UP scraps admission fee in government hospitals |  |
- UP scraps admission fee in government hospitals
- 'No rise in cancer cases due to nuclear power plants'
- Dutch varsity to do research in eye care in India
- UP rolls out ambulance service for villages, districts
- Asking women what they want: A step to improve maternal health
- Senior citizen dies of swine flu in Lucknow
- Johns Hopkins researchers return blood cells to stem cell state
- The American Society for Microbiology honors Mario Santiago
- The American Society for Microbiology honors David Tobin
- Joint Commission certifies 2 Primary Stroke Centers at Penn Medicine
| UP scraps admission fee in government hospitals Posted: 23 Aug 2012 01:17 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Lucknow, Aug 23 - The admission fee of Rs.35 has been scrapped in all government hospitals of Uttar Pradesh from Thursday, an official said. The orders in this regard were issued by Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Wednesday and were to be implemented with immediate effect. However, it would practically be enforced from Thursday across the state, a health official told IANS. Besides this, the ambulance service has also been made free for the poor, pregnant women and children, officials added. Announcing the benefits, the chief minister said that he was happy to have fulfilled the promise of free healthcare to the poor made in the Samajwadi Party - election manifesto. Yadav added that now the government would focus on cleanliness and adequate supplies of medicines and equipment in hospitals. The government is also considering to open a paramedical college in Uttar Pradesh to bridge the shortage of paramedics in the state, officials said. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| 'No rise in cancer cases due to nuclear power plants' Posted: 22 Aug 2012 10:14 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 22 - There has not been any rise in cancer cases, birth defects or any other ailments among employees working in nuclear power plants or among people living in close proximity to such plants, the government said Wednesday. Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office V. Narayanasamy made the assertion in the Lok Sabha, in a statement laid on the table of the house in response to a question. He said medical examination of workers at each of the six nuclear power plants is carried out each year in accordance with regulatory requirement prescribed by the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board -. The scientific data of these examinations - conducted during 1995 to 2010 - was analysed by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd -. It established that the cancer prevalence among the employees is lower, at 54.05 per lakh, compared to national prevalence of 98.05 per lakh, the statement said. In response to another question, the minister stated that radiation levels around nuclear power plants are negligibly higher than those arising out of natural background radiation. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Dutch varsity to do research in eye care in India Posted: 22 Aug 2012 06:42 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Bangalore, Aug 22 - The Netherlands-based Maastricht University will conduct joint research with Narayana Nethralaya in this tech hub on preventive eye care, leading to discovery of cost-effective medicine for eye ailments, an official said. We hope the joint research in ophthalmology will lead to finding affordable medicine for various eye ailments and reduce the cost of treatment, Maastricht University medical centre Chief Executive, Guy Peeters, told reporters here Wednesday, after signing an agreement with the leading eye hospital in the city. As a leading super specialty eye hospital, Nethralaya provides advance eye care and conducts applied research in stem cells, molecular techniques, genetics, ocular immunology and infectious disease. We selected Narayana Nethralaya after due diligence taking into consideration its capabilities and track record. Though we have generic agreements with other medical institutions in India, this is the first tie-up, which mandates setting up a centre of excellence for research into ophthalmology, Peeters said on the occasion. The Dutch varsity has agreements with the state-run National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences - and Narayana Hrudayala, a super specialty heart hospital in Bangalore, and Jagadguru Sri Shivarathreeshwara - University at Mysore, about 150 km from here. Admitting that the thrust in India was more on treating ailments with drugs and therapies, Nethralaya founder Chairman Bhujang Shetty said the joint research with the Dutch varsity would be to identify the cause for eye ailments. We will focus on drug discovery from the preventive perspective to benefit developing nations like India where population density is high and preventive medicine is the way forward, Shetty observed. Besides joint research, the agreement envisages faculty exchange programmes in healthcare, working with overseas partners on projects and organising international conferences on eye... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| UP rolls out ambulance service for villages, districts Posted: 22 Aug 2012 03:49 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Lucknow, Aug 22 - Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Wednesday flagged off 200 brand new ambulances for some districts of the state. Speaking before the flagging-off ceremony, Yadav said the Samajwadi Party - government had prioritised healthcare in its election manifesto and he was happy that the first steps in this direction were being taken. He also announced that in the second phase, 772 ambulances would be rolled out in other districts in October. The chief minister said the ambulance service would be available free of charge. The ambulances are Tata Winger and Force Traveller vehicles. The service was launched under a scheme funded by the National Rural Health Mission -. Two ambulances would be stationed at each district headquarters to serve block and village levels on SOS basis, an official said. A call centre will soon be set up, and those in need of emergency ambulance services could call 102. The state government is set to recruit some 2,100 drivers on contract basis to man the vehicles. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Asking women what they want: A step to improve maternal health Posted: 22 Aug 2012 01:54 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, Aug 22 - Was the labour room clean, was the medical staff polite and caring, were the mother and baby looked after properly? These are among questions proposed to be asked of women post delivery to determine if the quality of services provided at rural health centres was satisfactory and met expectations. The aspect of care, respect for the woman's privacy, and good behaviour by the medical staff -- these are important indicators in enthusing women to want to go for institutional deliveries, says Sanghita Bhattacharyya, a senior public health specialist with the Public Health Foundation of India. While women want a healthy child, what is equally important to them is that they want to be treated nicely during the delivery, Bhattacharyya told IANS. The government's Janani Suraksha Yojana, under which women going for free institutional deliveries are given Rs.1,400 as incentive, has helped increase the number of such deliveries from 53 percent in 2005 to 73 percent in 2009. But women are still made to spend money for deliveries, said Bhattacharyya who along with others has conducted a study on women's satisfaction with maternal health services in Jharkhand. Women are made to cough up informal payments, for transport, medicines, which amounts to 40 percent more than the Rs.1,400 they get, she said. According to Bilal Avan of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine -, the experience of satisfaction is an important criteria in helping women choose between home and institutional delivery. While there is relatively less safety in home delivery, but the comfort level is high for them. They decide to go for home delivery though they know it will be safer at a public health centre. Therefore quality of service is an area where we must concentrate to improve maternal health,' Avan told IANS on the sidelines of an event here With regard to cleanliness and hygiene, women were okay with the levels during home... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Senior citizen dies of swine flu in Lucknow Posted: 22 Aug 2012 01:15 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Lucknow, Aug 22 - Swine flu has claimed the life of a retired doctor here, an official said Wednesday. Dr S.B. Singh, a physiotherapist who had retired from the King George's Medical College -, was admitted to hospital with high grade fever and cough a few days back and succumbed Tuesday. Dr R.K. Mishra, director of the private hospital, told IANS that blood samples of Dr Singh, 65, were sent to a private pathology lab last week. It was found that the retired doctor had been infected with swine flu virus. He was administered tamiflu, but could not be saved and died of respiratory failure. Chief Medical officer - Lucknow Dr S.N. Yadav said the department was waiting for the final test report from the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences -. The state health department has, meanwhile, advised hospitals to be alert about symptoms of swine flu in admitted patients. http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Johns Hopkins researchers return blood cells to stem cell state Posted: 22 Aug 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then develop into any other type of cell in the body. The work, described in the Aug. 8 issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS), is Chapter Two in an ongoing effort to efficiently and consistently convert adult blood cells into stem cells that are highly qualified for clinical and research use in place of human embryonic stem cells, says Elias Zambidis, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of oncology and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Cell Engineering and the Kimmel Cancer Center. Taking a cell from an adult and converting it all the way back to the way it was when that person was a 6-day-old embryo creates a completely new biology toward our understanding of how cells age and what happens when things go wrong, as in cancer development, Zambidis says. Chapter One, Zambidis says, was work described last spring in PLoS One in which Zambidis and colleagues recounted the use of this successful method of safely transforming adult blood cells into heart cells. In the latest experiments, he and his colleagues now describe methods for coaxing adult blood cells to become so-called induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPS) --- adult cells reprogrammed to an embryonic like state, and with unprecedented efficiencies. Zambidis says his team has managed to develop a super efficient, virus-free way to make iPS cells, overcoming a persistent difficulty for scientists working with these cells in the laboratory. Generally, out of hundreds of blood cells, only one or two might turn into iPS cells. Using Zambidis' method, 50 to 60 percent of blood cells were engineered into iPS cells. Zambidis' team also found a way around the use of viruses to convert the cells to a stem cell state. Traditionally, scientists use viruses to deliver a package of genes to cells to... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| The American Society for Microbiology honors Mario Santiago Posted: 22 Aug 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The 2012 ICAAC Young Investigator Award designated for a researcher working in the area of HIV has been bestowed upon Mario L. Santiago, Ph.D., Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Colorado, Denver. Santiago is honored for his varied work in virology, from field-based HIV epidemiology studies to manipulating innate immunity in his efforts to explore innovative new ways to approach the challenge of the HIV vaccine. Already at this early stage of his career, Santiago is demonstrating that he is one of the upcoming leaders in the field of retroviral resistance genes and their fascinating mechanisms of action, explains Kim Hasenkrug, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, NIAID. Santiago graduated from the University of the Philippines magna cum laude with a BS in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. He then worked on schistosome and malaria vaccines as part of the NIH-sponsored Tropical Medicine Research Center in the Philippines and on HIV-1 molecular epidemiology as a Fogarty AIDS International Research fellow at Brown University. Santiago went on to receive his Ph.D. in Microbiology under Beatrice Hahn at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, where he developed noninvasive methods to detect Simian Immunodeficiency Virus in wild nonhuman primates, eventually leading to the discovery of the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2 in wild chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, respectively. During his tenure, he painstakingly designed, tested and optimized strategies to noninvasively screen fecal and urine samples from wild monkeys and great apes for simian immunodeficiency viruses, which aided in our breakthrough understanding of the origins of HIV-1 and HIV-2, explains Hahn. These findings resulted in fascinating high-profile publications and have revolutionized our perspective on the AIDS pandemic. After receiving his Ph.D., Santiago completed two postdoctoral fellowships, first at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, then at the Gladstone... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| The American Society for Microbiology honors David Tobin Posted: 22 Aug 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) David M. Tobin, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University School of Medicine, has been honored as a recipient of the 2012 ICAAC Young Investigator Award. These awards recognize and reward early career scientists for research excellence and potential in microbiology and infectious disease. Already Tobin has made important contributions to infectious disease therapeutics, explains Lalita Ramakrishnan, University of Washington. His findings are changing the way we treat TB meningitis, and his work will pave the way for a whole new way to tackle TB, including drug resistant TB. Tobin received his Ph.D. with Cori Bargmann at the University of California, San Francisco, where he defined the role of a set of TRPV-related ion channels in C. elegans behaviors. Bargmann describes Tobin as scholarly and deep; a star in the making. An excellent scientist, Tobin is very smart and intensely interested in his own work and related work. After graduating, Tobin spent two and a half years living in Guatemala where he taught undergraduate classes at the national university. He became particularly interested in tuberculosis through an HIV and tuberculosis clinic he became involved with while there, and with which he continues to collaborate. For his postdoctoral studies, Tobin joined Ramakrishnan's laboratory at the University of Washington, where he used a zebrafish model of tuberculosis. He developed a genetic screen in zebrafish to probe the host genetic determinants of susceptibility to mycobacterial infection. Tobin found that the balance between pro- and anti-inflammatory eicosanoids plays an important role in susceptibility and has applied these findings in human cohorts. A functional variant in the human gene LTA4H is associated with disease severity as well as responsiveness to adjunctive therapies for TB meningitis. As a postdoc in Ramakrishnan's group, Tobin was instrumental in developing a system to... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
| Joint Commission certifies 2 Primary Stroke Centers at Penn Medicine Posted: 22 Aug 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) PHILADELPHIA - Two Penn Medicine hospitals have received Primary Stroke Center certification from The Joint Commission for efforts to achieve long-term success in improving outcomes for stroke patients. All three Penn Medicine hospitals are now certified to optimally treat stroke patients: Pennsylvania Hospital and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center each received Primary Stroke Center certifications this summer and join the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), which has been certified as a Primary Stroke Center since 2004. Penn Medicine is the first Philadelphia health system to get certification for stroke care at all member hospitals. Pennsylvania Hospital and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center received Primary Stroke Center certification following a Joint Commission review where both facilities were found to be in compliance with the requirements for The Joint Commission's Disease-Specific Care Certification program as well as primary stroke center requirements, such implementing evidence based protocols and collecting the Joint Commission core measure data to use in performance improvement activities. This is a major step forward for Pennsylvania Hospital and the community we serve, said Howard I. Hurtig, MD, chair of Neurology at Pennsylvania Hospital, co-director of the Penn Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center and professor of Neurology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. By giving us their stamp of approval, The Joint Commission recognizes our ability to provide the very best care to patients with stroke. A recent Penn Medicine study led by Michael Mullen, MD, assistant professor of Neurology and Vascular Medicine, presented at the American Academy of Neurology meeting showed that the emergence of primary stroke centers certified by The Joint Commission has steadily improved the treatment of stroke patients. In Philadelphia, ambulances started bringing stroke... http://www.rxpgnews.com |
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