrom from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden who led the study.

“This ‘massage’ method proved to be at least as effective as a third brushing in increasing the amount of fluoride in the mouth,” added Nordstrom.

Gothenburg researchers were testing the effect of a high-fluoride toothpaste sold over the counter in Sweden. They asked volunteers to brush various numbers of times a day and also tested out the ‘finger rubbing’ technique, the Daily Mail reports.

“Rubbing the front of your teeth with toothpaste can be an easy way of giving your teeth a third ‘shot’ of fluoride during the day, after lunch for example,” said Nordstrom.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral that prevents decay by strengthening the protective enamel coating on teeth.

Study co-author Jennifer Pai, assistant professor of medicine at Channing Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said: “Our findings clearly demonstrate that long-term moderate alcohol consumption among men who survived a heart attack was associated with a reduced risk of total and cardiovascular mortality.

“We also found that among men who consumed moderate amounts of alcohol prior to a heart attack, those who continued to consume alcohol ‘in moderation’ afterwards also had better long term prognosis,” Pai was quoted as saying by the European Heart Journal.

Pai and colleagues looked at a subset of 1,818 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study who had survived a first heart attack between 1986 and 2006. They were followed for up to 20 years from the time of the heart attack. During this period 468 men died, according to a Brigham statement.

Looking at levels of alcohol consumption before and after the heart attack, they found that the majority of men did not change their drinking habits, and also that those who drank before and afterwards tended to have a lower risk of death than non-drinkers.

“Our results, showing the greatest benefit among moderate drinkers and a suggestion of excess mortality among men who consumed more than two drinks a day after a heart attack, emphasise the importance of alcohol in moderation,” said Pai.

Srinivas Janaswamy’s method involves creating crystalline-like fibres to embed nutritional supplements (nutraceuticals) and protect them from degradation.

The encapsulated fibres could then be chopped into small particles. Diners could reach for the resveratrol or curcumin the same way as they might for salt or pepper, he said.

“Once the nutraceutical is enveloped, it is thermally protected. Anything of interest can be used, even drug molecules, vitamins or hormones,” said Janaswamy, assistant professor of food science at Purdue University, the journal Food & Function reports.

Nutraceuticals such as beta-carotene, lycopene, resveratrol and vitamins are thought to play significant roles in treating or preventing disease. Resveratrol, for example, is found in red grape products, which prevents cancer and promotes cardio health.

Janaswamy said many of the supplements added to foods today are not structurally stable. Heat, light, oxygen and other external factors could degrade them, according to a Purdue statement.

“There are many methods for adding nutraceuticals to foods, but the one thing they all have in common is instability due to non-rigid structures,” said Janaswamy.

Janaswamy used iota-carrageenan, a carbohydrate, to encapsulate curcumin, the principle compound found in Indian spice turmeric, which is effective against inflammation, cancer and obesity.

They studied the immune system of ‘germ-free mice’ and compared them to mice living in a normal environment with microbes, the journal Science reported.

They found that ‘germ-free mice’ had exaggerated inflammation of the lungs and colon resembling asthma and colitis, respectively, caused by the hyperactivity of a unique class of T cells (immune cells).

These immune cells had been previously linked to these disorders in both mice and humans, said a university statement.

Most importantly, researchers discovered that exposing the germ-free mice to microbes during their first weeks of life, but not when exposed later in adult life, led to a normalized immune system and prevention of diseases.

Moreover, the protection provided by early-life exposure to microbes was long-lasting, as predicted by the hygiene hypothesis.

“These studies show the critical importance of proper immune conditioning by microbes during the earliest periods of life,” said Richard Blumberg, chief for the BWH Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, and study co-author, working with Dennis Kasper, director of BWH’s Channing Lab.

When did we last consider TB as one of India’s biggest health problems? To refresh memories, here are a few forgotten facts about TB in India: one of the leading causes of death in India, TB kills one person every two minutes and 750 people every day. The direct and indirect annual costs of treating TB stand at $23.7 billion. The disease primarily affects people in their most productive years of life – almost 70 per cent of patients are between 15 and 54 years. A communicable, air-borne disease that attacks the lungs, if left untreated, a TB patient can infect 10-15 people every year.

If the above facts do not shock you, recent reports of 12 Extensively Drug Resistant (XXDR) TB cases in Mumbai’s Hinduja hospital should.  Drug-resistant TB is a mutated strain of the bacteria that’s immune to anti-TB drugs. Extensively drug-resistant TB or XXDR-TB is a condition where patients become resistant to all 12 drugs used to cure TB.
When it comes to TB, women face the severest consequences. The disease takes a disproportionately large toll on young women. More than 50 per cent of female cases occur before 34 years of age. According to the World Health Organisation, TB is the third leading cause of death for women aged 15-44 worldwide. It is the fourth leading cause of death among women aged 10-19 in low-income countries and the fifth leading cause of death among women aged 20-59 worldwide. Poverty is a major factor in developing active TB. Since women comprise 70 per  cent of the world’s poor, this accounts for their high morbidity and mortality rates due to TB.

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The Eleventh Five Year Plan envisaged increasing total health expenditure at the Centre and the States to at least 2 per cent of GDP by the end of the Five Year Plan period.

During the 11^th Plan (2007-08 to 2011-12), Central Plan allocation to health sector has been Rs. 99,491 crore as against actual expenditure of Rs. 36,079 crore during the 10^th Five Year Plan. The Central Government has taken several steps to increase public health expenditure, which inter-alia, include:

• Launching of National Rural Health Mission with a view to provide accessible, affordable, accountable, effective and quality healthcare services, especially to the poor and vulnerable sections of the population.
• Implementation of programmes for control of communicable and non-communicable diseases.
• Mainstreaming of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy.
• Setting up of the Centres of excellence on the pattern of AIIMS, alongwith upgradation of government medical colleges through PMSSY
• Strengthening human resources in the health sector, with focus on Medical education, Para-medical education and Nursing and Pharmacy education.

The above information was given by the Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad  in theRajya  Sabha

The above information was given by the Union Minister for Health & Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad in the Rajya Sabha.

Insufficient evidence

The meeting concluded that there is currently insufficient evidence to adopt new case definitions for drug-resistant TB. Drug susceptibility testing (DST), which is key to defining new levels of drug resistance, lacks accuracy for several of the drugs that are used to treat multi drug-resistant (MDR) and extensively drug resistant (XDR)-TB. Secondly, there is insufficient correlation of DST results with clinical response to treatment for several drugs currently used to treat XDR-TB. Thirdly, new drugs are currently undergoing clinical trials, and could prove effective against drug resistant strains. The meeting urged diagnostics companies and TB laboratories to develop better diagnostic tests and also agreed that WHO and technical partners should develop more detailed guidance on XDR-TB treatment.

Prior to results from randomized controlled trials, which are not expected for at least four years, participants called on WHO to lead a process with partners to improve the quality and quantity of observational data on the management of cases of severe forms of drug resistance. These data should be collected in a standardized manner which is essential for stronger future policy decisions on the management of drug resistant TB.

Several new drugs belonging to new classes of anti-mycobacterial agents are under development for treating TB, but until they are shown to be effective in properly conducted clinical trials, WHO cannot include them in recommendations for treatment regimens. WHO is therefore leading a process to accelerate their introduction into clinical settings. The meeting also advised pharmaceutical companies to collaborate in the early development of combination regimens.

Compassionate use of new drugs

Meeting participants urged the Organization to facilitate the “compassionate” use of new drugs: access to drugs that have gone through clinical trials, but which are not yet readily available in countries. WHO was asked to help facilitate the necessary contact between National TB Control Programmes, Ministries of Health and pharmaceutical companies to expand access to investigational new drugs. WHO advises strongly against simply adding a single new drug to a failing regimen. Countries were therefore strongly advised to put in place or strengthen existing regulatory frameworks to enable “compassionate” use and prevent misuse – and premature loss – of these drugs.

Background

Within a year of the first reports of XDR-TB in 2006, 2 cases were reported from Italy that had resistance to both first and second-line treatments. In 2009, 15 TB patients in Iran were reported to be resistant to all anti-TB drugs tested – prompting researchers to coin new terms “extremely drug resistant” (“XXDR-TB”) and “totally drug-resistant TB” (“TDR-TB”). In 2012, four patients in India were described as having “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis. Media subsequently reported a further eight such cases.

In 2009, WHO led the response to the emergence of TB drug resistance through the Beijing Call for Action and the approval of the World Health Assembly Resolution 62.15, with 193 Member States present. This signalled a crucial step forward in countries’ commitment to, and planning for, the treatment and control of MDR-TB. However, planning, funding, and implementation have fallen behind the milestones that were set. In 2010, only 20 out of 36 countries with a high burden of TB or MDR-TB had at least one laboratory capable of performing TB culture and DST per 5 million people. Much of Africa and the Indian subcontinent remain poorly served.

Additional information

• Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB): TB resistant to both of the main first line drugs, isoniazid and rifampicin.
• Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB): MDR-TB with additional resistance to any of the injectables (amikacin, kanamycin or capreomycin), plus resistance to any of the fluoroquinolones.

The resolution, entitled “Birth registration and the right of everyone to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”, seeks action for universal registration at birth of all individuals, in order to reduce the high number of individuals throughout the world who are not registered and may never be registered during their lifetime. HMN and WHO participated in consultations on the draft resolution and provided technical input.

Registration of birth – critical to better health

WHO estimates that 40 million, or approximately one third of, births are not registered each year. Many barriers can prevent people from registering births including: poverty, social exclusion, remote geographical location, disability, discrimination and vulnerability, as well as a country’s laws, administration and infrastructure. It is critical that registration of a birth is followed by the issuance of an official birth certificate.

“Recent emphasis and action on the long-neglected, but critical, issue of registering births, deaths and causes of death will lead to better health, equity and accountability,” says Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, Executive Secretary ad interim, HMN and WHO Assistant Director-General for Innovation, Information, Evidence and Research. “I welcome this latest commitment by countries towards universal birth registration.”

“Lack of birth registration not only impacts the enjoyment of rights to which all persons are entitled, but may also hinder access to a range of essential services, including health care,” says Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO Assistant Director-General for Family, Women’s and Children’s Health. Moreover, without data on births, national governments will not have credible evidence as a basis for planning, implementing and monitoring public health policies and programmes, and the global community will have less facility in reaching internationally-agreed development goals. “The Council’s resolution is therefore important and timely, and will provide further incentive for countries to ensure birth registration for all children.”

HMN: key partner

In 2011, the Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health, co-chaired and hosted by WHO, recommended that by 2015 “all countries [would] have taken significant steps to establish a system for registration of births, deaths and causes of death,…” HMN has been designated as a key partner to lead actions for the realization of objectives of this first recommendation of the Commission. WHO and partners are currently facilitating a series of intercountry workshops on the Accountability Framework in which country teams start planning for a national roadmap to follow up on the recommendations of the Commission. Strengthening civil registration systems is a key component in this effort.

Lessons learned and guidance

Through its ongoing Monitoring of Vital Events, through the use of information technology (MOVE-IT) country projects in Africa and Asia, HMN will be generating lessons learned and guidance on best practices for improving civil registration in developing countries. These will be presented at the 8th Africa Symposium for Statistics Development and the Statistics Commission for Africa meetings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire in November 2012, and will provide an important input to governments in designing appropriate approaches to reach universal coverage of birth registration

Although his case is shocking to the Western world, it is not such a rare sight in Indonesia where it is estimated that about a million children under the age of 16 smoke, and that one-third of Indonesian children try smoking before the age of 10.

Eight-year-old Aldi Ilham, from Sukabumi, Indonesia, is now receiving help for his addiction, but his small body has already been seriously damaged from the effects of his destructive habit, Daily Mail reported.

Indonesia, the fourth most populous country on earth, appears to be in the clutches of an uncontrolled tobacco habit.

In Indonesia, it is perfectly legal for a child of any age to buy and smoke cigarettes.

Tobacco is linked to the death of six million people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organization. Most deaths are in low- and middle-income countries.

“It’s painfully clear that DR-TB infections are on the rise in India. The conditions for emergence of drug resistance are undeniably prevalent, in both the public programme and the private health sector,” said Amit Sengupta from Peoples’ Health Movement.

Experts from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Peoples’ Health Movement, Stop TB Partnership and Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) said that the Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) poses a higher risk for patients to miss doses, which is another key factor that leads to the creation of drug-resistant strains of TB.

The RNTCP provides treatment to TB patients on alternate days, instead of daily treatment and the programme does not invest in treatment counselling that strengthens adherence to treatment.

“The Direct Observed Treatment (DOT) model implemented by RNTCP is paternalistic, and fails to empower and support patients through TB treatment serving up a perfect recipe for treatment interruptions. This has implications not only for the patients treated but also on the development of drug resistance,” said Hari Shankar, of the DNP+.

According to the health ministry’s TB Control India statistics, the disease kills two people every three minutes, and accounts for over 3 million (3 lakh) deaths every year.

The airborne disease is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis that affects the lungs.

Symptoms include severe cough which lasts for three weeks or longer, producing bloody or discoloured sputum, night sweats, fever, fatigue and weakness, pain in the chest, loss of appetite, and pain in breathing or coughing.

“The proliferation of TB formulations in the private market coupled with the casual over-the-counter sale of antibiotics, of which some are used for DR TB treatment, is fuelling the development of drug resistance,” said Piero Gandini, MSF’s Head of Mission in India.

“There is an urgent need for regulatory control of sale and administration of TB drugs in the private sector in order to address the growing incidence of severe forms of DR-TB in India,” Gandini added.

The new findings showed that Protelos (strontium ranelate) reduced deterioration of knee joint cartilage in a group of arthritis patients by a third over three years, significantly reducing pain and improved day-to-day mobility, the Telegraph reported here.

Cyrus Cooper, professor from Oxford and Southampton Universities, who led the study, said: “This is a major breakthrough. Osteoarthritis is a painful and debilitating condition, and for over 20 years we have been searching for a treatment that would allow us to alter the course of the disease, rather than just manage the symptoms.”

“The results could totally change the way we treat osteoarthritis. For the first time we have a treatment that can slow the development of this debilitating disease and could reduce or even eliminate the need for expensive and painful joint replacement surgery,” said Cooper.

The Phase III trial involved 1,683 mostly female arthritis patients with an average age of 63 years who were randomly treated with either one gram or two gram daily doses of Protelos, or a dummy drug.

Cooper said the drug almost halved the frequency of its progression. Patients who are rapid progressors have a fivefold increased risk of needing joint replacement. “You would expect it might have an impact on joint replacement rates,” said Cooper.

Osteoarthritis affects 630 million people worldwide. Until now, pain management and physiotherapy has been the only available treatment short of surgery.

French manufacturer Servier is understood to be applying for a new licence so it can be used in osteoarthritis as well as osteoporosis. These findings were presented at the European Congress on Osteoporosis and Osteoarthritis (ECCEO) in Bordeaux, France.

“We found that obese black and white teenage girls who transitioned out of obesity continued to see themselves as fat, despite changes in their relative body mass,” said Sarah A. Mustillo, associate professor of sociology from Purdue University, who led the study.

“Further, obese white girls had lower self-esteem than their normal-weight peers and their self-esteem remained flat even as they transitioned out of obesity,” Mustillo was quoted as saying in the Journal of Health and Social Behaviour.

The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 17 percent of American children aged two to 19 hears are obese, said a university statement.

“If the current national movement to end childhood obesity is successful, we can anticipate many young people moving from obese into the normal weight range, which will result in better physical health,” Mustillo said.

“I wanted to know if the same thing would happen for psychological health. Girls often struggle with self-esteem anyway during adolescence and, therefore, it is troubling to find that the negative effects of larger body size can outlive the obesity itself,” said Mustillo.

The study is based on data from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Growth and Health Study, derived from more than 2,000 girls who were followed for 10 years – from nine to 10 years as part of the national study.

Researchers reported these findings after examining the cardio-health of astronauts who followed a rigorous exercise regimen on board the International Space Station (ISS) as little was known about their effects.

R.L. Hughson, D.K. Greaves, P.P. Pereira-Junior and D. Xu of the University of Waterloo; J.K. Shoemaker of the University of Western Ontario and others collected data from six male astronauts, aged between 41 and 55 years, who stayed on ISS missions from 52 to 199 days.

A month before they embarked, the research team collected a wealth of data on each subject’s cardiovascular health, the Journal of Applied Physiology reported.

This data was collected during spontaneous and paced breathing, both sitting up and lying down, to reflect a variety of conditions and cardiovascular stresses, said the university statement.

The researchers measured various factors including finger arterial blood pressure (BP), heart rate, left ventricular ejection time, and cardiac output.

Results showed that heart rate, BP and arterial baroreflex response (the body’s natural way to regulate heart rate and BP based on continuous sensing of both) were unchanged from pre-flight to in-flight.

On these particular missions, the astronauts were each allotted 2.5 hours per day to set up for exercise, complete a workout, and clean up after the session, with options to exercise on a cycle, treadmill, or doing resistance training.

These exercise sessions appear to keep astronauts relatively healthy and prepared for return to Earth, despite the potentially negative effects of a low-gravity environment.

The drug will be manufactured in the state-run Pharmaceutical Industrial Laboratory and distributed “under strict medical prescription” in public hospitals, provincial Health Minister Miguel Cappiello told the media.

He said that the laboratory is working to produce pills for adults suffering from erectile dysfunction and a syrup to treat children suffering from pulmonary hypertension.

“They’re moving forward on the trials to produce sildenafil, which will be distributed free among those who need it, to deal with different conditions within the framework of the public policies on the production of medications,” he said.

Cappiello went on to say that the decision to produce sildenafil arose “in the face of the need to have a medicinal (approach) to treat paediatric pulmonary hypertension”.

“Simultaneously, they’re developing the formula for sildenafil, 50 mg in pill form, usually prescribed for erectile dysfunction,” he added.

The minister insisted that the distribution of Viagra “will be free and under obligatory medical prescription” and that “other provinces” in the country are interested in buying the drug from Santa Fe to foster similar policies.

They are twice as likely to be diagnosed with mental health disorders, researchers in Australia have found.

The study of more than 1,000 women showed that completely switching to protein such as chicken and fish is not as healthy as many believe, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

The study, published in the journal Psychotherapy Psychosomatics, also advised women not to exceed the recommended amount of red meat either.

This figure includes 11 million children.

Numerous Indians “need vision correction and to move towards alleviating this healthcare crisis we need to promote optometry and optometrist”, Wadhwa said on the World Optometry Day here.

Although sinus infections are the fifth leading reason for antibiotics prescriptions, 90 to 98 percent of cases are caused by viruses, which are not affected by antibiotics. Nearly one in seven people are diagnosed with a sinus infection each year.

The guidelines – the first developed by IDSA on this topic – provide specific characteristics of the illness to help doctors distinguish between viral and bacterial sinus infections.

Most sinus infections develop during or after a cold or other upper respiratory infection, but other factors such as allergens and environmental irritants may play a role, the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases reported.

Used inappropriately, antibiotics foster the development of drug-resistant superbugs, said university statement.

“There is no simple test that will easily and quickly determine whether a sinus infection is viral or bacterial, so many physicians prescribe antibiotics ‘just in case,’” said Anthony W. Chow, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, who led the study.

“However, if the infection turns out to be viral – as most are – the antibiotics won’t help and in fact can cause harm by increasing antibiotic resistance, exposing patients to drug side effects unnecessarily and adding costs,” said Chow.

The guidelines recommend treating bacterial sinus infections with amoxicillin -clavulanate versus the current standard, amoxicillin. The addition of clavulanate helps to overcome antibiotic resistance by inhibiting an enzyme that breaks down the antibiotic.

The guidelines also recommend against using other commonly used antibiotics, including azithromycin, clarithromycin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, due to increasing drug resistance.

The recommendation to use amoxicillin-clavulanate instead of amoxicillin is a major shift from older guidelines developed by other organizations.

According to researchers, the answer may lie in a component of the immune system known as the acute-phase response during an invasion by bugs, viruses or microbes.

This response puts healthy cells and tissue under tremendous stress, and is actually the cause of many of the symptoms tied with feeling sick, the journal The Quarterly Review of Biology reported.

Acute-phase response raises body temperature, causes mild anaemia and loss of appetite.

Certain vital nutrients, namely, iron, zinc and manganese are partially sequestered away from the bloodstream.

“The question is why would these harmful components evolve,” said Edmund LeGrand from the University of Tennessee, who co-wrote the paper with Joe Alcock from the University of New Mexico.

The researchers said the answer becomes clear when the acute-phase response is viewed in terms of what they called “immune brinksmanship”, according to a Tennessee statement.

LeGrand said the concept was akin to what happens in international trade disputes.

When one country places trade sanctions on another, both countries’ economies take a hit, but the sanctioning country is betting that its opponent will be hurt more.

The incentives include deduction of up to Rs 5,000 in direct tax for preventive health check-up, indirect and service tax concession to several essential healthcare products, and a multi-sectoral nutrition augmentation programme. All these measures would strengthen secondary and primary healthcare services, respectively.

FLAGSHIP PROGRAMMES

The RSBY has immensely benefited in this Budget, with an allocation of Rs 1096.7 crore. The RSBY is a health insurance scheme for secondary-level care services for the BPL and disadvantaged sections of the society, which has been functioning under the Ministry of Labour and Employment since 2006. The RSBY scheme is expected to cover the entire BPL population, (which accounts for 37.2 per cent of the Indian population as per the Tendulkar committee estimate of BPL) in every year on a rolling basis, but could enrol only around 10 per cent of the Indian population by March 31, 2011.

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A new study by Daycare Trust, the University of Oxford, and A+ Education concludes that Ofsted grades are too broad to provide a detailed measure of quality in childcare settings, and are best used alongside other existing quality assessments.  The research was funded by a grant from the Nuffield foundation and is published today alongside a new guide for parents on how to identify high quality childcare.

Researchers compared Ofsted inspections based on the Early Years Foundation Stage, with other quality assessments such as ECERS (Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale) and ITERS (Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale), as well as quality assurance schemes.  Focus groups were also carried out with parents, providers and local authorities to explore how these different measures are understood.  Key details include:

• Some settings judged as outstanding or good by Ofsted were rated as lower quality on the ECERS and ITERS rating scales.  This could have implications for funding as Ofsted ratings are currently used by many local authorities to determine which nurseries and preschools receive government early years funding for free childcare provision .
• Local authorities should use a range of indicators when allocating funding for existing free provision and in particular the extension of free childcare places to 40 per cent of two year olds by 2014.
• Many parents consulted felt that Ofsted reports did not provide all the information they needed to make a decision about a childcare setting.

Sandra Mathers, Lead Researcher from the Department of Education at the University of Oxford and Director of A+ Education Ltd said:

‘We should not forget that Ofsted is a regulatory tool rather than a detailed quality measure. Our research suggests that Ofsted grades cannot necessarily be relied upon as complete measure of quality, and may need to be complemented by other measures.’

“This has important implications for the way in which funding decisions around early education are made, and particularly the free entitlement for disadvantaged two year olds.” Anand Shukla, Chief Executive of Daycare Trust, added:

“There is overwhelming evidence that investing in high quality childcare in the formative years of a child’s life can make the biggest difference to their life chances, but as this research proves parents are not currently equipped to make informed choices on quality.

“That is why Daycare Trust is calling on Ofsted to ensure its reports are accessible and useful to parents, and on local authorities to make more of the information they hold on childcare providers available to parents, to help them make choices based on quality.

“Given the high cost of childcare, parents deserve access to comprehensive information on quality so they can exercise informed choice.”

Mice tests have demonstrated that a mutation on a single gene broke down body-brain communication and triggered non-stop eating and rapid weight gain.

But the good news is that the scientists hope identifying the Bdnf gene could help with slimming treatments as obesity is becoming a global epidemic, the journal Nature Medicine reports.

Baoki Xu, who led the study at Georgetown University Medical Centre, US on variations in the Bdnf gene in mice, said: “This discovery may open up novel strategies to help the brain control body weight.”

His team found the Bdnf gene has ‘short’ and ‘long’ versions which form at an early stage in the womb. Those with the ‘long’ form sent the chemical signals to say ‘I’m full’ through a ‘superhighway’ of neurons in the brain to the hypothalamus, according to the Daily Mail.

In those with the short form, signals reached some brain cells but could not be picked up by the dendrites – the branch-like ‘fingers’ coming out of the cells which pass messages on to the right place.

Xu said: “If there is a problem with the Bdnf gene, neurons can’t talk to each other, and the leptin and insulin signals are ineffective and the appetite is not modified.” The mice ate twice as much as those without the mutation.

Humans also have this gene and it has been linked to obesity, but the researchers say it was not clear until now exactly how it worked.

After a meal, the activity of this gene transmits chemical signals down a chain of brain cells until they reach the hypothalamus, which receives the message that you are full and suppresses the appetite.

Scientists will now be looking at whether the faulty transmission line can be modified, to help prevent and treat obesity.

Scientists have now found that playing sufferers the same tone which they “hear,” halts auditory brain cells from creating the perceived noise.

The new acoustic coordinated reset (ACR) therapy has shown in trials that it eases loudness and annoyance caused by tinnitus in seven out of 10 patients, the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience reports.

With ACR, the brain manages to “unlearn” the neurological processes which cause it to generate the “phantom” sounds sufferers associate with tinnitus, according to the Telegraph.

Sufferers never experience pure silence, and many struggle to fall asleep. It is more common in the elderly. The only other treatments available have been those which mask symptoms, such as CDs of ocean waves, or psychological techniques to help people cope better.

Scientists have now found that playing sufferers the same tone which they “hear” in their mind stops auditory brain cells from creating the perceived noise.

With ACR, the brain manages to “unlearn” the neurological processes which cause it to generate the “phantom” sounds sufferers associate with tinnitus. The results of the research are being presented Tuesday at the British Medical Association conference here.

According to the study published in the European Journal of Public Health, eight-year-olds who were demand-fed as infants had IQs that were four or five points higher than those who were fed to a schedule.

Researchers from Essex and Oxford Universities looked at three types of mothers and babies – babies who were fed to a schedule, for example every four hours, when they were four weeks old, those whose mother tried but did not manage to feed to a schedule, and those who were fed on demand, the Daily Mail reported.

The data was drawn from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a study of over 10,000 children born in the Bristol area in the early 1990s.

The findings show that feeding on demand is associated with higher IQ scores at the age of eight, and better performance in national curriculum tests, known as Sats, at ages five, seven, 11 and 14.

Maria Iacovou from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at Essex University said: “The difference between schedule and demand-fed children is found both in breastfed and in bottle-fed babies.

“The difference in IQ levels of around four to five points, though statistically highly significant, would not make a child at the bottom of the class move to the top, but it would be noticeable.”

As a term, “coregasm” has circulated in the media for years, because of its linkage with exercises for core abdominal muscles, said study co-author Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Indiana University Centre for Sexual Health Promotion.

“These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women’s experiences of orgasm,” added Herbernick.

Findings from a first-of-its-kind study have shown that these women were neither fantasizing sexually nor thinking about anyone they were attracted to during their experiences, the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy reported.

Herbenick who co-authored the study with J. Dennis Fortenberry, professor at the Indiana School of Medicine, surveyed 124 women online who reported experiencing exercise-induced orgasms (EIO) and 246 who experienced exercise-induced sexual pleasure (EISP), said a university statement.

The women were aged between 18 to 63 years. Most were in a relationship or married, and about 69 percent identified themselves as heterosexual. About 40 percent of women who had experienced EIO and EISP had done so on more than 10 occasions.

Diverse types of physical exercise were associated with EIO and EISP. Of the EIO group, 51.4 percent reported experiencing an orgasm in connection with abdominal exercises within the previous 90 days.

Others reported experiencing orgasm in connection to such exercises as weight lifting (26.5 percent), yoga (20 percent), bicycling (15.8), running (13.2 percent) and walking / hiking (9.6 percent).

“It may be that exercise — which is already known to have significant benefits to health and well-being — has the potential to enhance women’s sexual lives as well,” said Herbenick, who is a widely read advice columnist and book author.

From Monday, a three km stretch on Necklace Road abutting the picturesque Hussain Sagar lake in the heart of the city would be a bicycle zone between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. Vehicles will not be allowed from Sanjivaiah Park to Prasad’s IMAX.

Under the initiative of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and Hyderabad Bicycling Club (HBC), 100 bicycles and helmets will be kept for those interested in bicycling. While this would be free till March 31, Rs.100 per month will be charged for maintenance from April.

Led by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, hundreds participated in the “bicyclone” rally. Greater Hyderabad mayor Majid Hussain and people from different walks of life participated.

The mayor said another cycling track would be opened in Hitec City. “We want to promote cycling among citizens so that they keep themselves healthy,” he said.

“It is a major carbon free awareness and healthy living initiative,” said Abhaya Shankar, Managing Director of Hyderabad Industries Limited (HIL), who not only participated in the rally but supported the event.

Announced on the concluding day of the 50th annual conference of the IAP held here, the guidelines would be systematically developed to assist the practitioner to take decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances, said a statement.

“It is for the first time that clinical guidelines for Indians would be framed. The objective is to create evidence-based practice guidelines for its members for better patient outcome,” said Umasankar Mohanty, President, IAP Organising Chairman of the conference.

According to Rajeev Agarwal, Member, IAP, it would be a multi-centre study which would involve centres from the metros and state capitals.

“Physiotherapists who have acquired substantial experience in carrying out their practice would be enrolled in the study. We expect to release the first ever clinical guidelines in 2014 at our annual conference,” he said.

According to IAP, at present the physiotherapists of India are following the guidelines framed by American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) but as Indian patients are different, guidelines framed by other countries do not apply fully on them.

“We know that Indians are racially different from others and the risk factors for different diseases defined for us are different from those for other populations,” said Sanjiv Kumar Jha, General Secretary, IAP.

“We need our own guidelines in view of our special geographical, ethnic, and climatic conditions and very different dietary habits,” he added.

“Wow, this is an era of self-diagnosis,” thought Arizona State University psychologist Virginia Kwan, learning that statistic. How might information accessed online affect individual health decisions?

Kwan and colleagues found that the way information is presented-specifically, the order in which symptoms are listed-makes a significant difference, the journal Psychological Science reported.

“People irrationally infer more meanings from a ‘streak’”- an uninterrupted series whether of high rolls of the dice or disease symptoms of consecutively reported symptoms. If they check off more symptoms in a row, the research found, “they perceive a higher personal risk of having that illness,” said Kwan, according to a university statement.

The findings could prove useful for public health education, Kwan said: “With certain types of illnesses, people tend to seek medical attention at the latest stage.”

Meanwhile, “People also go to doctors asking all the time about illnesses that are very rare,” added Kwan.

“We know that every six seconds there is a person affected by stroke in the world,” said study co-author Ercole Vellone, assistant professor in nursing science at the School of Nursing, University Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy.

“Identifying strategies to improve stroke recovery and patients’ quality of life represent a priority for the healthcare system and art exposure seems to be promising,” added Vellone, according to a university statement.

For the research, 192 stroke survivors (average age 70 years) were asked if they liked or did not like art (music, painting, theatre). Quality of life was compared for patients interested in art (105) and patients not interested in art (87).

Patients interested in art had better general health, found it easier to walk, and had more energy. They were also happier, less anxious or depressed, and felt calmer.

They had better memory and were superior communicators – speaking with other people, understanding of what people said, naming people and objects correctly.

Vellone said: “Stroke survivors who saw art as an integrated part of their former lifestyle, by expressing appreciation towards music, painting and theatre, showed better recovery skills than those who did not.”

The research was presented at the 12th Annual Spring Meeting on Cardiovascular Nursing, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“Sporadic outbreak of bird flu has been badly affecting the poultry industry in the northeastern states, bordering Bangladesh, where avian influenza is rampant in many districts,” Animal resources development department director Manoranjan Sarkar told IANS.

He said: “In view of the intermittent outbreak of bird flu influenza, the state government would soon request the department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries under the union agriculture ministry to send special expert-teams to study the reasons of occasional resurfacing of the contagious disease.”

Bird flu influenza has resurfaced in the state-owned Gandhigram Poultry Farm in western Tripura after one-and-a-half months, forcing the authorities to cull thousands of poultry birds, ducks and poultry products in the farm and in the adjacent four villages in a three km radius.

“In all 12 rapid response teams (RRT) have already begun culling of ducks and poultry birds at the farm, 20 km north of here and adjoining villages,” said the official.

“The paramilitary Border Security Force has been alerted to prevent the entry of ducks and fowl from across the border,” the official said.

The culling was initiated since Friday after the instruction of the central government department of animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries. The High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) at Bhopal had earlier confirmed the presence of the H5N1 virus in the affected birds of the Gandhigram Poultry Farm.

Over 6,200 poultry and ducks have been culled in last week of January in western Tripura after a bird flu outbreak at the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) farm at Lembuchara and in adjoining villages.

The Tripura government has been asking the central government to bear the entire cost of the compensation and other expenditure relating to bird flu.

The government of India shares cost of compensation on a 50:50 basis with the state governments – and has asked the state governments to utilise funds available with them under the programme of Assistance to States for Control of Animal Disease (ASCAD), a centrally sponsored scheme.

Four northeastern states – Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam – share a 1,880-km border with bird flu hit Bangladesh, where the contagious disease is rampant in many districts.

Even though India declared itself bird flu-free on December last year, Tripura and Meghalaya witnessed outbreak of the disease in January this year.

Authorities in East Garo Hills district of Meghalaya had culled 6,538 birds, while 9,157 eggs and more than 800 kg of feeds have been destroyed at Williamnagar and adjoining villages in fourth week of January.

Tripura had been affected by avian influenza since in April and May 2008, forcing authorities to cull over 250,000 poultry birds and ducks then.

The Tripura government in January had incurred an expense of Rs.15 lakh, that included payment of compensation to the affected poultry owners.

“In the ongoing culling and subsequent mopping operation, the state government has to spend another Rs.15 lakh to pay compensation to the poultry owners and farmers and to meet other expenditures. Such type of sudden spending affects the government exchequer,” ARDD director said.

Etihad Airways has entered into a partnership with Abu Dhabi Organics Farms, the first internationally certified organic farming initiative in the UAE.

The airline will be sourcing fresh organic produce daily from the farm that would include fresh eggs, vegetables and honey.

Etihad will soon launch the farm-to-table concept across all cabin classes.

The Abu Dhabi Organics Farms was established in 1997 by Khalid Al Shamsi, a UAE national passionate about organic living.

Built on more than 55 hectares of land, the farm features greenhouses and fields and grows a wide range of vegetables and fruits from around the world. It also raises livestock such as camels, cows, chickens and goats.

The farm also offers daily field trips to educate children on the importance of natural organic food, sustainability and recycling. It helps children experience first-hand how a desert has been turned into fertile land.

The Abu Dhabi Organics Farms works with the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN.

“The budget was reassuring. The finance minister ensured a strong focus on inclusive growth and an equally robust thrust to address the bottlenecks in infrastructure development,” said Prathap C. Reddy, chairman of Apollo group of hospitals.

“Tax exemption of Rs.5,000 for preventive health checks is very encouraging. With ample communication, it would encourage early detection of diseases like cancer, heart diseases and diabetes which are on the rise,” Reddy added.

India’s health allocation was hiked by 14 percent in the budget for 2012-13. Mukherjee proposed to extend concessional basic customs duty of five percent with full exemption from excise duty and anti-subsidy duty to six specified life saving drugs and vaccines used for the treatment or prevention of ailments such as HIV/AIDS and renal cancer.

“Considering the high morbidity rate we have, it is important to have tax relaxation on life saving drugs like Rotavirus. Rotavirus can prevent deaths caused by diarrhoea and this is would be a very good step,” Ajay Bakshi, chief executive officer at the Maxhealthcare group, told IANS.

Said Amol Naikawadi, joint managing director of Indus Health Plus: “The focus on preventive heath check ups will benefit the normal consumer, people working in stressed conditions and people with lifestyle diseases.”

“This is a very positive move which will lead to enhanced awareness of preventive healthcare which is at the state of infancy in India,” Naikawadi added.

The budget also focused on better health services to the poor in rural as well as urban slums, increasing the outlay of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and launching the National Urban Health Mission.

Presenting his seventh budget, Mukherjee proposed to extend concessional basic customs duty of five percent with full exemption from excise duty and anti-subsidy duty to six specified life saving drugs and vaccines used for the treatment or prevention of ailments such as HIV/AIDS and renal cancer.

Last year’s allocation to the sector was Rs.26,897 crore (Rs.268 billion/$5.3 billion).

The budget for 2012-13 also focused on better health services to the poor in rural as well as urban slums, increasing the outlay of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and launching the National Urban Health Mission.

The government hiked by nearly 15 percent the budget for NRHM with an outlay of Rs.20,822 crore (Rs.208 billion/$4.1 billion).

“I propose to increase the allocation to NRHM from Rs.18,115 (Rs.181 billion/$3.6 billioncrore in 2011-12 to Rs.20,822 (Rs.208 billion/$4.1 billion) crore in 2012-13,” he said.

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) flagship programme was launched in 2005 and aims to provide quality healthcare to villagers in 18 states which has weak public health infrastructure.

It is being implemented by a network of nearly 800,000 Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs).

“The scope of ASHA’s activities is being enlarged to include prevention of Iodine Deficiency Disorders, ensure 100 percent immunisation and better spacing of children,” he said.

“At the community level, a more active role is envisaged for ASHA as the convenor of the village health and sanitation committee, as also to support the initiative on malnutrition. Since ASHAs receive activity-wise, performance-based payments, this will also enhance their remuneration,” he added.

To target the urban poor, the government also launched the National Urban Health Mission, which aims to provide basic primary health needs of the people who live in shanties in cities.

Aiming to reach out to people living in the remotest part of the country, the government has already started upgrading the existing hospitals and establishing new hospitals.

This has been done under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).

Under this scheme, the government had aimed at setting up eight All India Institute of Medical Sciences-like institutions and upgradation of existing government medical colleges.

“It will enhance the availability of affordable tertiary health care,” he said.

Mukherjee also lauded the government’s efforts to virtually eradicate polio.

“They say persistence pays. I am happy to inform honurable members that no new case of polio was reported in the last one year,” he said.

“By modernising existing units and setting up a new integrated vaccine unit near Chennai, the government will achieve vaccine security and keep the pressure on disease eradication and prevention,” he added.

Aiming to fill the human resource gap, the highest allocation of Rs.4,182.38 crore (Rs.41 billion/$816 million) has been given to medical education, training and research. According to the Planning Commission, India faces a shortage of about 600,000 doctors, one million nurses, 200,000 dental surgeons and a large number of paramedical staff.

Expenditure on public health saw an increase with the government allocating Rs. Rs. 2,876 crore (Rs.28 billion/$557 million)to tackle vector control diseases, mental health, TB, blindness and leprosy.

In the previous budget, it was Rs. Rs.2,160.42 crore (Rs.21 billion/$418 million).

Patients who ate the greatest amounts of the grain had a 27% greater risk of developing the disease than those who ate the least, and the relative risk was higher among Asian patients, Qi Sun, PhD, of Harvard, and colleagues, reported in BMJ.

“Although rice has been a staple food in Asian populations for thousands of years, this transition [to more sedentary lifestyles and greater availability of food] may render Asian populations more susceptible to the adverse effects of high intakes of white rice, as well as other sources of refined carbohydrates, such as pastries, white bread, and sugar sweetened beverages,” they wrote.

The glycemic index of white rice is higher than that of other whole grains, largely due to processing. It’s also the primary contributor to dietary glycemic load for populations that consume rice as a staple food, such as Asians.

Sun and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of four prospective cohort analyses in Asian and Western populations, totaling 352,384 patients with follow-up ranging from 4 to 22 years.

During that time, there were 13,284 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

Asians generally had a higher level of white rice consumption than Western populations.

Overall, Sun and colleagues found a positive association between white rice intake and type 2 diabetes (RR 1.27, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.54, P=0.001), which was stronger in Asian populations.

Asians with the highest intake had a 55% greater risk of diabetes than Asian patients who ate the least rice (RR 1.55, 95% CI 1.20 to 2.01).

The risk was also heightened in Western populations, but the confidence interval straddled 0 and wasn’t significant (RR 1.12, 95% CI 0.94 to 1.33).

The researchers noted that study heterogeneity in these analyses was low.

They also found a dose-response effect — with each increase in rice serving per day, risk of type 2 diabetes rose by 11% (95% CI 1.08 to 1.14, P<0.001).

In secondary analyses, the association appeared to be more pronounced in women than in men, they added.

They cautioned, however, that the meta-analysis was limited by the observational nature of the included studies and by their reliance on food frequency questionnaires to assess dietary intake. Also, they did not analyze consumption of brown rice, since only one of the four studies examined this food.

Still, they concluded that the dose-response relationship may indicate that “even for Western populations with typically low intake levels, relatively high white rice consumption may still modestly increase risk of diabetes.”

In an accompanying editorial, Bruce Neal, MD, of the University of Sydney in Australia, cautioned that the “interpretation of the observed association, and, in particular, determination of the likelihood of causality, are problematic.”

Neal warned that the highest and lowest levels of rice intake varied greatly between studies, and that what’s really needed is a “more sophisticated analysis based on primary rather than summary data.”

He continued that there are “few immediate clinical implications,” since “further research is needed to develop and substantiate the research hypothesis” — even though funding is likely a challenge.

“Public health nutrition awaits the discovery of the model that will secure the investment needed to answer questions about the role of nutrition in health using large randomised studies,” Neal wrote. “Until then, the effect of the consumption of white rice on the development of type 2 diabetes will remain unclear.”

The Survey highlights that the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK) was launched on 1st June, 2011 to give free entitlements to pregnant women and sick newborns for cashless delivery, C-Section, drugs and consumables, diagnostics, diet during stay in the health institutions, provision of blood, exemption from user charges, transport from home to health institutions, transport between facilities in case of referral, and drop back from Institutions to home. A sum of Rs. 1437 crore has been allocated to the states during 2011-12 under the JSSK. In order to reach out to difficult, inaccessible, backward and under-served areas with poor health indicators, 264 high focus districts in 21 states have been identified based on concentration of SC/ST population and presence of left wing extremism for focused attention. A Mother and Child Tracking system has been introduced, which provides complete data of the mothers with their addresses, telephone numbers, etc. for effective monitoring of ante-natal and post-natal check-up of mothers and immunization services.

The Survey also points out that the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), which targets lowering of Maternal Mortality Ratio by ensuring that deliveries are conducted by skilled birth attendants, has shown rapid growth in last three years, with number of beneficiaries rising to 106.96 lakh in 2010-11 from 90.37 lakh in 2008-09. The issue of governance, transparency, and grievance redressal mechanisms are now the thrust areas for the JSY.

The advantages of running are enumerated below:

Heart: The maximum benefits occur in the heart as the muscles of two ventricles which pump out blood become thicker and both the interiors of these chambers become larger in size by 20 percent. This enables both the ventricles to pump out more blood with each beat.

The heart rate reduces and goes down to 40-50 per minute. Giving the heart time to relax as each beat pumps out more blood than usual. This also enables more blood supply to the heart muscles, giving it more power. Simultaneously, the coronary arteries which supply blood to the heart muscles become larger in diameter and supply more blood to the heart muscles, making it more powerful. Population studies have revealed that runners suffer less from heart attack.

Improvement of blood chemistry: Running reduces blood cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglyceride which indirectly contribute to heart attacks. HDL cholesterol which protects from heart attacks increases with running and even goes up to 80 to 100 mg. Running causes stimulation of the hypothalamus in the brain, leading to an anti-clotting factor named Plasminogen Activator which like Streptokinase prevents clot formation in coronary arteries, preventing heart attack. Running improves glucose tolerance and helps diabetics to control blood sugar.

Psychological well-being: This is the best thing that happens to a runner. Few scientific studies have been done in this area but some have shown that running addiction is associated with high frequency running and positive personality, though not with mood enhancement. Some scientific studies have shown that marathon runners are below normal in anxiety, low in tension, depression and hostility. Among runners there is improved self-concept, sense of control and body image. Runners have better concentration in professional work, a positive outlook towards life and better sleep.

Anti-obesity: Running reduces body weight and obesity.

Anti-smoking: The running habit stops smoking.

Anti-ageing: Runners are slower to grow old. Physiologically, age increases 10-15 percent in 10 years. But runners grow old by 5 percent in 10 years.

Respiratory Functions: With running, lung functioning improves and breathing becomes effortless after some time. Even asthma patients can improve by starting slow running.

Sleep: Runners have no sleep problems and they feel fresh every morning.

It was published a few years back that in a UK drug addiction centre, patients were given a daily running routine of 30-40 minutes and they showed quicker response to therapy.

From kings and presidents to criminals on death row, everyone is taking a shot at running and the marathon is the most popular mass participation sports in the world. People with blindness, artificial legs, cardiac transplants, terminal cancer run marathons to feel happy.

It has become a most popular mass participation sport. In all, more than 1,000 marathons are organised in the world every year and billions take part. People of all ages and from all strata of society run marathons together.

I have seen 98 years old completing full marathons. One person with a heart transplant ran a marathon with me. I have run with amputees, I have seen many running after bypass cardiac surgery. I have seen a millionaire having his own Jet plane running a marathon with common men. In contrast I ran with a prisoner on death row – he was wearing stripped pyjamas and his right arm and leg were shackled in thick chains.

(11-03-2012- Dr. [Wing Commander] Ashis Roy is a physician cardiologist and served in the Indian Air Force for 21 years. By the time he was 79, he completed 131 marathons which is an Indian record. He can be contacted at ashisroy32@yahoo.com)

Karen and Carl — parents of now two-year-old Ellie-Mae Wolfenden — celebrate an extra birthday each year for their daughter, marking the day of her surgery as the day she was given a second life, the Daily Mail reported.

“I asked where the liver had come from because I didn’t like to think of another child dying, but it was actually from a 37-year-old man. People think it has to be from another child but it doesn’t, the liver will grow with her. They cut a bit off and put it inside,” said 38-year-old Karen, from Cheshire.

Karen took Ellie-Mae to doctors in June 2009 when she noticed a swelling in her stomach. After an examination, she was referred for a scan which revealed a mass on her liver.

The family were told Ellie-Mae had stage four hepatoblastoma and the cancer had spread to her lungs.

Within days, the baby was put on a cycle of chemotherapy and her parents were told she would require a full liver transplant.

She had a surgery and was allowed home in January 2010. She has since made a full recovery.

“Mental illness is like any other physical illness and is treatable. Early intervention leads to better outcomes and can prevent people from reaching the crisis point,” said Sudhir Joseph, director at St. Stephen’s hospital in the capital.

“Over 60 percent of people suffering from mental illness do not seek help because of a complex set of reasons, especially the fear of stigma and poor access to professional mental health advice,” Joseph said.

The hospital has been running a mental health helpline in the national capital since Oct 2011 in collaboration with Emmanuel Hospital Association (EHA), Vandrevala foundation and the Mar Thoma Church.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report of 2010, nearly 9,465 people committed suicide in the country due to mental illness. Experts suggest people should seek counselling if in stress or depression.

“We have received calls ranging from stress, domestic violence, fears, adolescent problems, dejection and marital problems. It is important to change deep-seated public attitudes and reduce the stigma and discrimination they face,” said Ashok Chacko, regional director of the helpline.

“The problem for those suffering from mental health problems stems not from the illness, but from the way others treat them. People are spoken of as addicts, schizophrenics, neurotics, maniacs or depressive. At times, the entire family has to suffer because of the prejudices against them,” Chacko observed.

While the Union Health Ministry is trying to adopt a fresher approach towards mental illness through its national mental health programmes, experts feel the change needs to come in from within the community.

“People living with mental illness need to be mainstreamed. They are only victims of circumstances and family members need to be extremely sensitive to the confusion, fear and concern of those experiencing symptoms of mental illness,” said Zaki Shah, a psychologist at the St. Stephens Helpline.

The researchers believe the inflammation of joints in arthritis may cause irregular heartbeat, known as atrial fibrillation, besides formation of blood clots and stroke.

Rheumatoid arthritis tends to strike between the ages of 40 and 70 years and is more common amongst women than men. It is the result of the immune system attacking cells lining the joints, making them swollen, stiff and very painful, reported online journal BMJ.com.

Copenhagen University scientists studied more than four million people of whom 18,250 had rheumatoid arthritis over a period of five years, and found those afflicted were 40 percent at higher risk of atrial fibrillation and 30 percent higher risk of strokes than the general public.

In a group of 1,000 normal patients, six would likely suffer from atrial fibrillation in any given year while 5.7 would be likely to have a stroke.

However, amongst a group of 1,000 rheumatoid arthritis sufferers, eight would be expected to have atrial fibrillation while 7.6 would be likely to have a stroke.

“Inflammation plays a central role in rheumatoid arthritis and in the disease process of many other related conditions, so it’s not surprising that it may also play a role in the development of atrial fibrillation,” said Michael Ehrenstein of Arthritis Research, Britain.

The results of these studies demonstrated that LSD patients were less likely to relapse into problematic alcohol use and had higher levels of total abstinence, said Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

LSD was also used in the treatment of alcoholics 40 years ago with good results. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, researchers experimented with LSD in treating various disorders, including alcoholism. Not all of them were scientifically tenable today, but some were, the Journal of Psychopharmacology reports.

“There has long been a need for better treatments for addiction. We think it is time to look at the use of psychedelics in treating various conditions,” the researchers say, according to Norwegian statement.

They found six different studies of LSD and alcoholism that were scientifically sound, in which patients were randomly assigned, as if by tossing a coin, to receive either LSD or a comparison treatment. They combined all the data from these studies, involving a total of 536 people – the first such rigorous quantitative analysis in the world.

All of the studies were conducted either in the U.S. or Canada between 1966 and 1970. The studies all involved individuals who were admitted to treatment for alcoholism and who voluntarily participated in the trials. Nearly all were men.

Within each of the studies all patients were given the same treatment programme. But on one treatment day some patients were given a single large dose of LSD, while other group received a low dose of LSD or a stimulant drug – or nothing.

“Neither patients nor the individuals who were treating them knew in advance who would get a full dose of LSD. On average, 59 percent of full-dose (LSD) patients showed a clear improvement compared with 38 percent in the other groups,” say Krebs and Johansen.

Many of the patients said they had gained a new appreciation for their alcohol problem and new motivation to address it.

The new designer drug curbed the growth of cancer cells including that of colon, pancreatic, lung, prostate, breast, and leukemia, in the lab, according to a team from the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education of The City College of New York.

“The key components of this new compound are that it is very, very potent and yet it has minimal toxicity to the cells,” said Khosrow Kashfi, associate professor at City College and principal study investigator, the journal Medicinal Chemistry Letters reports.

Prolonged use of aspirin is known to pose its own dangers: side-effects ranging from bleeding ulcers to kidney failure. To resolve this, researchers created a hybrid of two earlier formulations, which they have called “NOSH-aspirin.”

They used the aspirin as a scaffold to support two molecules that have been shown to increase the drug’s safety and potency.

One arm of the hybrid aspirin releases nitric oxide (NO), which helps protect the stomach lining. The other releases hydrogen sulphide (H2S), which the researchers have previously shown enhances aspirin’s cancer-fighting ability, according to a City College statement.

The researchers suspected that the hybrid would be more effective than either of the two components alone to boost aspirin’s safety and power against cancer.

The aspirin compound also shrank human colon cancer tumours by 85 percent in live animals, again without adverse effects, according to another study by the City College researchers and colleague Kenneth Olson of Indiana University School of Medicine, South Bend.

“If what we have seen in animals can be translated to humans,” said Kashfi, “it could be used in conjunction with other drugs to shrink tumors before chemotherapy or surgery.”

Long the go-to drug for minor aches and pains, aspirin and other so-called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen are known primarily for their ability to calm inflammation. Studies in the 1980s resolved a decades-old debate on the utility of a daily dose of aspirin to cut the risk of heart attack and stroke.

More recent studies tracking regular use of the drug and other NSAIDs demonstrated their remarkable ability to inhibit the growth of cancer.

“There’s a lot of data on aspirin showing that when taken on a regular basis, on average it reduces the risk of development of colon cancer by about 50 percent compared to nonusers,” noted Kashfi.

These findings will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Chicago, from March 31 to April 4.

The 66-year-old politician, who has been confined to wheelchair since April 2004 after a near-fatal road accident, will reach India’s financial capital Mumbai next week where a team of Kiwi doctors would begin a trial with the robotic legs.

“It’s surely a very tense wait for March 16 when a team of two to three doctors will begin my trial,” Jogi told IANS.

“I am getting ready to feel the pleasure of walking on my own legs and stop being confined to the wheelchair, though it has not hampered any of my activities,” remarked Jogi who travelled and addressed more rallies than most other politicians in Chhattisgarh’s last assembly polls in November 2008.

The IAS-turned politician remarked, “The trial’s success depends on several counts and it will go on for several days, I hope to respond well and stand on my own feet.”

The buoyant Jogi has already listed out his first assignment once he gets over the wheelchair, “in Raipur I will like to take a stroll on the lawn at my residence and in Delhi I will walk on the campus of 10, Janpath (the residence of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi).”

Jogi met with with a near-fatal road accident in April 2004 during the Lok Sabha campaign in Chhattisgarh while he was contesting poll as the Congress candidate from Mahasamund constituency against V.C. Shukla, who was then a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee.

Jogi at that time defeated Shukla on his home turf by over 100,000 votes.

Jogi said doctors of New Zealand-based Rex Bionics Limited had earlier said the trial would be undertaken in Chhattisgarh capital Raipur, but later shifted the venue due to the fear of Maoists.

Research conducted by Amir Lahav, director of the Neonatal Research Lab, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and colleagues linked exposure to an audio recording of a mother’s heartbeat and her voice to lower incidence of cardio-respiratory events in pre-term infants.

“Our findings show that there may be a window of opportunity to improve the physiological health of these babies born prematurely using non-pharmalogical treatments, such as auditory stimulation,” said Lahav, principal study investigator, The Journal of Maternal-Foetal and Neonatal Medicine reported.

Because they are underdeveloped, preterm infants experience high rates of adverse lung and heart events, including apnea (pause in breathing longer than 20 seconds) and bradycardia (periods of significantly slow heart rate), according to a hospital statement.

Researchers sought to determine whether an auditory intervention could affect the rates of these unwarranted cardio-respiratory events.

“Our findings are promising in showing that exposure to MSS (maternal sound stimulation) could help preterm infants in the short-term by reducing cardiorespiratory events,” said Lahav.

“The results also suggest that there is a period of time when the infant’s auditory development is most intact that this intervention of MSS could be most impactful,” Lahav said.

“However, given our small sample size, further research is needed to determine if this intervention could have an impact on the care and health of preterm infants,” added Lahav.

While corruption needs to be condemned and curtailed anywhere, this particular scam is a chilling reminder that in our country, bureaucrats and politicians of ruling parties will even sacrifice the lives of poor people to make money on the sly. NRHM funds were direly needed in UP because over 19 crore residents of India’s largest state are suffering from severe health deficits.

Health Status

Take just two key indicators. The Infant mortality rate (the number of babies upto 12 months old dying per 1000 live births) in UP is 61 compared to the all India average of 47. Maternal mortality rate (number of mothers dying while giving birth per 1,00,000 live births) in UP is a jaw dropping 359 compared to the national average of 212. The state is also prone to widespread ravages of infectious diseases like malaria, TB, encephalitis etc. Malnutrition too is widely prevalent. According to the last National Family & Health Survey conducted in 2005, 85% of children in the age 6-35 months and 52% of pregnant women were anaemic. Among children upto 3 years of age, 46% are stunted and 47% are underweight.

These horrifying statistics are from the government’s own surveys. Clearly, there is urgent need for state intervention to provide health facilities, doctors and drugs, besides policy interventions to boost nutritional status, which is so bad because of extreme poverty. So, when funds meant for this purpose are embezzled, the culprits are actually equivalent to murderers because they will cause untold misery and slow death to thousands by diverting funds into their pockets.

Scam Cover Up

Once the suspicion of a scam came to light (in 2010) a series of bizarre murders and suicides started the like of which has never been seen in India before. Two chief medical officers of family welfare were murdered – Dr V K Arya in 2010 and Dr B P Singh in 2011. Then deputy CMO Y S Sachan was found dead under mysterious circumstances in the district jail in Lucknow, where he had been held for his role in the scam. Then Sunil Verma, an NRHM project manager with Construction and Design Services (CDS), shot himself with his licensed revolver at his residence in Lucknow.

The latest in this series of mystifying deaths happened just a few days ago on 12 February 2012. The deputy chief medical officer of Varanasi, who was questioned by the CBI in connection with the NRHM scam in Uttar Pradesh, died under mysterious circumstances in Varanasi. Shailesh Yadav died in what the police claimed was a road accident but eyewitnesses said that a truck with a trailer hit his car and it was dragged for 300 meters before local villagers stopped it. In a macabre coincidence, immediately afterwards, two of Yadav’s subordinates were killed when the three wheeler in which they were rushing to the hospital where Yadav’s dead body was kept, overturned. The two employees were nurses – Shivkumari (50) and Savitri (55).

Besides these deaths, the massive scam took a heavy toll of politicians and bureaucrats. Chief Minister Mayawati sacked health minister Anant Kumar Mishra and family welfare minister Babu Singh Kushwaha. The CBI had arrested Abhay Vajpayee, director in UP health services, G. Ram, retired director general of health services, and Saurabh Jain, managing director of two medicine companies in Moradabad, in January. Apart from the top officials in the medical and health department, the CBI is also questioning the CMOs of 72 districts from where the irregularities in NRHM funds have been reported.

What do all these deaths and arrests reveal? It is clear that the scam was controlled and managed by ministers in the Mayawati led BSP government. In 2010, Mayawati had split the health and family welfare department into two with Mishra heading health and Kushwaha heading the family welfare departments. Kushwaha also created a new post – chief medical officer (family welfare). Arya and Singh held this post and subsequently paid for it with their lives. It is obvious that murders have been resorted to in order to keep the lid on the scam, or at least prevent further revelations of the masterminds behind it.

Interestingly, the scam tainted minister Kushwaha was welcomed into the BJP after being thrown out by the BSP. Desperate to salvage some support in the state in the ongoing Assembly elections, the state BJP with the sanction of the Delhi based high command, inducted Kushwaha in the hope of attracting kurmi (a backward caste) votes. There was such an uproar of protest at this brazen gimmick that Kushwaha himself was forced to withdraw from the BJP although he appears to be campaigning for the party actively. This incident shows the hypocrisy and callousness of the BJP which was grandstanding against corruption and actively involved in Anna Hazare’s campaign. It had no scruples in embracing a corrupt leader from a rival party because all it wants is to somehow get political power.

Unutilised Funds, Scarce Facilities

Meanwhile, what is happening in the NRHM? Latest data from NRHM shows that the program is floundering in UP. There is now a prohibition on further allocation and spending of NRHM funds pending enquiry. There are 1,07,452 villages in UP, in which about 15.5 crore people live. Between April 2005 and September 2011, a total of Rs.11,046.63 crore was allocated by the central government to the state government for implementing NRHM. But actually only Rs.9,401.04 crore was released to the state government. The state has “spent” Rs.9305.90 crore. This obviously includes money that has been embezzled. About Rs.2337.16 crore remains unspent.

The state is supposed to have 20,521 Sub-Centers for giving primary healthcare to villages, roughly one for every 5 village cluster. Only about half of these (10,403) are functioning from government owned buildings. Others are in rented accommodation which is most inadequate. Only 1,620 of these sub centers have two auxiliary nurse cum midwife (ANM) and just 247 of them have 3 staff nurses, as required by rules. Out of the 515 Community Health Centers required in the state, only 412 have been set up and out of these just 9 have been physically upgraded to meet the standards of public health set by the government. In 50 others work is “in progress”. For 15 crore people, there are just 515 general duty doctors in place. Of the 2060 specialist doctors that were to be posted under NRHM, just 1256 are ‘appointed’, whether they attend to their job in rural areas is another question. 4635 staff nurses were required to be posted in the state’s CHC’s. As of date, only 1127 (less than one fourth) have been appointed. Only 1500 ANMs are in position.

Clearly, neither the physical infrastructure nor the medical personnel are in place to tackle the huge challenge in Uttar Pradesh. The four prominent parties that are bidding for power in the state’s elections – Congress, BJP, BSP and SP – have nothing to say about this tragic situation although they are at each other’s throats constantly on various other issues.

The success of our efforts shows that teamwork pays. The Central Government and the States Governments have worked in close partnership with many community base, national level and international organizations and groups including the Rotary International, the World Health Organization and UNICEF. But,  the real credit goes to the 23 lakh volunteers who repeatedly vaccinated children even in the most remote areas, often in very bad weather conditions. Their dedication, for their commitment and for their selfless service is commendable.

Our ultimate objective is and as it must be to achieve full immunization for all our children. We must ensure that every Indian child, rich or poor, whether living in Ladakh or in Delhi has equal access to the best immunization.

Universal access to safe vaccines, however, is only one of the many strategies for preventing and control of diseases and promoting good health among our children. We also need to provide them nutritious food, safe drinking water, proper sanitation and education. Nutrition especially for women and children is essential for community health. Sanitation and safe drinking water are pre-requisites for better absorption of food and prevention of infant and child mortality. But above all, we need to educate our children and our mothers on the importance of hygiene and nutrition to overall good health and longevity.

We are taking urgent measures to address these challenges. The National Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges is spearheading our efforts to address the challenge of malnutrition. The Total Sanitation Campaign aims to eradicate the practice of open defecation by 2017. We are moving towards the creation of Public Health Cadres to work for the prevention and the control of disease. It will be our effort to ensure that every village has access to safe drinking water. The Right to Education Act is in place and we have made considerable progress in universalisation of elementary education. However, going forward we have to give proper attention to issues such as bridging social and gender gaps in school enrolment, adult literacy particularly of women and the need to improve learning outcomes.

Reduction of infant and maternal mortality rates and population stabilization are among the core health goals of our national programme, National Rural Health Mission. Some states in the Union have already reached the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. This agenda however remains a challenge in many of the other states. We need to, in a mission mode, focus on these states and deploy more human, financial and managerial resources to improve their health status. This was what was done in the last three years under the polio campaign.

On a broader level, we need to accelerate our efforts to achieve our goal of providing universal access to health care at affordable cost for all our citizens. This needs first and foremost a determined effort to strengthen our public health systems. The National Rural Health Mission aims to develop the basic rural health infrastructure including through greater investments, community participation and optimisation of manpower and resources.

As the country enters a demographic and epidemiological transition, we need to focus more attention on non communicable diseases and a wider range of infectious diseases. The task of prevention of trauma through prompt and effective emergency care has also acquired great urgency. About 10% of our mortality is now due to trauma which is claiming many young lives.

The rising cost of health care is another key challenge. The impact of high medical costs places an unconscionable burden on the poor. We are, therefore focusing our attention towards social security of the poor with regard to their health care.

The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana provides insurance cover today to over 2.67 crore poor families. However, two thirds of private healthcare expenditure is on out-patient and diagnostic care and for purchase of medicines. Insurance schemes generally tend to focus on in-patient cares. We therefore need to work towards hassle free and cashless outpatient care in our public hospitals.

India’s sustained high growth rates in recent years, has been able to provide the higher levels of public investment needed in the health sector. Public expenditure on health has increased from less than 1% of our GDP in 2006-07 to an estimated 1.4% of GDP by the end of the Eleventh Five year Plan. But we will need to work harder and do more if we have to reach our goal of increasing public expenditure on health to at least 2.5% of the GDP. Education and health will be the key priorities of the Twelfth Five Year Plan.

More money for health must also result in more health for the money. Beyond investments, we, therefore need greater capacities for decentralized health care planning and management. This will require greater focus on human resource development as well as on technological innovation and information systems that can support such decentralization. These are the challenges for the future. Building capacities in our 600 odd districts and states of the union is one important area where the sustained support and partnership of all stakeholders will be vital in terms of health outcome.

Source: Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s address at the Polio Summit in Delhi.

“Progress has been made on the issue of safe motherhood. But a lot still needs to be done,” said Aparajita Gogoi National Coordinator of the White Ribbon Alliance.

“Advocacy is critical in making the change happen and engaging with the political and social leaders is vital to tackle this problem,” said Gogoi.

White Ribbon Alliance, which is an advocacy alliance of 1,000 organizations in the country, will commemorate the 101st International Women’s Day Thursday.

With World Kidney Day celebrated March 8, doctors opined that immediate measures should be taken to the curb the rising numbers.

“Diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high uric acid are on the rise and kidney disease is very common in these metabolic conditions,” said Jitender Kumar, Senior nephrologist and department Head, Nephrology, Asian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS).

Talking about the rise of kidney disease in women, Kumar said that the lifestyle among women is changing and an increasing number of metabolic disorders are affecting them– not only in the higher strata but lower too.

“Consuming junk food and smoking is common among females today. Even in lower strata of society, smoking “beedis” and “hookahs” is rampant,” said Kumar.

“Last year alone, we observed out of 1,200 deliveries, many women had high sugar, high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and hypertension. Out of 11,000 dialysis done last year, around 40 percent were women patients.”

Talking about preventive measures Sanjeev Saxena, Nephrologist, PSRI Hospital, said that there was low awareness in India about the disease and its preventive measures.

“In most cases, the disease is only identified at an advanced stage or end stage. It’s important that people are aware and realize the importance of timely intervention,” he said.

According to doctors, in India, estimates indicate that anywhere between 200,000 and 400,000 people develop end stage kidney disease (kidney failure) each year.

Agreed, Sunil Prakash, Nephrologist, BLK Superspeciality hospital: “Given the difficult circumstances, it’s best to promote simple screenings such as urine and blood tests as well as ultrasound, particularly for patients with diabetes and hypertension.”

“Timely diagnosis and treatment can most certainly delay and even prevent kidney failure, totally avoiding the need for troublesome dialysis,” he added.

More and more Indians should donate their kidneys, expressed the doctors further.

“We should pledge to donate kidneys and give the gift of life to another human being in need, in face of acute shortage of kidney donors,” said N.K. Pandey Pandey ,Chief Surgeon and Chairman and Managing Director, AIMS.

The National Kidney Foundation of India estimates that 100 people in a million suffer from kidney ailments in India and around 90,000 kidney transplants are required annually in India.

Since health insurance in India does not cover outpatient dialysis treatment, this can be an expensive affair for patients.

Out of 510 patients reporting back pain, nearly 43 percent were women. Among them, nearly 82 percent had done no exercises at all during pregnancy.

“Complaints of backache during and immediately after pregnancy are very common. The increasing weight and the forward shift of the centre of gravity add to the problem,” said H.S. Chhabra, medical director of the south Delhi-based ISIC.

“General conditioning and back strengthening exercises during and after pregnancy help to counter this. However, this is seldom done in our country,” added Chhabra.

The study said: “In over 60 percent women respondents, the pain disappeared within two days after delivery. In those with recurrent back pain from previous pregnancies, as many as 82 percent have persistent pain at 18 months.”

Specific back exercises under proper medical guidance and proper posture can help in prevention of recurrence of back pain.

“Pregnant women must ensure that they do all the proper exercises to avoid back pain during this stage. The result of the study reveals that more than 80 percent of women had not done any general conditioning and strengthening exercises after pregnancy,” Chhabra added.

Melinda Manore, from Oregon State University, reviewing evidence surrounding hundreds of weight loss supplements, concluded that no single product results in significant weight loss and many have side-effects.

“What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass,” Manore said. “There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems.”

A few products, including green tea, fibre and low-fat dairy supplements, can have a modest weight loss benefit of three to four pounds, but it is important to know that most of these supplements were tested as part of a reduced calorie diet, the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism reports.

“For most people, unless you alter your diet and get daily exercise, no supplement is going to have a big impact,” said Manore, according to an Oregon statement.

Manore looked at supplements that fell into four categories: products such as chitosan that block absorption of fat or carbohydrates, stimulants such as caffeine or ephedra that increase metabolism, products such as conjugated linoleic acid that claim to change the body composition by decreasing fat, and appetite suppressants such as soluble fibres.

She found that many products had no randomized clinical trials examining their effectiveness, and most of the research studies did not include exercise. Most of the products showed less than a two-pound weight loss benefit compared to the placebo groups.

“I don’t know how you eliminate exercise from the equation. The data is very strong that exercise is crucial to not only losing weight and preserving muscle mass, but keeping the weight off,” said Manore, professor of nutrition and exercise sciences at Oregon.

Manore said the key to weight loss is to eat whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats, reduce calorie intake of high-fat foods, and to keep moving.

“Adding fiber, calcium, protein and drinking green tea can help,” Manore said. “But none of these will have much effect unless you exercise and eat fruits and vegetables,” Manroe added.

The Teravac-HIV-1 vaccine designed to fight AIDS is the result of cutting edge genetic engineering techniques, and has been presented to more than 600 scientists from 38 countries attending the 24th International Biotech Congress here, Juventud Rebelde Daily said Tuesday.

The vaccine will initially be tested on a very small and controlled group of AIDS patients in the primary stages of the disease, the newspaper quoted Enrique Iglesias, head of the biotech research team that designed the vaccine.

The vaccine was developed from a recombinant protein with virus-like particles which stimulate an immune response, he noted.

Iglesias said the testing of the vaccine on the patients represented a “clinical trial, so expectations should not go beyond that”, reported Xinhua.

The trials are to measure the safety of the vaccine, he said, adding that “developing a possible vaccine requires many years of laboratory research” before discovering something that can be tested on humans.

About 15,400 registered AIDS patients live in Cuba currently, making it one of the countries with the lowest rate of infection worldwide.

Cuban health officials said the government invests more than $200 million a year on prevention programs and medical care for AIDS patients.

Cuba markets more than 100 high-tech medical products in about 40 countries with revenues of about $200 million a year.

International experts rate Cuba’s biotech industry as the most advanced among developing nations.

For instance, mice modified to limit production of the brain compound, an endocannabinoid called 2-AG, did not gain any weight, even after being fed high fat diets and becoming sluggish.

Neither did they develop any signs of obesity and high blood pressure linked ith cardiovascular disease and diabetes, the journal Cell Metabolism reported.

Endocannabinoids are a group of lipids associated with appetite, pain-sensation, mood, and memory. All mammalian brains contain 2-AG.

“We discovered that these mice were resistant to obesity because they burned fat calories much more efficiently than normal mice do,” said Daniele Piomelli, neuroscientist and pharmacology professor at the University of California, Irvine and colleagues.

“We had known that endocannabinoids play a critical role in cell energy regulation, but this is the first time we found a target where this occurs,” said a university statement.

Specifically, these mutant mice stayed thin because their brown fat — a type of fat that exists in all mammals to keep them warm — became hyperactive and was converted into heat at a much more rapid pace than in ordinary mice.

Does this mean that a drug limiting 2-AG levels may one day become a weight-loss panacea? That’s more easily said than done, according to Piomelli. For the study, the mice were bred with brain cells manipulated to limit 2-AG production — which can’t be done with humans.

“To produce the desired effects, we would need to create a drug that blocks 2-AG production in the brain, something we’re not yet able to do,” he explained.

“So don’t cancel that gym membership just yet,” said Piomelli.

The study, by US and Australian researchers, involving 1,000 adults, found those who regularly have dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt score better on tests of mental ability than people who never, or rarely, consume dairy products, the Daily Mail reported.

Although the research, published in the International Dairy Journal, needs following-up, as it did not conclusively establish the link between dairy and fatty diets and brain power, it highlights an intriguing line of research.

It follows another US study, involving 104 pensioners, where scientists found older people with higher levels of beneficial fats in their blood had less brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer’s disease.

These beneficial fats – omega-3 essential fats – are found in foods such as oily fish.

The study, published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, measured the levels of different fats in people’s blood, rather than simply relying on their reports of what they tended regularly to eat.

It’s now well established from brain-tissue studies that our mental functions depend heavily on a good supply of fat, the Mail said Tuesday.

Our brain is composed of 60 percent fat. The brain cells are insulated by sheaths of myelin composed of 75 percent fat. This myelin fat needs to be replaced constantly.

The drug is thought to work by blocking mechanisms in the brain that give alcoholics enjoyment from drink and so helps them fight the urge to drink too much. It only needs to be taken when people were going out where they might be tempted to drink alcohol.

Alcoholics taking the drug and having counselling more than halved the amount of alcohol they drank per day and binged on fewer days. The findings were presented at the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) congress in Prague.

The drug, developed by Lundbeck pharmaceutical company, called nalmefene, is not licensed yet and is currently undergoing clinical trials.

“Every year, tens of thousands of new cancer cases occur in India. The rise of various cancers is all the more worrying because of the high death toll, as well as due to the disruption in people’s lives caused by stress and the heavy burden of medical expenses,” said Dikshit while inaugurating Women’s Health Camp in the capital.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the camp was organised by Apollo Hospitals aimed to raise awareness about breast cancer as well as other cancers, including issues related to prevention and early diagnosis.

“Preventing a dangerous ailment like cancer is therefore is critical. I applaud the sustained efforts of Apollo Hospitals in raising awareness about cancer and its preventive measures among patients and the public,” she added.

The thesis is based partly on a survey study involving 207 individuals, partly on an intervention study where an group of 21 people listened to self-chosen music for 30 minutes daily for two weeks while a similarly sized group got to relax without music.

“To get the positive effects of music, you have to listen to music that you like,” says Marie Helsing of the University of Gothenburg, who authored the thesis.

“But…it is important to remember that all people do not respond in the exact same way to a piece of music and that one individual can respond differently to the same piece of music at different times, depending on both individual and situational factors,” Helsing added.

The study shows that positive emotions were experienced more often and more intensively in connection with listening to music, according to a Gothenburg statement.

Under the anti-smoking law that took effect March 1, 2010, public venues, including hospitals, schools, bars and restaurants are required to establish designated non-smoking areas and put up signs prohibiting smoking.

People ignoring smoking bans are first warned by supervisors, and on refusing they can be fined 50 to 200 yuan (about $8 to $32).

Last week, the Shanghai municipal health promotion committee teamed up with other government agencies to launch a week-long supervision initiative on compliance with the smoking ban in public places, the China Daily reported.

According to Li Zhongyang, deputy director of the municipal health promotion committee and deputy inspector of the municipal health bureau, several reasons are to blame.

“Employees there lack systematic education and training. They know less about the harm of smoking and passive smoking,” she said.

“Some internet bar operators choose to turn a blind eye to the smoking because they worry they would hurt their business if they prevented smoking,” she added.

Last year, 66 establishments and five individuals were fined more than 157,000 yuan ($25,000) for violating the city’s anti-smoking law, according to a report released by the health promotion committee under the Shanghai municipal health bureau.

As per the report, internet bars were the worst places for complying with the law, followed by entertainment venues and restaurants.

Monday’s opening session was attended by 600 experts from 38 countries, the organizers said.

Topping the list is 2003 Chemistry Nobel award winner Peter Agre, who will deliver a special lecture on the biological and biochemical aspects of molecules and their applications against malaria, Xinhua reported.

Cuba, which for several decades has won international acclaim for having developed one of the highest medical standards in the world, has in recent years also increasingly moved into biotechnology.

In a keynote speech in Havana last December, Agre said the world “has a lot to learn from Cuba” because the island has managed to discover the solutions to many of the medical and biotechnological problems persisting on the planet.

Cuba’s biotech industry manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products and vaccines in 40 countries, generating revenues worth some $300 million a year, making it one of the top foreign exchange earners for the national economy.

The Cuban agenda to be presented at the congress include a list of eight vaccines developed against different types of cancer, AIDS, hepatitis B and C, as well as the special prevention programs developed against dengue fever, a disease that regularly breaks out across Latin America with severe consequences.

Countries represented at the 2012 edition of the Havana Biotechnology fair include Argentina, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Britain and the US.

Cuba first embarked on the development of a biotechnology industry in 1979 after then leader Fidel Castro ordered scientists to look into the issue as a future opportunity for the Caribbean nation.

The study done at the chest pain centre ofLakeland Regional Medical Center, Florida, showed that of 1.1 million people, 42% of women admitted to hospitals for heart attack never experienced chest pain, while the figure was 30.7% in the case of men.

The study, of which the Center’s director John G Canto is an author, was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

FOR MORE READING. . 

“It is unfortunate that such an event happened,” Ravi Shankar said in a statement offering “to mediate between the media and the lawyers”.

The attack, by lawyers, has led to state-wide protests by media people who are demanding action against the guilty.

The journalists have rejected the government’s decision to order a probe by a retired high court or Supreme Court judge into the incident.

Accusing the media of falsely implicating lawyers for the attack, advocates across Karnataka Monday boycotted courts.

A large number of media people Monday took out a procession from the Press Club here to the Mahatma Gandhi Circle, about one kilometer away, demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the incident.

They also met Chief Justice Vikramjit Sen and submitted a memorandum.

The lawyers too held a demonstration in the city centre and met Governor H.R. Bhardwaj protesting against the arrest of four advocates over the attack.

Around 30 police personnel, 10 media persons and seven lawyers were injured in the incident that took place in the court complex in the heart of the city.

A large number of media persons had converged at the complex to cover the court appearance of former Bharatiya Janata Party minister and mining magnate Gali Janardhana Reddy in connection with an illegal mining case.

Chief Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda said in Mangalore, abut 350 km west of Bangalore, that he was hopeful of ending soon the bitterness between the media and lawyers community.

“Rosselkhoznadzor considers it necessary to inform market participants about the decision to suspend cattle and small livestock and pigs imports from the European Union states from March 20,” the watchdog said in a statement.

The service will impose the ban owing to a failure by EU sanitary agencies to provide the Russian watchdog with information about the animal epidemic, counter-measures and antidote researches.

Schmallenberg virus, named after the German city where it was first identified in August 2011, is spread by blood-sucking insects. The infection causes fever, gastrointestinal disorder, a sharp drop of milk production and miscarriages.

Bluetongue is also an insect-borne disease of ruminants, mainly sheep, which causes excessive salivation, swelling of the face and tongue and cyanosis of the tongue.

A probe by the The Health Protection Agency of cases of hepatitis A from July to December last year revealed seven cases in which sun-dried tomatoes were implicated.

Hepatitis A is infectious and can lead to fatal liver complications.

Health officials fear contaminated samples or other foods containing them could still be on sale or lurking in kitchen cupboards, the Daily Mail reported Monday.

This is because they are unable to test food for the virus and do not know which brand of sun-dried tomato is responsible.

Sun-dried tomatoes have become an increasingly popular ingredient in middle class kitchens and favourite of TV celebrity chefs.

The hepatitis A virus is carried by human faeces and can be passed on through contaminated food or water. It is a common food-borne disease preventable by vaccine.

“The re-development of RML Hospital would be taken up in two phases during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017),” Azad said, addressing the first batch of post-graduate and super speciality students passing out of the hospital’s Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER-RML).

Giving out details, he said: “In the first phase, it is proposed to construct a super-speciality building with state of art medical facilities.”

The new facilities will provide services like a cancer care centre to provide medical, surgical and radiation oncology services; paediatric cardiology services to be added to the cardiac care Service; transplant facility for organ donation and transplant; day-care services for super-speciality departments as also private wards for patients of super-speciality departments.

While all these activities are in the pipeline, manpower and equipment for paediatric cardiology services and an electro-physiology lab have already been sanctioned, Azad added.

Uterine fibroids are the most common non-cancerous tumours in women of childbearing age. Fibroids grow within and around the wall of the uterus.

Thirty percent of women aged between 25 and 44 years report fibroid-related symptoms, such as lower back pain, heavy vaginal bleeding or painful menstrual periods.

Uterine fibroids also are associated with infertility and such pregnancy complications as miscarriage or preterm labour.

Other than surgical removal of the uterus, there are few treatment options for women experiencing severe fibroid-related symptoms and about 200,000 US women undergo the procedure each year.

A recent analysis by National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists estimated that the economic cost of fibroids to the US alone may exceed $34 billion a year.

Fibroids are three to four times more common in African-American women than in white women. Moreover, African-American women are roughly 10 times more likely to be deficient in vitamin D than are white women.

In previous research, the study authors found that vitamin D inhibited the growth of human fibroid cells in laboratory cultures, according to an NIH statement.

“The study results provide a promising new lead in the search for a non-surgical treatment for fibroids that doesn’t affect fertility,” said Louis De Paolo, chief of the Reproductive Sciences Branch of the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which funded the study.

Fatty fish such as salmon, mackerel and tuna are the best natural sources of the vitamin. Very few foods naturally contain vitamin D. Fortified milk and other fortified foods provide an additional source of the vitamin. Vitamin D is also produced when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin.

The study, conducted by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, is based on 11,000 children followed up over six years and is the largest and most comprehensive of its kind.

“This is the strongest evidence to date that snoring, mouth breathing and apnea (abnormally long pauses in breathing during sleep) can have serious behavioural and social-emotional consequences for children,” said study leader Karen Bonuck, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology and women’s health at Einstein.

“Parents and paediatricians alike should be paying closer attention to sleep-disordered breathing in young children, perhaps as early as the first year of life,” added Bonouck, the journal Paediatrics reports.

Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is a general term for breathing difficulties that occur during sleep. Its hallmarks are snoring (which is usually accompanied by mouth breathing) and sleep apnea, according to an Einstein statement.

SDB reportedly peaks from two to six years of age, but also occurs in younger children. About one in 10 children snore regularly and two to four percent have sleep apnea, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Health and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). Common causes of SDB are enlarged tonsils or adenoids.

“Until now, we really didn’t have strong evidence that SDB actually preceded problematic behaviour such as hyperactivity,” said Ronald D. Chervin, study co-author and professor of sleep medicine and of neurology at the University of Michigan.

Scientists have discovered how just a few of these proteins, called ion channels, distinguish perhaps dozens of discrete temperatures from mildly warm to very hot.

Ion channels are pores in cell membranes controlling the flow of charged ions, which turns (nerve cell) neuron signalling on or off — in this case to inform the body of the temperature the neuron senses, the Journal of Biological Chemistry reported.

Researchers showed that the building blocks, or subunits, of heat-sensitive ion channels can assemble in many different combinations, yielding new types of channels, each capable of detecting a different temperature.

The discovery, in cell cultures, demonstrates for the first time that only four genes, each encoding one subunit type, can generate dozens of different heat-sensitive channels.

“Researchers in the past have assumed that because there are only four genes, there are only four heat-sensitive channels, but now we have shown that there are many more,” said Jie Zheng, associate professor of physiology and membrane biology at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, who led the study.

One of the channels they studied, called TRPV1, reacts to hot temperatures — about 37 degrees Celsius. It is also responsible for the ability to sense spicy foods, such as chili peppers, said a university statement.

A second channel, TRPV3, responds to temperatures of about 26 degrees Celsius. It also senses many food flavours such as those found in rosemary, oregano, vanilla and cinnamon that elicit a warm sensation.

The finding is based on a long-term study of 40,000 British households, which asked more than 2,000 teenagers aged 10 to 15 years how frequently they stayed out past 9.00 p.m., without telling their parents.

Researcher Maria Iacovou, from the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, who analysed the data, said: “Staying out late does not cause young people to smoke and drink, but regularly staying out late without telling their parents where they are is symptomatic of a young person with underlying problems.”

The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), also found that staying out late, without telling your parents, may be affected by the quality of the emotional relationship the child has with their parents, according to an university statement.

Regularly staying out late is linked with visiting pubs or bars more often; with frequency of alcohol consumption; with smoking, and with cannabis use.

Sixty-four percent of 15-year-old girls who stay out frequently past 9 p.m., without their parent’s knowledge, consumed alcohol more than once in the last month, compared with only 25 percent of girls who hadn’t stayed out in the past month.

Eighteen percent of the teenage girls who have not stayed out past 9 p.m. smoked. This rises to 51 percent among girls who stay out frequently.

Five times more boys who frequently stay out late, report ever having used cannabis, compared to boys who do not stay out late.

Amin Hussein Al Amiri, assistant undersecretary for medical practices and licensing at the ministry, said these drugs contain chemical additives that are harmful to health.

He said some herbal products contain undeclared packaging materials.

The ministry has “checked a sample of turmeric powder used for treatment of knee and back pain”. It contained piroxicam and paracetamol as well as other unknown substances that are harmful to human health, he said.

“Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla held a meeting here last week with ministers and officials and decided to enforce inflexible laws to check drug abuse and tobacco related menaces,” a health department official told reporters.

“It was decided that the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances act and the Assam Drug Control Act (adopted by Mizoram) would be enforced with state specific amendments to suit the prevailing problem,” the official stated.

The proposed laws would be tough and with sufficient penalty and imprisonment for the guilty, he said

According to a study by social group Mizoram Population Base Cancer Registry, cancer claims lives of 550-600 people on an average annually in Mizoram, whose total population is a little over one million.

As per the state government records, the mountainous northeastern state, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh, had topped the country eight years ago in tobacco consumption.

“Smoking has already been banned in the premises of government offices, educational institutions, health centres and crowded places across Mizoram,” an official release quoted the chief minister as saying in the meeting.

Social activist and chief minister’s wife, Lal Riliani said that more than 50 percent of cancer cases among Mizos were caused by tobacco.

University of Michigan engineering researchers have designed a device that harvests the vibration of heartbeats through the chest and converts it to electricity to run a pacemaker or an implanted defibrillator.

By replacing batteries that power them today, which last five to 10 years, the new energy harvester could save patients from repeated surgeries, the journal Applied Physics Letters reports.

“The idea is to use ambient vibrations that are typically wasted and convert them to electrical energy,” said Amin Karami, research fellow at the Michigan department of aerospace engineering.

“If you put your hand on top of your heart, you can feel these vibrations all over your torso,” added Karami, according to a Michigan statement.

The researchers haven’t built a prototype yet, but they’ve done enough work to make the concept work. Here’s how: A 100th-of-an-inch thin slice of a special “piezoelectric” ceramic material would essentially catch heartbeat vibrations and briefly expand in response.

Piezoelectric materials’ claim to fame is that they can convert mechanical stress (which causes them to expand) into an electric voltage. The new device could generate 10 microwatts of power, which is about eight times the amount a pacemaker needs to operate, Karami said.

Karami and colleague Daniel Inman, who heads aerospace engineering at Michigan, have precisely engineered the ceramic layer to a shape that can harvest heart vibrations across a range of frequencies.

“The problem is few adults can maintain ideal cardiovascular health factors as they age,” said Kiang Liu, study co-author and professor of preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.

“Many middle-aged adults develop unhealthy diets, gain weight and aren’t as physically active. Such lifestyles, of course, lead to high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes and elevated cardiovascular risk,” added Liu, the journal Circulation reports.

“In this study, even people with a family history of heart problems were able to have a low cardiovascular disease risk profile if they started living a healthy lifestyle when they were young,” Liu said.

“This supports the notion that lifestyle may play a more prominent role than genetics,” Liu added, according to a statement of Feinberg School.

The majority of people who maintained five healthy lifestyle factors from young adulthood (including a lean body mass index (BMI) or height to weight ratio, no excess alcohol intake, no smoking, a healthy diet and regular physical activity) were able to remain in this low-risk category in their middle-aged years.