Mud for meals: UP cracks whip on district officials

May 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Allahabad, May 28 — Following a damning report by a Supreme Court fact-finding team over the widespread malnutrition and total collapse of food security-related schemes in Uttar Pradesh’s Ganne village, the district administration finally cracked the whip on the erring officials. The apex court had sent the team after Hindustan Times highlighted the villagers’ plight in a report on April 5.

District Magistrate Sanjay Prasad ordered that the power of the Ganne’s gram pradhan be immediately seized and also terminated the services of anganwadi workers on charges of dereliction of duty. The district administration also decided to probe the allegations of intimidation of villagers by the kotedar (owner of the fair price shop), following their admission to the Supreme Court’s team.

On Friday, Prasad met the reporter of HT and asked for information about the situation in Ganne. “A criminal case will be registered against the kotedar, and sent to jail, if found guilty,” said Prasad.

“We have also decided to form a three-member committee comprising villagers for monitoring the implementation of welfare schemes in the village in absence of the Gram Pradhan.”.

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Genetic variants that increase infectious diseases risk identified

May 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Washington, May 20 (ANI): Scientists have identified new genetic variants that increase susceptibility to several infectious diseases including tuberculosis and malaria.

With greater understanding of the role of the gene implicated, researchers from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, Singapore”s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and National University Health System (NUHS) hope that the findings could one day lead to better therapies and vaccines.

Environmental factors such as malnutrition and poor hygiene can account for a large proportion of an individual person”s susceptibility to infectious diseases, but it”s clear that this is not the whole story. Studies of twins and adopted persons indicate that genetics also plays a role.

The team analysed genes from over 8,000 people at clinical sites in Malawi, Kenya, Vietnam, Hong Kong and The Gambia, over a period of 5 years. In particular, they were looking for genetic variants that might contribute to susceptibility to tuberculosis, malaria and serious bacterial infections of the blood, or bacteraemia.

Their findings reveal a striking association with a gene called CISH and increased risk of susceptibility to these infectious diseases.

CISH encodes a protein that is involved in the immune response to infectious diseases. It plays a role in dampening down messaging signals between cells of the immune system.

A panel of five different genetic variants was identified within the CISH gene. Within the population studied, having just one of these variants increased susceptibility to disease by 18 percent compared with somebody who does not have any ”risk” variants.

One variant in particular accounted for most of the genetic association with disease. Functional studies carried out in Singapore showed that blood cells from healthy Chinese volunteers carrying that variant had lower levels of the CISH protein overall than individuals with the normal variant.

This suggests that CISH exerts a significant genetic influence on our immune response.

Dr Chiea C. Khor from A*STAR”s Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences (SICS), who co-led the studies in Singapore, commented: “It”s not clear from our study why having a reduced level of CISH associates with increased susceptibility to multiple infectious diseases, but it does suggest that CISH is a key regulator of the immune system. We hope that our findings will encourage clinical research to better understand the immunological processes that are going on, with a view to identifying targets for therapeutic intervention and the development of better therapies and vaccines.” (ANI)

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Former Delhi High Court Judge questions eviction of beggars for CWG

May 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

New Delhi, May 14 (ANI): Former Delhi High Court Chief Justice A. P Shah has criticized the State Government for evicting beggars and other ”have-nots” from Delhi.

He was speaking after the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN), a non-government body, released its progress report on the government”s intended plans in the run-up to the October 2010 Common Wealth Games.

“Authorities are cleaning street vendors, rickshaw pullers and other informal sector workers of the road in the process depriving thousands of the urban poor of their livelihood,” said Shah.

Miloon Kothari, one of the panelists, said the holding of the Games contravened India”s Constitutional.

Kothari said the excessive costs involved in staging the games event ignore the reality of high levels of poverty, hunger, inequality, homelessness and malnutrition.

The HLRN report has posed several questions such as the rationale for spending billions of rupees on the event vis-à-vis the key pre and post event general recommendations and allied suggestions.

Human rights activists have raised several questions covering various dimensions of the Commonwealth Games, especially the level of expenditure on a one-time sporting event and actual delivery of benefits to the masses

Apart from Justice Shah and Kothari, others who took part in the panel discussion were Amitabh Kundu, Director of Hazards Centre and Dunu Roy of HLRN. (ANI)

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Patel removed bowel ‘with no sign of cancer’

March 31, 2010 By Leave a Comment

A section of bowel removed from a patient by Dr Jayant Patel failed to reveal any sign of cancer or a reason for his rectal bleeding, a court has been told.

Giving evidence in the Supreme Court in Brisbane, pathologist Dr Vasanthamala Varmin said she examined 75-year-old Mervyn Morris’s sigmoid colon after it was removed by Patel at the Bundaberg Base Hospital on May 23, 2003.

She said analysis of the tissue revealed no malignant growths and no bleeding site.

“If there had been bleeding would you have noticed it?” prosecutor David Meredith asked.

“Yes, yes we would have,” Dr Varmin said.

Under cross-examination, defence barrister Michael Byrne, QC, asked if the fact the colon had been stored in formalin and transported to Brisbane would have washed away any signs of blood.

Dr Varmin said it would not have.

The crown is alleging Patel failed to properly investigate the cause of rectal bleeding and that the removal of part of Mr Morris’s colon was “unnecessary”.

Mr Morris, 75, died at Bundaberg Base Hospital on June 14, 2003.

Patel’s trial has previously heard malnutrition contributed to Mr Morris’s death.

Former Bundaberg hospital dietitian Grace Andrews testified about difficulties meeting Mr Morris’s post operative nutritional needs.

She said his feeding plan complied with Patel’s orders but was not enough to meet Mr Morris’s requirements and she was not consulted by Patel.

Patel has pleaded not guilty to Mr Morris’s manslaughter, as well as the manslaughter of two other patients and the grievous bodily harm of another man.

The charges relate to Patel’s time as director of surgery at the Bundaberg Base Hospital between 2003 and 2005.

The trial continues.

- ABC/AAP

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Patient’s daughter testifies at Patel trial

March 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The daughter of a man who died after undergoing surgery by Jayant Patel has testified at the doctor’s manslaughter trial in Brisbane.

Patel, 59, the former chief of surgery at Bundaberg hospital, has pleaded not guilty to unlawfully killing three patients and causing grievous bodily harm to a fourth.

One of his alleged victims was Mervyn Morris, 75, who died three weeks after surgery in 2003 from a combination of factors including malnutrition.

His daughter Vicki Whitfield has testified at Patel’s Supreme Court trial about her father’s deteriorating health after the operation.

Ms Whitfield told the court she spoke to Patel about his plan to perform the major bowel operation.

“I asked him if he could possibly be bleeding from anywhere else, maybe the liver? He said ‘no’,” she said.

“He wanted to do a bowel resection. We thought that was pretty dramatic.

“We asked if that would stop the bleeding and he said ‘yes’.”

Patel allegedly told Ms Whitfield her father would be out of hospital in a week.

Instead, Mr Morris died an undignified death three weeks later, vomiting faeces that were aspirated into his lungs in his final hours.

Ms Whitfield told the court her father had been unable to eat after the operation, so she had asked Patel if she could bring him energy-rich drinks.

But he got worse, so she said she made another suggestion to Patel.

“We asked him, ‘could he have a feed tube?’ He couldn’t drink the Sustagen, he was really struggling,” she said.

She told the court, Patel agreed about the feeding tube.

“Dr Patel also said that he thought Dad would have been better by now,” she said.

“He thought he would have been over it in a couple of days but because of his age he wasn’t coping with it very well.”

The court has heard that along with the operation itself, poor post-operative nutrition was also listed on Mr Morris’s death certificate as a causal factor.

But Ms Whitfield told the court that when she raised concerns that her father’s feeding tube was not working properly, Patel pulled it out of his nose a bit and was optimistic it would be OK.

On the morning her father died, Ms Whitfield told the court: “I asked Dr Patel, ‘how come it’s got to this point that my father is in the ICU?’

“‘[He] looks like he’s dying, how did it get this bad?’”

She said Patel replied: “When I was putting the tube down, your father was vomiting, so he would have got some into his lungs. But we’ve given him some medication to fix that.”

The prosecution says Patel performed unnecessary and negligent surgery at a hospital not equipped to handle such major operations.

The trial has heard x-ray services were so lacking at the hospital that some reports were not available until after one of Patel’s patients had died.

Dr Emma Igras worked under Patel at the hospital in 2003.

Under cross-examination this morning from Patel’s counsel, Dr Igras told the court that during her time at the hospital, radiology services were “absent at times, delayed often”.

The court was shown a number of x-ray documents that showed there were long delays before doctors received reports from radiologists about their patients’ diagnostic x-ray pictures.

In one instance it was more than two months.

The court has also heard that Patel had restrictions placed on his licence in the US because of gross negligence, but staff at Bundaberg were unaware of this.

Patel has been quiet throughout the trial.

He enters court each morning holding his wife’s hand and does not respond to any questions from reporters.

The trial continues.

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“They made us the poorest of the poor” say UK Gurkhas

March 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

London, Mar 22(ANI): Veterans of the Gurkha community in the UK have said that the men who once served the Queen and country proudly are now the “poorest of the poor” in Nepal.

Gyanraj Rai, member of the United British Gurkhas Ex-Servicemen’s Association (UBGEA), said that the community has been shattered into angry divisions, punctuated by accusations and counter-accusations.

Gurkhas, who retired before 1997 when the regiments relocated to the UK from Hong Kong, were granted the right to settle in the UK last summer, but their pension remains around 20 percent of other British soldiers.

“They made us the bravest of the brave, then they made us the poorest of the poor. They sent us home almost barefoot. Thousands of veterans have died of malnutrition and lack of medication,” The Independent quoted Rai, as saying.

“They would rather stay in Nepal, but they are penniless so they are borrowing money, selling their cows and buffaloes to come here,” he added.

Former Sgt Gajindra Rai, who came to Britain three weeks ago, said that the Gurkha Army Ex-Servicemen”s Association (GAESO) in Nepal had charged him 900 pounds, including the visa fee, for advice.

“They talked about lots of benefits and housing, but I have found nothing. I am very angry. I feel very betrayed to have been given the wrong information,” he added. (ANI)

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North Korea rights situation has worsened: U.N. envoy

March 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment

(Reuters) – Human rights in North Korea have worsened over the last few years and it is time for the United Nations Security Council to protect the people who are mistreated by their own government, a U.N. envoy said on Monday.

World | North Korea

Vitit Muntarbhorn, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), said his main achievement in six years was that the world was now better informed about abuses in the reclusive country.

“Sadly on many fronts the situation has actually got worse,” he told a news conference after presenting a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that spoke of “harrowing and horrific” human rights violations in the communist state.

One example was the way the authorities had clamped down recently on a cautious experiment introducing market elements into food production started after the state distribution system collapsed in the 1990s resulting in widespread starvation.

Muntarbhorn said the clamp-down and related redenomination of the won currency last year had led to inflation and insecurity, and malnutrition remained a serious problem.

“Logically, it would seem that if the authorities are not able to satisfy the basic needs of the people, the people should be able to participate in activities which can help generate income so as to enable them to produce or buy their own food as well as sustain their livelihood,” he told the council.

NORTH KOREA DENUNCIATION

North Korean diplomat Choe Myong Nam dismissed the report and told the council the very creation of the rapporteur — who has never been accepted by Pyongyang — was the result of hostility to his country by the United States, Japan and the European Union.

These countries were responsible for plenty of human rights abuses themselves and were just seeking confrontation, he said.

“The anachronistic ‘special rapporteur’ on DPRK must be eliminated once and for all,” Choe said.

Muntarbhorn, who underlined his independence from other states, said recommended several steps for improving human rights.

– improve food supplies by allowing people to grow and trade their own food, and work with international food aid donors,

– stop executions, especially public executions used to intimidate people,

– end the punishment of refugees sent back to North Korea,

– cooperate with other countries whose citizens have been abducted by North Korea,

– allow the special rapporteur to visit.

The Thai jurist, whose six-year mandate ends in June, said North Korea had never allowed him to visit, and he had relied for information on refugees, non-governmental organizations and U.N. agencies with a presence in the country.

Muntarbhorn said the question arose who would help people subjected to “systematic widespread abuses” if their nation state was unwilling or unable to protect them.

“My answer is that at least the Untied Nations must lend a helping hand,” he said.

Some parts of the U.N. were working with North Korea, but the top of the system — the Security Council, with the power to refer abuses to the International Criminal Court — had not yet been involved, he said.

Muntarbhorn said he favored food aid for North Korea, but this must be carefully monitored to ensure resources were not diverted to the party and military elite, and North Korea itself had to spend more of its own resources on food provision instead of focusing on a military build-up.

He said current sanctions imposed on North Korea for its nuclear program appeared to be carefully targeted at the elite and were not having a human rights impact.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

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Regulation of ‘short stature’ gene crucial for growth in kids

August 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 26 (ANI): A team of researchers in Germany have found that not only a gene called SHOX is involved in the development of short stature, but sequences of genetic material on the X and Y chromosome that regulate it are also crucial for growth in children.

Professor Gudrun Rappold, the Director of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics at Heidelberg University Hospital, points out that these gene regulators determine how frequently a gene is copied, and, thus, how effective it is.

In many cases, she says, the mutation of one regulatory sequence of the SHOX gene is sufficient to give rise to the full-blown syndrome.

Publishing their results in the Journal of Medical Genetics, she and her colleagues have said that their findings may open up new possibilities for diagnosing the cause of short stature, and initiating treatment before it is too late.

According to background information in the report, the SHOX gene (short stature homeobox gene) is responsible for the normal growth of bones, and is often mutated in short-stature patients-no more than 160 cm of final height in men, and 150 cm in women.

Hormone disorders, malnutrition, chronic disease, or a genetic disorder are some of the causes of short stature. If, in addition to short stature, other symptoms such as short forearms and lower legs or other bone malformations also occur, it is considered a syndrome.

However, often no exact cause can be determined and other typical features are lacking – this is then known as idiopathic short stature.

In 2007, a research team led by Professor Rappold found that in over 4 percent of children with idiopathic short stature, the trigger for the disorder was a mutation in the SHOX gene. er latest study has shown that not only the gene itself, but its regulators as well can be crucial for developing the disease.

During the study, the researchers examined the genetic material from a total of 893 subjects.

About 5 percent of the patients with idiopathic short stature, and 80 percent of the patients with Leri-Weill syndrome, had mutations in the segment either including or around the SHOX gene.

The researchers said that some patients had an intact SHOX gene, but an unexpectedly high number of mutations in its enhancer sequences: for 26 percent of patients with SHOX deficiency and idiopathic short stature and for 45 percent of patients with SHOX deficiency and Leri-Weill syndrome, the disease could be attributed solely to a genetic mutation of the enhancer sequence.

“The astounding thing is that this enhancer mutation is quite far away from the affected gene and yet it still leads to the exact same clinical symptoms as a mutation in the gene itself,” said Professor Rappold.

The researchers hope that their results will give them a better understanding of the causes of the disease, and allow them to optimise the diagnostic possibilities for patients with SHOX gene mutations.

“Patients who suffer from their short stature often have a great need to be able to name the cause. Even if it is not possible to treat the cause, patients with mutations of the SHOX gene can benefit from a treatment of the symptoms with growth hormones,” said Professor Rappold. (ANI)

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Smoking may aggravate malnutrition in developing countries

August 25, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Washington, August 24 (ANI): Smokers may exacerbate the problem of malnutrition in developing countries because they tend to finance their habit by dipping into the family food budget, say a pair of researchers.

Steven Block and Patrick Webb, of Tufts University, have revealed that their fidning is based on a study conducted in Java, Indonesia.

They say that their findings suggest that the costs of smoking in the developing world go well beyond the immediate health risks.

The researchers surveyed 33,000 households, most of which were poor, and found that the average family with at least one smoker spent 10 percent of its already tight budget on tobacco.

They observed that 68 percent of a smoking family’s budget went to food, and 22 percent for non-food, non-tobacco purchases.

On the other hand, said the researcher duo, the average non-smoking family spent 75 percent of its income on food, and 25 percent for non-food items.

“This suggests that 70 percent of the expenditures on tobacco products are financed by a reduction in food expenditures,” the researchers write.

They note in their report that that decreased spending on food appeared to have real nutritional consequences for children of smokers, with the study finding that smokers’ children tended to be slightly shorter for their ages than those of non-smokers.

The decrease in child nutrition associated with a parent who smokes is “an intuitive but rarely documented empirical finding,” the researchers write.

The team further pointed out that the poorer nutrition in smoking families came not only because they bought less food in total, but also because the food they ate tended to be of lower quality.

They said that, compared to non-smoking families, families with a smoker were found to spend a larger budget share on rice and a smaller share on meats, fruits and vegetables, which are nutrient-rich, but more expensive.

“The combination of direct health threats from smoking coupled with the potential loss of (food) consumption among children linked to tobacco expenditure presents a development challenge of the highest order,” the researchers conclude.

The study has been published in Economic Development and Cultural Change. (ANI)

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Bangladesh calls in Australian lifeguards to rescue kids from drowning

August 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Dhaka, Aug. 19 (ANI): Figures suggest that around 17,000 children drown in Bangladesh every year, a figure that is proportionately more than anywhere else in the world.

Now, according to The Independent, aid workers are battling to reduce the toll by teaching children to swim.

Instructors from Australia, a nation as famed for its lifeguards, have been teaching swimming and life-saving techniques to Bangladeshis who then pass on the skills to children.

Swimming classes are being held in makeshift bamboo pens that have been set up in murky ponds and canals.

Bangladesh, which sits on the Ganges delta, was once notorious for the threat to children from malnutrition, disease and diarrhoea.

The biggest single threat to children these days is from drowning, which accounts for more than 25 per cent of all child deaths.

Carel de Rooy, the Bangladesh head of UNICEF, which is funding the program, said the danger was only likely to get worse.

The country faces a number of threats from climate change. An increase in melting ice in the Himalayas is causing both a rise in sea levels and increased erosion as rivers flow faster.

Some predictions have suggested that the country of 150 million people could lose up to 20 per cent of its land by 2030. By then up to 20 million people could have become climate-change refugees, forced to leave their flooded homes.

The Australian instructors who have been working in Bangladesh say they believe they have already had an impact. (ANI)

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4-Year-Old Ashish Dies After Polio Vaccination; Case Filed

May 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Four-year-old Ashish, a resident of Todapur village near Patel Nagar, died hours after he was given pulse polio drops in West Delhi on Sunday.

However, the authorities called the death of the child as a coincidence as Ashish, who was reportedly suffering from malnutrition, was given vial together with 150 other children, including Ashish’s two siblings.

No other case of any complication has been reported thus far.

A case has already been lodged at the Trilokpuri police station.

Dr. CM Khanijo, officer on special duty, Pulse Polio Programme said, “We were told the boy was very weak and had to be carried in his mother’s arms. A four-year-old should ideally come walking.”

Physicians at RML Hospital also stated that Ashish’s death because of the vaccine was doubtful.

A senior doctor at RML Hospital said, “The child must have had an underlying medical condition and the death after the polio dose was administered appears to be a coincidence.”

The postmortem will be conducted on Tuesday at the RML Hospital, and the officials are waiting for the postmortem report before taking any action.

Dr. Khanijo said, “Soon after the matter was brought to our notice, we visited the family in Todapur village. We are told the child was malnourished. In fact, his siblings, who were also administered OPV, suffer from some bone disease and are not very healthy. His siblings as well as the over 145 children who were given the vaccine are doing fine. The chances of death resulting from the vaccine are less, but we’re waiting for the postmortem report.”

Delhi Health Minister Kiran Walia said, “We have asked the Drug Control Authority to check the quality of the polio vaccine.”

She, however, said the child did not die because of the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) as 150 other children were also administered the polio drops from the same vial.

“None of these children have reported any complications. The child did not die because of the vaccine. Even the child’s brother and sister were given drops from the same vial,” Walia said.

She said the government was waiting for the post-mortem report.

Officials said Union Health Ministry has been informed about the incident.

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Supplementary Nutrition Programme benefits women in Faizabad

May 8, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Faizabad, May 8 (ANI): Union Government’s Supplementary Nutrition Programme has greatly benefited women and children in Faizabad by curbing malnutrition among the poor families.

Government started the scheme with focus on improving the health and nutritional status of infants aged till six years, pregnant women and lactating mothers.

Under this programme, infants below six years of age are given cooked meals at the school while women in advanced stage of pregnancy are given weekly dry nutrient preparations.

The aim is to supplement the daily nutritional intake by 300 calories, 8 to 10 grams of protein for children, 500 calories and 20-25 grams of protein for women under the ante-natal and post-natal care.

“For children between three to six years, we give hot cooked food, for children below three years of age, we distribute nutritional food. The distribution is done weekly. Some people come here, while for those who cannot; our volunteers visit them by covering the entire area to distribute the food,” said Sunita Soni, Supervisor, Supplementary Nutritionrogramme, Faizabad.

The response of the program has gradually increased unlike the initial stages when many conservative women refused to come out of their mud-houses.

To advise the womenfolk about health and pregnancy related issues, regular ‘Mahila Mandals’ (women council meetings) are organized as part of this program.

Supplementary nutrition is provided as per the programme to needy children and women for 300 days in a year.

“They give us scholarships, Panjiri (traditional formulation of nutrients), good food and books. The programme run by the Indian government is good,” said Ramkumari, a local beneficiary, Faizabad.

Pregnant women are also provided with basic counseling about immunization, iron supplementation and special care for young children. (ANI)

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UAE business tycoon to sponsor Haj trip of Obama’s grandma

May 4, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Dubai, May. 3 (ANI): US President Barack Obama’s grandmother Mama Sarah will be performing Haj this year.

She reportedly has accepted an invitation of United Arab Emirates’ property tycoon Dr Sulaiman Al Fahim for the Haj trip.

“I found out that she had not been to the Haj and that she very much wants to go. As my own mother is no longer with us, our family has a spare place. So I invited her and she has accepted,” The News quoted Dr. Al Fahim, as saying.

The Hydra Properties chief executive officer, who met Mama Sarah during a trip to Kenya last week, said that he was very much looking forward to it.

Dr. Al Fahim has been appointed a goodwill ambassador in support of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and he was touring Kenya to launch an anti-malnutrition campaign in the region.

“It’s something I’m going to be doing a lot more of. And, I feel it’s time to give something back and try and do something for those less fortunate,” Dr Al Fahim said.

The New-York educated property tycoon is now planning to establish a soccer training camp for underprivileged children in Africa.

His company is involved in projects in Mexico, Libya and Pakistan, besides the UAE. (ANI)

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Top UN humanitarian official heads to Sri Lanka

May 3, 2009 By Leave a Comment

New York – The United Nations said Friday that its top humanitarian official would visit Sri Lanka over the weekend as tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in rebel-held areas. John Holmes, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, will be in Sri Lanka for three days, urging the government to facilitate a UN humanitarian mission to the conflict zone and assessing the condition of refugees living in makeshift camps.

The UN Security Council president, Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, said the Sri Lankan government should allow the UN and Red Cross to access all sites where displaced people were being registered and provided with shelter, according to UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe.

The plight of civilians trapped in a narrow coastal strip in northern Sri Lanka worsened Friday amid shortages of food and medicine as the Army vowed to continue its offensive operations against Tamil rebels in the area.

The UN estimates that of the tens of thousands of civilians remaining in the conflict zone “at least 50,000 are in extreme peril.”

No humanitarian aid has been delivered to the conflict zone since April 1, Okabe said, adding that the UN was concerned about malnutrition and other health issues, as well as overcrowding in the camps.

UN officials said those who escaped the fighting spoke of Tamil rebels using civilians as human shields.

In Washington, the White House said that President Barack Obama was “deeply concerned about the plight of innocent civilians caught up in the conflict.”

“We call on both sides to stop fighting immediately and allow civilians to safely leave the combat zone,” the US statement said.

“We call on both sides to strictly adhere to their obligations under international humanitarian law. We are very concerned about reports of violations and take these allegations very seriously.”

The Sri Lankan government should stop shelling the “safe zone,” let international aid groups and media reach civilians and refugees, the White House said. The US is “working with international partners to attempt to care for those civilians who can be reached.”

“It would compound the current tragedy if the military end of the conflict only breeds further enmity and ends hopes for reconciliation and a unified Sri Lanka in the future,” the White House said.

For more than 25 years, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been fighting for a separate state for the Tamil ethnic minority in the northern and eastern parts of majority-Sinhalese Sri Lanka. (dpa)

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Philippines to immunize half a million children this year

April 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Manila – The Philippines on Wednesday launched a programme to immunize about half a million children below 5 years of age this year, to help prevent child deaths from illnesses which kill some 82,000 children every year. Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the government allocated 36.4 million pesos (75,800 dollars) to the immunization programme, as part of the “save a child” strategy of the Department of Health.

“The department is working very hard to push for needed health sector reforms in order to sustain gains in child health,” he said. “We are also doing our best to further improve maternal health, which is very closely linked with the health and welfare of children.”

Duque lamented that for every 1,000 infants born alive in the Philippines, 42 die before reaching their fifth birthday, averaging to about 82,000 child deaths every year.

More than half the child deaths are caused by malnutrition, while others died from such preventable causes as pneumonia, diarrhea, measles or injuries.

Duque said the health department’s strategy would include training for mothers and health care providers on basic child care, injury prevention, nutrition and integrated management of sick children.

He said the campaign would help the Philippines meet the UN goals to bring down infant and child mortality rates by two-thirds by 2015.

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Bitter melon can help battle malnutrition and disease

April 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Sydney, Apr 14 (ANI): Bitter melon may not seem a very appetising name, but experts say that this vegetable may help protect the world’s population from malnutrition and disease.

Dr. Dyno Keatinge, the head of a not-for-profit research institute which uses horticulture to fight poverty and malnutrition, says that Bitter melon is rich in vitamins and offers protection against diabetes.

“It’s not a sweet vegetable, and that’s why I like it in salad and a whole range of things,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted him as saying.

“You do eat it here in Australia and it’s something that should be encouraged for people that are pre-diabetic. Bitter melon (or gourd, Momordica charantia) has properties which helps ameliorate type 2 diabetes,” he added.

Keatinge further said: “The take-home message for Australians is to eat as many varied vegetables as you can – different colours, orange, green – and make sure you have them in balance with the rest of the diet. So cut back on some of the meat consumption, have less carbohydrates and increase the fruit and vegetable intake, then you will live a longer and healthier life”.

He presented the findings at the University of Queensland. (ANI)

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CPI-M fumes at Congress’ West Bengal report card, Pranab

April 7, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Kolkata/New Delhi, April 6 (IANS) A day after senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee released a report card on the Left’s three decades of ‘misrule’ in West Bengal, the Marxists refuted the findings and, launching an attack on Mukherjee, wondered at his ‘doublespeak’.

Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Biman Bose, speaking in Kolkata, expressed surprise over the ‘development report card’ released by Mukherjee, the West Bengal Pradesh Congress president.

‘He is an experienced politician and a professor. I don’t know how he could give all wrong information about West Bengal,’ Bose, the state Left Front chairman, said at a press conference here.

Citing a number of newspaper reports, he said: ‘I could not correlate the information Mukherjee provided Sunday and the statements he had delivered during various programmes with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee just a month ago.’

‘I am sure somebody must have given him the false figures and asked him to read that out in front of the media as per the party’s instruction.’

Asked if Mukherjee was playing a ‘dual role’ before the coming Lok Sabha polls, Bose declined to comment.

‘I just can’t say he’s playing a dual role. But he should not deliver such wrong information without cross-checking it properly,’ he said, adding that none of the figures provided by Mukherjee was correct.

The report titled ’30 years of Left Front rule in West Bengal: A development report card’ alleges that the CPI-M-led government failed to provide proper healthcare and education or generate employment in the state.

In New Delhi, CPI-M politburo member Brinda Karat expressed the communists’ ire over the report and at Mukherjee.

‘Pranab Mukherjee appreciated the West Bengal government on Feb 2 and March 2 for undertaking development programmes. This shows his doublespeak. He now has to answer why this double standard in just one month,’ she said.

Refuting the findings, Brinda Karat said: ‘The Congress document shows that the West Bengal government has been doing well enough on the indices of poverty, hunger and malnutrition and education. Selective statistics should not be looked and used for political motives.’

Taking on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), she said: ‘What is the report card of the UPA? Did they tell the people that Maharashtra has the highest number of farmer suicides. The Congress party has entirely ignored the agriculture factor and plight of farmers.’

Brinda Karat also criticised the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for writing off the Third Front.

‘Both Congress and BJP have tried to scuttle the Third Front, but it finds regular mention by them. This shows their desperation for power. Their efforts of ensuring a two-party system has failed,’ she added.

Referring to the BJP fielding Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling and the party aligning with the Gorka Janamukti Morcha (GJM) for the polls, Brinda Karat said: ‘The BJP has fielded senior leader Jaswant Singh from Darjeeling constituency on the shoulders of an outfit which is out to divide Bengal on the basis of ethnic and linguistic identity.’

She also released the CPI-M’s audio CD for the poll campaign called ‘Aaina’.

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Zimbabwe prison officers arrested over prison scandal documentary

April 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Harare – Three prisons officers in Zimbabwe have been arrest on allegations that they helped film the shocking conditions in two of the country’s prisons for a documentary that was screened to international outrage last week, reports said Sunday.

The television documentary, Hell Hole, produced by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, on Wednesday showed scores of skeletal prisoners dressed in rags and reportedly dying of malnutrition and HIV-AIDS in filthy institutions without food, medication or basic cleaning materials.

The SABC team said sympathetic warders had been supplied with secret cameras to film conditions in two institutions, Khami prison in the western city of Bulawayo, and one in the southern border town of Beitbridge. The documentary took three months to produce.

A senior police officer in Beitbridge was quoted Sunday in the independent weekly Standard newspaper as saying that warders Thabiso Nyathi, Siyai Muchechedzi and Thembinkosi Nkomo were arrested on Friday on charges under the Official Secrets Act, which prescribes lengthy jail terms for government employees who leak “state secrets.”

The film’s screening was greeted with uproar from human rights groups around the world and highlighted the situation of severe neglect of prisoners, many of them political detainees, that the new coalition government has inherited from the former regime of President Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe and pro-democracy leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change formed a coalition government recently, with Mugabe staying on as president and Tsvangirai appointed prime minister.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, who is in charge of the country’s prisons, last week denied the documentary had anything to do with Zimbabwean prisons. “The SABC is lying,” he said. “We don’t allow cameras in our prisons. We have made our investigations and found that the footage is not of Zimbabwe but other countries.”

Prison support groups report that 20 of the country’s 14,000 inmates die each day

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Diets targeting oxidized cysteine may reduce inflammation and lower disease risk

March 28, 2009 By 1 Comment

Washington, March 28 (ANI): Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine say that they have found a direct association between oxidative stress and inflammatory signals in the blood.

The researchers believe that their finding may pave the way for improved strategies for preventing several diseases by including antioxidants in the diet, and for reducing the impact of inflammation in critically ill patients by adding cysteine to intravenous or tube feeding.

Dr. Dean P. Jones, professor of medicine and director of the Clinical Biomarkers Laboratory at Emory University School of Medicine, points out that many normal metabolic functions produce reactive forms of oxygen that can damage cells.

He says that oxidative stress, a disruption of the body’s ability to control reactive forms of oxygen, has been connected with heart disease, diabetes and several neurodegenerative diseases.

However, adds the researcher, scientists are still learning about the best ways to measure and reduce oxidative stress-for example, large-scale clinical trials have shown little benefit in supplementing the diet with antioxidants such as vitamins C and E.

Working in collaboration with his colleague Dr. Thomas R. Ziegler, Jones concentrated on a measure of oxidative stress in the blood: cysteine, an amino acid found in most proteins in the body.

Cysteine can exist in two forms: oxidized and reduced. The higher the level of oxidative stress outside the cell, the more oxidized cysteine there is. Other indicators like glutathione are more important inside cells.

The researchers underscore the fact that several studies have shown that levels of oxidized cysteine in the blood tend to rise as people age. Smoking and alcohol consumption are also linked with higher levels of oxidized cysteine, they add.

Jones and Ziegler have found that critical illness and malnutrition are associated with oxidative stress and oxidized cysteine in the blood.

Their team also included graduate student Smita Iyer and immunologist Mauricio Rojas, who found that a high level of oxidized cysteine drives white blood cells to send out inflammatory messages in the form of the protein IL-1 beta.

During the study, the researchers used a mouse model of sepsis to test the effects of dietary cysteine on reducing inflammation.

They treated the mice with LPS, which mimics the inflammatory effect of bacteria on the human immune system and causes an increase in the level of IL-1 beta.

Upon supplementing the mice’s diets with cysteine, the researchers found IL-1 beta levels to drop, thus blunting the impact of a sepsis-like inflammation.

In a subsequent study of healthy, but overweight adult volunteers with an average age of 62, IL-1 beta levels also rose and fell in association with the amount of dietary cysteine.

“Our research shows a direct mechanistic link between the oxidative stress biomarker (cysteine redox potential) and pro-inflammatory cytokines, which have been linked to multiple age-related and chronic diseases,” says Jones.

“Our group and others have already established that cysteine redox potential is oxidized with aging and with a number of health risk factors. This suggests that one could target cysteine redox potential as a means to decrease chronic proinflammatory signaling as an intervention for age-related diseases and for the acute inflammation of sepsis or lung injury,” he adds.

He revealed that his research team would continue studying the link between cysteine and markers of inflammation in different age groups, in overweight and normal weight individuals, and in critically ill patients requiring intravenous feeding.

The study has been published online in the journal PLoS One.(ANI)

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