Indian firm to set up $200 mn medical hub in Maldives |  |
- Indian firm to set up $200 mn medical hub in Maldives
- UK PubMed Central - Latest Developments
- Scheme for children under rights panel's lens
- Smuggled Indian pan masala poses cancer threat to Africa
- Goverment kicks off campaign against bidis
- Fancy a tattoo? Beware of hepatitis virus
- Tiny flying machines inspired by nature will revolutionize surveillance work
- Research finds veterinary medicine students experience higher depression levels than peers
- $3 million grant to aid minorities with uncontrolled diabetes
- Viral hepatitis a silent killer: WHO
| Indian firm to set up $200 mn medical hub in Maldives Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:16 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) An Indian company will set up a $200 million global knowledge and medical hub in Maldives, a country that receives a million tourists a year. Coinciding with the two-day official visit of India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna, the Indo-Maldives collaboration project to set up the hub, which would include a medical tourist resort pioneered by an Indian company, was announced Wednesday. The project is the second largest Indian investment after GMR's take-over of operations of the Male International Airport. The completion of a series of agreements between government ministries and the Island Development Company Pvt. Ltd., Maldives - was made in the presence of President Mohamed Nasheed of Maldives and Krishna, a statement said. Maldives Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem said: 'The project is symbolic of the growing bilateral ties between the countries and the peoples. It was a significant project and welcomed by the government - to fill a major gap in education and healthcare.' IDC is a joint venture between India's Universal Empire Infrastructures Ltd. -, based in the Indian capital New Delhi, and the government owned Works Corporation Ltd., -, in which UEIL will invest and control a significant majority. The IDC project represents a unique combination of domestic and international public and private partnerships in sectors where Maldives lags. The project envisages a unique Global Knowledge & Medical Hub comprising Maldives' first full-fledged and autonomous multi-disciplinary university, including a medical college and teaching hospital, together with a major sports & media center, convention center and holistic wellness center and a medical resort in Maldives. The project cost is pegged at $200 million and will take at least three years to be completed in phases. IDC immediately takes over a 150-bed hospital in the South Central Province island of Gan, one of the largest islands in Maldives. IDC plans to upgrade... http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| UK PubMed Central - Latest Developments Posted: 29 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) has been awarded the contract to run and lead the development of UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), the free online literature resource for life science researchers. Now five years old, UKPMC has grown from a simple mirror of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed Central site to a stand-alone site providing access to a repository of over 2 million full-text biomedical research articles, over 25 million citations from PubMed and Agricola, patents from the European Patent Office, UK treatment guidelines and biomedical PhD theses. Content is discoverable via an integrated full text and abstract search and is semantically enriched by the application of cutting edge text-mining approaches. Over 250 000 articles in this valuable resource are published under open-access licenses, which means that their contents can be freely reused. The UK funding organisations that support UKPMC wish to build upon this success through a new five-year contract awarded to EMBL-EBI, who will lead the development of the service in partnership with the University of Manchester and the British Library. The goal is to build a gold-standard digital repository for the biomedical literature that benefits life science researchers throughout the world. We want to help researchers make the best possible use of the scientific literature by building deep content links between articles and the underlying data, said Dr Johanna McEntyre, Head of Literature Services at EMBL-EBI. If we manage that, UKPMC will give people a chance to navigate the biomedical information space in an intuitive way. The service will be funded by a significantly expanded group of funding organisations: eight funders launched the service in 2007; the new contract sees the participation of 18 UK and European funders, led by the Wellcome Trust. We are delighted that additional funders are... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Scheme for children under rights panel's lens Posted: 28 Jul 2011 11:52 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 28 - The National Human Rights Commission - Thursday issued notices to the women and child development ministry and states over alleged corruption in implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services -. 'The commission issued notices to the principal secretary of the ministry of women and child development and the chief secretaries of all the states, and asked them to submit their reports in the matter within six weeks,' a statement said. The NHRC took suo motu cognizance of media reports that only 40 percent of the expenditure on the supplementary nutrition of the children under the ICDS could actually be accounted for at the national level. The reports were based on the planning commission's review of the ICDS launched to reduce malnutrition among children up to six years old, the NHRC said. The reports alleged that there was a nexus among the officials responsible for implementing the programme, contractors and panchayat and Anganwadi workers to siphon off public funds. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Smuggled Indian pan masala poses cancer threat to Africa Posted: 28 Jul 2011 10:50 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 28 - African teenagers, especially school kids, are addicted to Indian 'gutka' and pan masala smuggled into their countries, an Indian health ministry official said here Thursday, warning of oral cancer threat in the continent. The official, who did not wish to be named, visited countries like Uganda and Kenya and was shocked to know that the African consumers of 'gutka' and pan masala had no idea that they were chewing tobacco. 'We are illegally smuggling oral cancer to these countries,' the official said. 'These products are available in Africa illegally and the locals there think of them as a sweet, exotic mouth freshener from India. They don't know that it is tobacco,' said the official. 'Just to increase profits, the Indian tobacco industry has now shifted focus to smuggling,' added the official. As these products carry health warnings in Indian languages, the African consumers cannot read and understand them, added the official. Africa has strict anti-tobacco and smoking laws. If these products were exported legally, the manufacturers would have to reveal the contents and pay high duty, said the official. 'These are smuggled illegally and sold secretly,' said the official. The official said that the addiction was widespread and was affecting everybody from the villagers to educated city dwellers. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Goverment kicks off campaign against bidis Posted: 28 Jul 2011 08:18 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 28 - The government Thursday launched a nationwide campaign through the mass media to make people aware of the ill-effects of smoking bidis, an official said. Developed with technical support from NGO World Lung Foundation -, the campaign consists of two public service announcements in 14 regional languages which will be aired on television and radio for a month, starting Aug 1. 'This is the first government sponsored campaign anywhere in the world that links bidi smoking to heart disease. As bidis are manufactured and consumed majorly in Asia, so we had to take the lead,' B.K. Prasad, joint secretary in the health ministry, said. To deter youngsters from taking to smoking, he said revised notification on sale of tobacco in the vicinity of schools and colleges has been introduced, fixing accountability on the government as well as society. 'State police, teachers and principals, health inspectors and members of panchayats have all been assigned with the job of curbing tobacco sale to students,' said Keshav Desiraju, additional secretary of the health ministry. Quoting the Central Tobacco Research Institute, officials said that by 2030, cultivation of cheaper tobacco used in bidis would be completely curbed while the more expensive one, used in cigarettes would be cut down by 50 percent. But it was equally important to rehabilitate tobacco cultivators, said Desiraju. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Fancy a tattoo? Beware of hepatitis virus Posted: 28 Jul 2011 09:44 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 28 - A pair of wings on the back, a butterfly on the ankle or simply a pair of initials on the hand - beautifully designed tattoos are a craze these days. But getting yourself inked can expose you to the dangerous hepatitis B or C virus and even HIV, warn doctors. Getting a permanent tattoo involves piercing the skin with a needle and injecting coloured ink in different designs. If the needle or the surroundings is infected, then the chances of transmission of the hepatitis virus goes up manifold. 'Tattoos are a potential cause for spreading hepatitis B and C virus, even HIV. While the number of cases is still not very high, we do come across patients who have been infected this way,' Ajay Kumar, senior consultant - at the Indraprastha Apollo hospital, told IANS. 'The main risk is if the equipment, which is the needle, is infected and not enough precaution is taken to prevent transmission,' he added. But it's not just the needle that can spread the virus. Ajay K. Sachdev, head of surgical gastroenterology at the Artemis Health Institute, Gurgaon, said: 'Needles are not the only things that can cause transmission of the hepatitis virus or even HIV. The silent culprits are the expensive ink bottles in which the artist dips his needle time and again while doing the tattoo.' 'So even if they use disposable syringes or fresh gloves, if an artist uses the same ink bottle for several clients, the chances of transmission of the virus increase. Now since these ink bottles are mostly imported, they generally don't use fresh bottles for every client,' Sachdev told IANS. Explaining the science behind it, Sachdev said: 'Tattoo making involves pricking the needle deep into the dermis - the layer under the skin surface - which results in bleeding and the same needle is dipped into the paint bottles which leads to transferring of infection.' 'The chances of a person getting infected are higher if one gets it done immediately... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Tiny flying machines inspired by nature will revolutionize surveillance work Posted: 28 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Tiny aerial vehicles are being developed with innovative flapping wings based on those of real-life insects. Incorporating micro-cameras, these revolutionary insect-size vehicles will be suitable for many different purposes ranging from helping in emergency situations considered too dangerous for people to enter, to covert military surveillance missions. Supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, world-leading research at the University of Oxford is playing a key role in the vehicles' development. Dr Richard Bomphrey, from the Department of Zoology, is leading this research, which is generating new insight into how insect wings have evolved over the last 350 million years. Nature has solved the problem of how to design miniature flying machines, he says. By learning those lessons, our findings will make it possible to aerodynamically engineer a new breed of surveillance vehicles that, because they're as small as insects and also fly like them, completely blend into their surroundings. Currently the smallest of state-of-the-art fixed-wing unmanned surveillance vehicles are around a foot wide. The incorporation of flapping wings is the secret to making the new designs so small. To achieve flight, any object requires a combination of thrust and lift. In manmade aircraft, two separate devices are needed to generate these (i.e. engines provide thrust and wings provide lift), this limits the scope for miniaturising flying machines. But an insect's flapping wings combine both thrust and lift. If manmade vehicles could emulate this more efficient approach, it would be possible to scale down flying machines to much smaller dimensions than is currently possible. This will require a much more detailed understanding than we currently have of how insect wings have evolved, and specifically of how different types of insect wing have evolved for different purposes, Dr Bomphrey says. For instance, bees are... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Research finds veterinary medicine students experience higher depression levels than peers Posted: 28 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) MANHATTAN, KAN. -- Veterinary medicine students are more likely to struggle with depression than human medicine students, undergraduate students and the general population, according to several recent collaborative studies from Kansas State University researchers. Mac Hafen, therapist and clinical instructor in Kansas State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, and researchers from Kansas State University, the University of Nebraska and East Carolina University decided to take a closer look at depression and anxiety among veterinary medicine students. Although the mental health of human medicine students has been extensively studied, the same extent of study has not been performed with veterinary medicine students. Additionally, most veterinary research related to depression involves pet owners, not veterinarians or students. We are hoping to predict what contributes to depression levels so that we can intervene and make things run a little bit more smoothly for students themselves, said Hafen, who has spent five years researching the well-being and mental health of veterinary students. Once a semester, the researchers anonymously surveyed veterinary medicine students in various stages of academic study. The survey helped uncover a rate of depression occurrence and understand how it related to the amount of stress veterinary students experience during their four years of study. During the first year of veterinary school, 32 percent of the veterinary medicine students surveyed showed symptoms of depression, compared to 23 percent of human medicine students who showed symptoms above the clinical cutoff, as evidenced by other studies. The researchers also discovered that veterinary students experience higher depression rates as early as the first semester of their first year of study. Their depression rates appear to increase even more during the second and third year of school. During the fourth year, depression rates drop... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| $3 million grant to aid minorities with uncontrolled diabetes Posted: 28 Jul 2011 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Health Research and Policy and College of Medicine have received a $3 million federal grant to improve diabetes management in minority patients. The grant will fund a five-year study to evaluate a new intervention designed to improve lifestyle behaviors and medication compliance and to intensify therapy in minority patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. African-Americans and Latinos with diabetes often do not reach desired blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol levels, placing them at high risk for complications or death. We know there's a breakdown in the current health care system, said Lisa Sharp, assistant professor of medicine and co-principal investigator of the study. Even when patients have access to quality health care, there are many other economic, social and cultural factors that contribute to them not meeting their therapeutic goals. The researchers will enroll 300 African-American and Latino adults with uncontrolled diabetes from the University of Illinois Medical Center. Patients will be randomly assigned to one of two groups. In the first group, a clinic-based pharmacist will educate patients about diabetes, reconcile their medications, and address any compliance barriers. In the second group, a community-based lay health worker (or health promoter) will team with the clinic-based pharmacist to assist with cultural and language barriers, reinforce educational messages, provide support, help solve problems related to compliance, and assist in continuity of care. The pharmacist, working with a lay health worker, may help create a bridge, because there's this huge chasm between the patient and the health care provider, said Dr. Ben Gerber, associate professor of medicine. A lot of times, people will leave their doctor's office, and they have a lot of questions and don't understand things. For example, a physician may prescribe a new... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Viral hepatitis a silent killer: WHO Posted: 27 Jul 2011 05:10 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, July 27 - On the eve of the first World Hepatitis Day Thursday, the World Health Organisation - Wednesday said that viral hepatitis kills more people than any other communicable disease in the Southeast Asian region. Terming it a 'silent killer', a statement by WHO said: 'The estimated number of deaths in the region associated with viral hepatitis and its complications exceeds deaths due to malaria, dengue and HIV/AIDS combined'. According to the statement, every year an estimated 8.98 million cases of hepatitis and 585,800 deaths occur in the South East Asia region. 'Of these, 400,000 cases and 800 deaths are due to hepatitis A, 1,380,000 cases and 300,000 deaths due to hepatitis B, 500,000 cases and 120,000 deaths due to hepatitis C and 6,500,000 cases with 160,000 deaths and 2,700 stillbirths due to hepatitis E,' the statement said. The WHO said that unsanitary conditions, infected blood and unprotected sex are some of the ways by which this disease spreads. 'The region bears more than half the global burden of hepatitis E infection. Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. In approximately a quarter of all such cases, the infection results in death, and stillbirths,' it added. While a vaccine for hepatitis A and B exists, there is no vaccine yet for hepatitis C and E. 'On World Hepatitis Day, WHO recommends that hepatitis be made a notifiable disease,' the statement added. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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