Delhi viral cases up 25 percent this monsoon |  |
- Delhi viral cases up 25 percent this monsoon
- How healthy is your school? Chandigarh to show way
- When yoga and classical music combine to heal
- Daunting barriers found in accessing psychiatric care
- Court orders guidelines to protect nurses
- Over half of Indian kids are without immunisation
- Dopamine also vital for kidney health, lifespan
| Delhi viral cases up 25 percent this monsoon Posted: 21 Jul 2011 01:31 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 21 - There is a 25 percent increase in the number of viral cases in the capital this monsoon, says the Indian Medical Association - while advising people to keep their surroundings clean, drink fresh juices and wash their hands regularly. 'The number of viral cases has gone up by 25 percent and these are a result of parasites, bacteria and viruses which find the monsoon temperature and humidity perfect for breeding,' Narendra Saini, president of the IMA, told IANS. 'They play a major role in increasing cases of jaundice and typhoid every season,' he added. According to doctors, in order to keep such waterborne diseases at bay, simple measures like keeping your surroundings clean and washing hands regularly can work wonders. 'People should keep their surroundings clean to prevent mosquito breeding, which is of utmost importance,' said R.D. Sharma, a Delhi-based physician. 'Consuming more liquids like fresh juice and lemonade further strengthens metabolism,' he added. Doctors also advised avoiding roadside food and washing fruits and vegetables properly before eating. Pharmaceutical shops across the city are registering a massive increase of 30-50 percent in the sales of hand sanitisers, tissue papers and mosquito repellants. 'We are selling almost double the number of sanitisers as compared to last month and same is the case with mosquito repellant sprays. Face and hand tissues are also selling in good numbers,' said Charanjeet Chowdhari, owner of a chemist shop in south Delhi's Green Park Extension. Other chemists agree. Anand Singhal, the owner of Asoka's departmental store in west Delhi's Patel Nagar, said: 'Sales have definitely increased and it's good that people are taking precaution instead of falling ill and buying medicines.' Delhi-based physician Suniti Sharma said people should take precautions and contact a doctor at the first sign of body ache, fever or cold and cough. 'There is no point... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| How healthy is your school? Chandigarh to show way Posted: 21 Jul 2011 11:34 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Chandigarh, July 21 - Toilets, disaster preparedness, first-aid knowledge...these are among various criteria to help categorise many Chandigarh schools under a unique initiative to ensure healthy surroundings in these institutions, government or private. Called Health Promoting School -, it will be implemented within three years in 185 schools and benefit over 225,000 students. Schools in this union territory - will be the first in the country to adopt this scheme. For the pilot project, 21 schools have been selected and over 37,600 students will be involved. It will be funded by the health department in collaboration with the World Health Organisation. 'An HPS is defined as a school constantly strengthening its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working,' said Bhavneet Bharti, associate professor at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research - and co-investigator for the project. The schools will be accredited with the health department and be required to fulfil certain health and hygiene parameters. Each school will fill a proforma in which it will list its existing facilities - from health status to toilets, health initiatives being taken and the preparedness of each institution for disaster management and first-aid knowledge. The schools will then be put under various categories - bronze, silver, gold and platinum - depending upon the goals achieved by them. 'The categories will be allotted to schools based on fulfilling certain criteria of nutrition, physical activity, health-hygiene, stress management and others,' Paramjyoti, medical officer-school health, told IANS here. Once accredited, the schools will be monitored by the Quality Council of India -, an enterprise jointly set up by the government of India and leading industry associations in 1997. QCI will ensure that all health parameters are met by these schools. 'We intend to cover all the 106 government schools, 75 private... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| When yoga and classical music combine to heal Posted: 21 Jul 2011 11:22 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Agra, July 21 - What do you get when you combine the elaborate postures of yoga with the soothing strains of Indian classical music? A novel music therapy for the sick and the stressed, say two musicians of the Taj city who've just returned from the 13th World Congress of Music Therapy in South Korea. Lovely Sharma, a D.Litt in sitar and author of eight books, along with eminent classical guitarist Devashish Chakrovorty, conducted a workshop on healing techniques through music and yoga, at the congress in Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul. Attended by more than 50 participants, the workshop focussed on the beneficial effects on concentration, relaxation and mood of the yoga-and-music therapy. But the duo says the field is very much neglected in India. 'It is high time we took a lead in developing appropriate technologies, guidelines and a proper scientific frame to promote music therapy, which has already been recognised as alternative therapy capable of bringing about significant responses and aiding treatment through other therapies,' Sharma told IANS. India, she said, has a vast treasure in the form of classical ragas and musical strains which had in the past proved their efficacy but in course of time 'we were swept away by modern influences and adopted Western ways'. 'But now, even Western countries are recognising the role and contribution of yoga and Indian classical music, as was evidenced by the impressive participation of so many western countries in the World Congress,' Sharma said. According to Chakrovorty, India was particularly suited for making use of musical therapy. 'India stands a very good chance of encashing on the success of music therapy advances because our classical music was geared to healing and had a very diverse variety. 'Western music has had limited success in this field as Western classical music is not melodious like ours. We work on individual 'surs', fine-tuning the notes to specific... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Daunting barriers found in accessing psychiatric care Posted: 21 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A new study by Harvard Medical School researchers published today in the Annals of Emergency Medicine finds that access to outpatient psychiatric care in the greater Boston area is severely limited, even for people with reputedly excellent private health insurance. Given that the federal health law is modelled after the Massachusetts health reform, the findings have national implications, the researchers say. Study personnel posed as patients insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts PPO, the largest insurer in Massachusetts. They called every Blue Cross-contracted mental health facility within a 10-mile radius of down town Boston, stating they had been evaluated in an emergency department for depression and discharged with instructions to obtain a psychiatric appointment within two weeks – i.e. they signalled they needed urgent care. Only 8 of the 64 facilities (12.5 percent) listed by Blue Cross as preferred providers offered appointments; only 4 (6.2 percent) offered an appointment within two weeks. These findings indicate that even patients with top-drawer private insurance face grave difficulties in securing mental health services in the Boston area. According to the study, 23 percent of phone calls seeking appointments were never returned, even after a second attempt. Another common reason appointments were unavailable was that 23 percent of psychiatric providers required that the patient already be enrolled with a primary care doctor affiliated with their psychiatric facility. "People with mental health problems often can't advocate for themselves – especially in a crisis," said lead author Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, an attending psychiatrist at the Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Health Alliance. "Health insurers know this and yet, thanks to their restrictive provider networks and their low reimbursement rates for psychiatric services, they've created a situation where a patient with a potentially... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Court orders guidelines to protect nurses Posted: 20 Jul 2011 10:38 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 20 - The Delhi High Court Wednesday directed the Delhi government to frame guidelines to protect and safeguard the interests of nurses working in various hospitals. 'Slavery and begging is not prevalent in any part of the world,' the division bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna earlier commented on the plea of a 22-year-old nurse whose certificates were withheld by an hospital from where she wanted to resign. The bench said: 'We direct the city government to consider framing of guidelines in three months so that the nurses don't feel that they are being harassed.' The court disposed off the petition of Ancy N. who moved the court against Indraprastha Apollo Hospital. She alleged the hospital refused to give back her original certificates and accept her resignation when she wanted to attend to her terminally-ill mother in Kerala. Jose Abraham, counsel for Ancy, told the court that the hospital took all her original certificates at the time of joining March 1. The hospital administration refused to grant her leave to attend to her mother, suffering from cancer, the petition said. The nurse said her only sibling was mentally challenged and she wanted to join her mother. Her counsel said after the court issued a notice to Apollo Hospital, it returned her certificates. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Over half of Indian kids are without immunisation Posted: 20 Jul 2011 07:47 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 20 - More than half of Indian children under the age of two do not receive comprehensive routine immunisation, a study by an NGO said Wednesday. According to international aid agency Save the Children, India is one of the 25 developing countries in the world where up to one-third of all children receive no vaccinations for childhood killer diseases. 'Approximately 2.7 million children under the age of five receive no treatment for diarrhoea, which is a major killer of children. Of the 25 developing countries listed in the report, India has the highest number of children who do not receive even the most basic of healthcare services,' the statement said. 'The country also has the highest number of children under five dying every year,' it added. Terming the absence of healthcare services as 'healthcare deserts', the statement said that over 40 million children worldwide do not receive the most basic of healthcare services, including routine immunisation. Save the Children's chief executive officer Thomas Chandy said that the existence of 'healthcare deserts' shows that efforts to reduce child mortality are still sidelining the poorest children and this denial of basic healthcare is leaving them vulnerable to fatal conditions. 'Ironically, in cities like Delhi, large pockets can be classified as healthcare deserts, where no primary health care is available for the urban poor,' Chandy said. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Dopamine also vital for kidney health, lifespan Posted: 20 Jul 2011 12:34 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Washington, July 20 - Dopamine, a key neurotransmitter active in the brain, is best known for triggering feel good emotions. Now investigators have shown how dopamine produced outside the brain, in the kidneys, is important for renal function, blood pressure regulation and lifespan. Neurotransmitters are chemicals which help transmit signals from one neuron to another across synapses or junctions of such brain cells. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Centre suggest that the kidney-specific dopamine system may be a therapeutic target for treating hypertension and kidney diseases, the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports. Previous studies had suggested a role for dopamine in regulating kidney function and total body fluid volume, 'but how that mechanism works was not clear,' said Raymond Harris, chief of nephrology and hypertension at Vanderbilt, according to its statement. Harris and Ming-Zhi Zhang, assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt, eliminated kidney-specific dopamine production in mice by knocking out a dopamine-generating enzyme only in the kidney, and studied the outcome. They found that mice lacking kidney dopamine had high blood pressure at baseline and became more hypertensive when they consumed a high-salt diet, suggesting they may be a good model of salt-sensitive - hypertension, Harris said. Alterations in the kidney dopamine system may predispose individuals to hypertension -, he noted. 'These animals retain salt and water when they don't have sufficient dopamine production in the kidney,' Harris said. --Indo-Asian News service st/sak/vt http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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