Measles kills four kids, affects over 80 in Odisha |  |
- Measles kills four kids, affects over 80 in Odisha
- Ban to meet business leaders for UN health agenda
- 'NACO merger with NRHM not insensitive'
- Kashmiri youth survives tumor size of a cricket ball
- Deadly decision: Obese drivers are far less likely to buckle up
- NIH grant using genomics to tailor oral cancer treatment NYU College of Dentistry, UC San Francisco
- Notre Dame paper examines nanotechnology-related safety and ethics problem
| Measles kills four kids, affects over 80 in Odisha Posted: 30 Apr 2012 12:42 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Bhubaneswar, April 30 - An outbreak of measles has killed four children and affected over 80 people - mostly young ones aged below five - in Odisha's Rayagada district in the past week, officials said Monday. The first case of the contagious viral disease was detected April 23 in a hilly village, located 90 km from the district headquarters of Rayagada. Later, it spread to three more nearby villages, chief district medical officer K.V.S. Chowdhury told IANS. Currently at least 84 people, mostly children below the age of five, are undergoing treatment. The condition of about 10 is critical, he said. The villages affected by the disease include Salapash, Katraguda and Railighati. One needs to walk several kilometres to reach to these patients as there is no motorable road to access these villages. The villagers are mostly tribal and they don't get their children vaccinated. The superstitious residents also perform religious rites instead of seeking medical help, he added. The disease which mostly infects children starts with fever. Subsequently a patient also gets cough, running nose, blurred vision and body rashes. http://www.rxpgnews.com    |
| Ban to meet business leaders for UN health agenda Posted: 28 Apr 2012 03:32 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) Mumbai, April 28 - United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will later Saturday meet business and social leaders here to discuss ways and means to achieve the health-related UN Millennium Development Goals -, an official said. According to the official, top global business leaders will meet Ban and heads of UN health agencies to discuss progress towards achieving the MDGs. Senior officials from the Indian health and finance ministries, and representatives of leading NGOs will also join the meeting. It will be an honour to meet with the UN secretary-general and discuss how we in the business community can improve the health sector in India, said Mukesh Ambani, chairman and managing director, Reliance Industries Ltd. In tangible ways, we can use our business acumen to advance progress already under way to ensure healthier and better future for women and children, Ambani said. To achieve the MDGs in India, Ban in 2010 had launched the Every Woman Every Child programme, which aimed to save 16 million women and children in the country by 2015. Much progress has been made in India, but to meet the MDGs and save the lives of 16 million women and children, a collective effort from all sectors is required. The private sector, a critical partner in the initiative, can lead the way, said the UN chief, currently on a three-day visit to India. He added that maternal, child and infant death rates in India were among the highest in the world with 63,000 women and 1.70 million aged under five dying each year due to causes that could be prevented. While some Indian states have achieved the MDGs, more progress is needed in others to achieve the targets, Ban said. A key agenda of Saturday's meeting will be significant market opportunities for India's business community to scale up optimal, affordable and high-quality products and services to accelerate the country's progress towards MDGs. Focusing on the public-private partnership model... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| 'NACO merger with NRHM not insensitive' Posted: 27 Apr 2012 10:57 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 27 - The convergence of India's AIDS control mission with the government's flagship National Rural Health Mission - is not going to be insensitive for the communities and the vulnerable sections involved, Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed said here Friday. The whole idea behind integration is not to do it in a ham-handed manner and reversing the AIDS control department's achievements. We are not going to be insensitive to the needs of the vulnerable communities involved, said Hameed, head of the steering committee on health in the plan panel. The steering committee for the 12th plan had proposed to the Commission to integrate the two-decade old National AIDS Control Organisation - with the NRHM that functions across the country to provide basic healthcare delivery and strengthening community health structure. NACO, established with the mission of prevention, care and support of people living and affected by HIV, is under the ministry of health and family welfare. The merger had raised apprehensions on the delivery of services to the marginalized communities affected by HIV-AIDS who are already facing the burden of stigma and discrimination. India has a population of around 2.5 million HIV positive, third largest across the globe. Referring to the B.K Chaturvedi report on restructuring centrally-sponsored schemes, Hameed said the Plan panel will keep in minds the importance of the AIDS control schemes. We have been reminded again and again that there are a lot of centrally sponsored schemes with the same purpose on health. Some programmes of NACO are already taking place in convergence with NRHM and we will ensure the convergence is done in the right manner, she said. The NACO is currently in the concluding phase of its national AIDS control programme - phase 3. NACP 4 has been rolled out April 1, the department says. While the NACO has adopted a work approach through communities, civil societies and... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Kashmiri youth survives tumor size of a cricket ball Posted: 27 Apr 2012 04:21 PM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) New Delhi, April 27 - It was a life-saving miracle for 22-year-old Kashmiri youth Majid Khan, who was operated upon at a hospital here for a tumor the size of a cricket ball, doctors said Friday. The condition was rare as the tumor burst into a blood vessel making Khan's condition potentially fatal. Majid had severe allergic attacks and difficulty in breathing. After series of investigations, we found that a large hydrated tumor in the chest had burst into the aorta - a blood vessel in the body, said Deep Goel, director of the department of minimal access, bariatric and surgical gastroenterology at west Delhi's BLK Hospital. The aorta is the large artery that carries all the blood from the heart to various organs of the body. The tumor was stuck between the heart and spine. The surgery cost Khan's family around Rs.2 lakh. This was a rare condition because aorta is a very crucial blood vessel and we were expecting huge amount of bleeding during the surgery, Goel told IANS. Khan, 22, from a village near Srinagar, had visited various hospitals where he faced problems in diagnosis. Around two months back, the team of doctors from bariartric and cardiac department of BLK Hopsital planned the surgery on Khan. The tumor of the size of a cricket ball has been removed. Such an operation involves controlling flow of blood in the aorta and is considered risky as vital organs of the body like the spinal cord and kidney can be affected, said J.C. Vij, a cardiac surgeon from the hospital. When the aorta was clamped, special techniques and expertise were employed to successfully remove this tumor and repair the hole in the aorta, added Vij. http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Deadly decision: Obese drivers are far less likely to buckle up Posted: 27 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Obese drivers are far less likely to wear seatbelts than are drivers of normal weight, a new University at Buffalo study has found, a behavior that puts them at greater risk of severe injury or death during motor vehicle crashes. The UB study found that normal weight drivers are 67 percent more likely to wear a seatbelt than morbidly obese drivers. Drivers were considered overweight or obese if they had a BMI (body mass index) of 25 or more, according to the World Health Organization definition of obesity, with 25-30 defined as overweight, 30-35 slightly obese, 35-40 moderately obese and 40 morbidly obese. It's clear that not wearing a seatbelt is associated with a higher chance of death, says lead author Dietrich Jehle, MD, professor of emergency medicine at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and associate medical director at Erie County Medical Center. We hypothesized that obese drivers were less likely to wear seatbelts than their normal weight counterparts. Obese drivers may find it more difficult to buckle up a standard seatbelt. The finding comes from the same UB researchers who in 2010 identified obesity as a risk factor for death in a study of 155,584 drivers in severe auto crashes. In that study, they found that morbidly obese individuals are 56 percent more likely to die in a crash than individuals of normal weight. The results of the current study, Obesity and Seatbelt Use, will be presented May 10 in Chicago at the annual meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. The UB researchers based their study on data in the national Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which tracks motor vehicle crashes and numerous variables about the collisions, some of which are related to seatbelt use. They looked at 336,913 drivers who were in a severe crash where a death occurred and controlled for confounding variables. We... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| NIH grant using genomics to tailor oral cancer treatment NYU College of Dentistry, UC San Francisco Posted: 27 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded a two-year grant to Dr. Brian L. Schmidt, professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the NYU College of Dentistry, and Dr. Donna G. Albertson, professor at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. The grant will fund groundbreaking research to customize treatment for oral cancer patients. Drs. Schmidt and Albertson have identified candidate genomic markers in tumors that predict if an oral cancer is likely to spread (metastasize) to the neck. Oral cancer is often fatal if it spreads to the neck and remains untreated. Current clinical and radiographic examination provides limited information for diagnosis of early neck metastasis of oral cancer. Nearly all cancers within the oral cavity must be surgically removed. An additional and extensive surgery (neck dissection) is also performed to remove lymphatic tissue in the neck if there is any clinical or radiographic evidence of neck metastasis. Patients who present with no evidence of metastasis in the neck often undergo a preemptive neck surgery because untreated occult (hidden) metastasis reduces life expectancy by half. The work of Drs. Schmidt and Albertson will validate genomic markers that will ultimately be used to rule out neck dissection in oral cancer patients with no clinical evidence of neck metastasis and who have tumors containing specific genomic profiles. Dr. Alberston notes, It has taken us eight years of research to converge on a genomic marker that could be used to tailor treatment for oral cancer patients. We look forward to testing this marker in a clinical study and this funding will help up us to develop the appropriate laboratory test for such a trial. Currently, neck surgery for those suffering from oral cancer entails a three-to-four hour major procedure involving critical anatomic structures and is associated with life altering... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
| Notre Dame paper examines nanotechnology-related safety and ethics problem Posted: 27 Apr 2012 05:00 AM PDT ( From http://www.rxpgnews.com ) A recent paper by Kathleen Eggleson, a research scientist in the Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano) at the University of Notre Dame, provides an example of a nanotechnology-related safety and ethics problem that is unfolding right now. The world of nanotechnology, which involves science and engineering down at billionths-of-a-meter scales, might seem remote. But like most new advances, the application of that technology to everyday experience has implications that can affect people in real ways. If not anticipated, discussed or planned for, some of those implications might even be harmful. The problem that Eggleson describes is that hospital-acquired infections are a persistent, costly, and sometimes fatal issue. A patient goes in for one condition, say an injury, but ends up being infected by a microorganism picked up in the hospital itself. That microorganism might even have developed a resistance to conventional drug treatments. The solution is that engineers are developing new and innovative ways of coating medical materials with nano-sized particles of silver, an element that has long been known for its antimicrobial properties. These particles are being applied to hard surfaces, like bedrails and doorknobs, and to fabrics, such as sheets, gowns, and curtains, by a growing number of medical supply companies. And these new materials are proving effective. Nanosilver coatings have made life-saving differences to the properties of typical hospital items, says Eggleson. Just this last December, a textile made by a Swiss company was the first nano-scale material approved as a pesticide by the EPA. The possible new danger is that the vast majority of bacteria and other microorganisms are actually neutral, or even beneficial, to human life and a healthy environment. For example, some bacteria are needed to maintain appropriate levels of nitrogen in the air, and others, living inside the human body, are critical to... http://www.rxpgnews.com   |
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