Health

London,October 15: Coming soon is a single shot that may keep blindness at bay. Yes, sight-saving drugs could one day be given without repeated injections into the eye, by temporarily breaching the blood-retina barrier, say scientists.

At present, drugs to treat age-related muscular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness, are injected in to the eyeball once a month. They cannot be injected into the blood partly because an eye lining normally prevents molecules in the blood from reaching the retina.

Washington, October 14: Grilled chicken replaced the hot dogs. Strawberries instead of cookies at snack time. No more fruit juice – water or low-fat milk only. This is the new menu at a Delaware day care center, part of a fledgling movement to take the fight against obesity to pudgy preschoolers.

Day care is the next frontier: New Harvard research shows few states require that child-care providers take specific nutrition and physical activity steps considered key to keeping the under-5 crowd fit.

Chicago, October 14: A new study suggests less-invasive keyhole surgery for prostate cancer may mean a higher risk for lasting incontinence and impotence when compared with traditional surgery.

Laparoscopic, or keyhole, surgery is increasingly chosen by men having a cancerous prostate removed. And often it involves the highly marketed da Vinci robotics system. Da Vinci’s popularity has been rising even though there’s never been a rigorous head-to-head comparison between it and standard surgery.

Monroe, October 14: A husband and wife are both undergoing treatment for breast cancer in a case that illustrates how the disease can strike both sexes. Mike and Barbara Welsh, of Monroe, in southwestern Ohio, each had surgery this year after separate discoveries that they had breast cancer.

Barbara Welsh, 63, had surgery in January, went through chemotherapy and is now starting radiation treatments.

Washington, October 14: Test results of its swine flu vaccine suggest that children under 10 may need two shots to be fully protected, vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur said Wednesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the news is not surprising, since this age group needs two doses of regular seasonal flu vaccine for full immunity to develop.

New Delhi, Octobeer 14: Three more swine flu deaths, all in Maharashtra, were reported Wednesday, taking the total toll in the country due to the influenza A (H1N1) virus to 399, health authorities said here.

Also, 150 new cases were reported in the country, taking the total number of people affected with the virus to 12,334.

London, October 14: More than half of cot deaths happen when a baby is sleeping with a parent, a study reveals today.

Researchers said this could be linked to the baby’s parent having been drinking or taking drugs, before falling asleep with the baby in bed or on a sofa.

Despite a dramatic drop in the rate of cot deaths in the UK since the early 1990s, experts are advising parents to avoid sleeping with their babies in order to help reduce these deaths even further.

Washington, October 14: The number of abortions worldwide has declined in recent years as access to contraception has increased, according to a report released Tuesday by a US think tank that studies sexual and reproductive health.

Abortions declined to 41.6 million in 2003 from 45.5 million in 1995 – a drop to 29 per 1,000 women from 35, the report by the Guttmacher Institute said.

Still the decline in abortions had not greatly affected the number of unsafe abortions performed, which remained relatively flat from 19.9 million to 19.7 million during the period.

Washington, October 14: The number of abortions worldwide has declined in recent years as access to contraception has increased, according to a report released Tuesday by a US think tank that studies sexual and reproductive health.

Abortions declined to 41.6 million in 2003 from 45.5 million in 1995 – a drop to 29 per 1,000 women from 35, the report by the Guttmacher Institute said.

Still the decline in abortions had not greatly affected the number of unsafe abortions performed, which remained relatively flat from 19.9 million to 19.7 million during the period.

New Delhi, October 13: As swine flu cases rise in the national capital, a public school was closed Tuesday after a student tested positive for the flu.
A class 10 student in the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Lodhi Road tested positive for the flu, a health official said.

“The school was shut Tuesday after the student tested positive for the flu. The school has also preponed Diwali leave by a day,” said a school official.

Delhi Tuesday reported 26 new swine flu cases including 18 children. So far, 15 people have died of swine flu in Delhi.

—IANS

Bangalore, October 13: Twentytwo fresh cases of swine flu were reported in Karnataka today where the virus has claimed 110 lives.

Out of the 22 who tested positive, 18 were from Bangalore, two from Bellary, one from Chitradurga and one from Gadag, health officials said.

The total number of confirmed H1N1 cases so far is 1188, they added.

–PTI

Tokyo, October 13: A woman has transmitted cancer to her unborn daughter during pregnancy in the first proven case of the disease being passed from mother to child while in the womb.

The Japanese woman, who was 28 when she gave birth, has since died from medical complications during her treatment for leukaemia, but her daughter, who is now nearly three, is in remission, scientists said yesterday.

Washington, October 13: Much has been made of the health effects of vegetarian diets. Various studies have confirmed that vegetarians enjoy more robust health, especially when it comes to cancer prevention. Researchers have cited many reasons why and I will share with you their diet recommendations as well as their cautioning against being strict vegetarians.

What is a Vegetarian?

New Delhi, October 12: Indians don’t get much advice and information on sex, but they fully enjoy their sex lives, says a survey.

Among the 26 countries that were part of the online Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global survey, Mexicans are the most contented lot.

About 80 percent Mexicans agree that “there is enough advice and information to enjoy one’s sex life to the full”.

On Indians, the survey said Monday: “..It reveals that 82 percent of men and women in India feel they have sufficient information to enjoy their sex lives to the full and are satisfied with their sexual wellbeing.”

Bangalore, October 12: A group of sex workers from across Karnataka came together here Monday to inaugurate Ashodaya Academy, a regional centre on HIV and AIDS to be run by the sex workers themselves to fight the spread of the disease.

The academy is located in Mysore, nearly 150 km from here, and is said to be the first of its kind in the entire Asia Pacific to be run by sex workers for prevention of HIV and AIDS.

The project is a collaboration of Unaids and Ashodaya Samiti, a Mysore-based organisation working for the welfare and health issues of sex workers in Karnataka.

Geneva, October 12: The World Health Organisation plans to start sending H1N1 flu vaccines to poorer countries as early as next month, the United Nations agency’s head of vaccine research said on Monday.

Marie-Paule Kieny said about 100 low- and middle-income nations would receive the vaccines donated by companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi, as well as related supplies such as syringes.

“We are trying to have a first delivery starting in November,” she told journalists in Geneva. “The idea is to start with northern hemisphere countries first.”

New Delhi, October 11: The Delhi government Sunday ordered a probe into the death of 74-year-old Sharda Gaur, who died Saturday when her life support device failed during a power cut in a government hospital.

Gaur was admitted to the Govind Ballabh Pant Hospital in New Delhi area Sep 7. She underwent angioplasty, following which she was kept in the intensive coronar care unit (ICCU). For the past few days she was on ventilator.

Delhi Health Minister Kiran Walia ordered a probe into her death and said that the hospital authorities should ‘own up responsibility’.

New Delhi, October 11: Four swine flu deaths, two in Maharashtra and two in Karnataka, were reported Sunday, taking India’s death toll due to the pandemic to 389, the health ministry said Sunday.

With labaratory conformation of the two deaths in Maharashtra, the western state has reported 160 deaths so far, the highest in the country. The two deaths in Karnataka took the state’s toll to 110.

New Delhi, October 10: Five swine flu deaths in Maharashtra Saturday took India’s death toll due to the pandemic to 385, the health ministry said.
While two people died of influenza A (H1N1), laboratory confirmation for three others came late Saturday. With these, the western state has reported 158 deaths so far, the highest in India.

Also, 122 fresh cases were reported during the day, taking the total number of infections to 11,778. Three of these cases have a foreign travel history and the rest are indigenous cases. India reported its first swine flu case early May in Hyderabad.

New Delhi, October 10: Five Swine flu deaths were reported from Maharashtra, taking the country-wide death toll due to the virus to 385 as 122 new cases were reported today.

Out of the five deaths in Maharashtra, two cases were reported today while three samples sent for testing turned positive, an official spokesperson said here.

Maharashtra reported maximum of 43 cases during the day followed by Delhi (39). The confirmed cases have now risen to 11,778 in the country.

New Delhi, October 10: As many as 20 million Indians are believed to be suffering from mental illnesses, but there are only 3,500 psychiatrists and 1,500 psychiatric nurses to treat them, say experts.

Not only does India lag far behind western countries when it comes to mental health manpower but it also falls short of some Asian countries, they say.

New Delhi, October 10:: Delhi already has the second highest number of swine flu cases in the country after Maharashtra and with the winter approaching, the situation is just going to get worse, say experts.

But government health officials and doctors advise stringent precautionary measures.

Delhi Health Minister Kiran Walia, while acknowledging that the situation will only get worse as the winter comes closer, said all facilities to tackle the flu are in place.

New Delhi, October 10: An India-made oral cholera vaccine meets World Health Organisation (WHO) standards, and has been found by researchers to be highly effective and safe for mass disease prevention use.

The vaccine, manufactured by Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotechnics, is cost-effective and can be used by other nations as well in cholera control programmes, a study published in The Lancet says.

Berlin, October 10: A German woman who is in a persistent vegetative state has given birth to a baby 22 weeks after suffering a heart attack that cut off the blood flow to her brain, doctors in Erlangen said Friday.

The healthy baby was born several months ago, but it was not announced at the time to protect the family’s privacy. The woman is 40 years old.

Supervised pregnancies of brain-damaged women have been controversial ever since the first such birth in the 1980s in the US. There was controversy in 1992 as to whether two similar cases in Germany were ethical.

New Delhi, October 09: Passing AIDS from mother to child is a human rights violation and soon all pregnant women in India will have to undergo a mandatory HIV
test, the parliamentary forum on HIV and AIDS said on Friday.

“We want a HIV free generation. We are for testing all pregnant women for HIV so that no children can be born with the disease,” Oscar Fernandes, head of the Parliamentary Forum on HIV and AIDS, told IANS.