Kounteya Sinha, TNN, Nov 15, 2010, 04.19am IST
Article:
NEW DELHI: Acute Respiratory Infections, a disease group that includes pneumonia, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), is causing up to 4.25 million deaths annually.
According to the first-ever ARI Atlas published by the World Lung Foundation on Thursday, ARIs are the third largest cause of mortality in the world and the top killer in low- and middle-income countries like India.
Pneumonia is one of the worst acute respiratory diseases and it alone accounted for 20% of all pediatric deaths around the world, 1.6 million in 2008. India recorded the highest number of deaths due to pneumonia — 3.7 lakh. The death rate due to pneumonia was 215 times higher in low-income countries compared to high-income countries.
Also, 97% of the 156 million new cases of pneumonia each year occur in the developing world.
Lack of trained doctors has been identified as one of the causes. India has just six physicians per 10,000 people while it is eight in Pakistan, 14 in China and six in Sri Lanka.
Interestingly, while acute respiratory diseases are a serious threat, only about 1% ($32 million) of all pharmaceutical research and development funding was spent on acute respiratory diseases in 2007, compared with $1.1 billion spent on HIV-related research.
"Yet, acute respiratory diseases take twice the toll in lives lost. Despite causing 6% of deaths, research efforts attract only 1% of pharmaceutical research funding," according to the ARI Atlas.
World Lung Foundation CEO Peter Baldini says compared to the illness and mortality they cause, ARIs receive a fraction of government, donor agency and philanthropic support.
The goal of the ARI Atlas is to demonstrate in vivid detail the scale of this problem and to kick-start a serious conversation about addressing it.
Read more: Respiratory infections kill 4.25m a year - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Respiratory-infections-kill-425m-a-year/articleshow/6927224.cms#ixzz15VD1dflu
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
2m new TB cases in India last year
Kounteya Sinha, TNN, Nov 15, 2010, 04.21am IST
Article
NEW DELHI: India is saddled with highest burden of tuberculosis — with nearly 2 million new cases recorded in 2009. Out of an estimated 1.3 million people who died of TB in 2008, the nation alone accounted for 2.8 lakh lives.
India's case detection was around 67%, while the estimated number of TB cases that had become multi-drug resistant was 99,000 in 2009.
Even though the TB mortality rate has fallen by 35% since 1990, the disease claimed 1.7 million lives last year — of which 3.8 lakh were women.
According to World Health Organisation's annual report, "Global Tuberculosis Control 2010," around 4,700 die of TB daily. An estimated 9.4 million contracted the disease in 2009 — the same number as the previous year. However, the incidence of TB was stable, or falling in all 22 countries that have the highest burden of the disease except South Africa.
Six million lives are being saved annually as compared to 1995, thanks to improved detection and treatment. "There are still 1.7 million deaths a year from a disease that is perfectly curable in 2010. At this pace, it will take millennia to get rid of TB," said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB unit.
However, "the biggest challenge of all" — as per the WHO — was an estimated 4.4 lakh multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains of TB a year, which are both hard to detect and treat.
"The main issue is in Russia, China and India, where most of the global (MDR) burden lies," said Raviglione. The global detection rate for MDR TB was about 5%.
WHO estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2008 occurred in the Southeast Asia Region, which accounted for 34% of incident cases globally. However, the estimated incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa is nearly twice that of the Southeast Asia Region, which has recorded over 350 cases per 100,000. Among TB patients notified in 2009, an estimated 2.5 lakh had MDR-TB. Of these, slightly more than 30,000 (12%) were diagnosed with MDR-TB and notified.
The four countries that had the largest number of estimated cases of MDR-TB in absolute terms in 2008 were China (100,000), India (99,000), Russia (38,000), and South Africa (13,000). By July 2010, 58 countries had reported at least one case of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).
"India is a country which has seen the most spectacular increase in doing the right things in TB control," Raviglione said, pointing to a shift from sparse detection and treatment a decade ago to nationwide coverage. "In terms of treatment, possibly in the next 2-3 years, we will have for the first time I would say since the 1970s, two or three compounds that are effective against multi-drug resistant TB. So this will give us an extra weapon," Raviglione explained.
It was estimated that in 2009, 3.3% of all new TB cases had MDR-TB. TB is among the three main causes of death among women between 15 and 44 years.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
Article
NEW DELHI: India is saddled with highest burden of tuberculosis — with nearly 2 million new cases recorded in 2009. Out of an estimated 1.3 million people who died of TB in 2008, the nation alone accounted for 2.8 lakh lives.
India's case detection was around 67%, while the estimated number of TB cases that had become multi-drug resistant was 99,000 in 2009.
Even though the TB mortality rate has fallen by 35% since 1990, the disease claimed 1.7 million lives last year — of which 3.8 lakh were women.
According to World Health Organisation's annual report, "Global Tuberculosis Control 2010," around 4,700 die of TB daily. An estimated 9.4 million contracted the disease in 2009 — the same number as the previous year. However, the incidence of TB was stable, or falling in all 22 countries that have the highest burden of the disease except South Africa.
Six million lives are being saved annually as compared to 1995, thanks to improved detection and treatment. "There are still 1.7 million deaths a year from a disease that is perfectly curable in 2010. At this pace, it will take millennia to get rid of TB," said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO's Stop TB unit.
However, "the biggest challenge of all" — as per the WHO — was an estimated 4.4 lakh multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains of TB a year, which are both hard to detect and treat.
"The main issue is in Russia, China and India, where most of the global (MDR) burden lies," said Raviglione. The global detection rate for MDR TB was about 5%.
WHO estimates that the largest number of new TB cases in 2008 occurred in the Southeast Asia Region, which accounted for 34% of incident cases globally. However, the estimated incidence rate in sub-Saharan Africa is nearly twice that of the Southeast Asia Region, which has recorded over 350 cases per 100,000. Among TB patients notified in 2009, an estimated 2.5 lakh had MDR-TB. Of these, slightly more than 30,000 (12%) were diagnosed with MDR-TB and notified.
The four countries that had the largest number of estimated cases of MDR-TB in absolute terms in 2008 were China (100,000), India (99,000), Russia (38,000), and South Africa (13,000). By July 2010, 58 countries had reported at least one case of extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB).
"India is a country which has seen the most spectacular increase in doing the right things in TB control," Raviglione said, pointing to a shift from sparse detection and treatment a decade ago to nationwide coverage. "In terms of treatment, possibly in the next 2-3 years, we will have for the first time I would say since the 1970s, two or three compounds that are effective against multi-drug resistant TB. So this will give us an extra weapon," Raviglione explained.
It was estimated that in 2009, 3.3% of all new TB cases had MDR-TB. TB is among the three main causes of death among women between 15 and 44 years.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
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Life vs death: Lab uses DNA to fight cancer
Malathy Iyer, TNN, Nov 13, 2010, 02.59am IST
Article
MUMBAI: The simplicity of Lab Surgpath's office in Mumbai Central gives no indication of the cutting-edge work being done there. The six i-Macs bunched up in a corner of the largely bare office, however, provide the answer when they are switched on: Hitherto unseen high-definition images of normal and cancer cells start flashing rapidly on the screen.
It's here that a part of the ambitious sequel to the Human Genome project — the sequencing of the complex human DNAs — is being played out. Called the Human Protein Atlas (HPA), the sequel's Mumbai chapter is being handled by surgical pathologist Dr Sanjay Navani and his 10-member team of doctors.
Headquartered in Sweden, the Atlas is envisaged as a natural progression to the Genome project. The effort is to map each protein's behaviour in normal and cancer tissues. Once the proteins and the genes on which they occur are correlated, it would be easier to spot an anomaly that causes a disease. Once the antibody for each protein is known, preparing medications would be easier — a concept gaining popularity through the term 'personalized medicine'.
On November 15, 2010, when the HPA team presents the half-mark of its project in Stockholm — the sequencing of half the human proteome — Lab Surgpath's team of pathologists will also take a bow. They have painstakingly validated and documented the profiles of over 10,000 antibodies that the Swedish team has so far produced.
''The validation is an online exercise, as India has stringent rules governing the transfer of biological samples,'' says Dr Navani, who is among the handful of pathologists in the country practising surgical pathology (the study of human tissues under a microscope) and immunohistochemistry (in which proteins in tissues are detected using antibodies). So, teams in Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm and Uppsala University prepare slides of normal and cancer tissues. They use various antibodies generated within the project to stain the tissue: A dark stain would mean the sample has a particular protein while a lighter one would mean poor concentration of that protein.
At the Lab Surgpath office, pathologists such as Dr Naila Khan and Dr Tushar Patil study the stained samples and grade the antibodies on high-definition computer screens — their efficacy as well as their usefulness in diagnosing a particular form of cancer such as cancer of the ovary, breast or others. ''The HPA has provided us an excellent way to educate ourselves,'' say Dr Khan and Dr Patil.
The team works in batches, and follows a system of counter-checking each other's work. ''So, a sample graded by Dr Naila could be further validated by Dr Patil or an international expert,'' says Dr Navani, who until the start of the project worked with Breach Candy Hospital.
At present, the Human Protein Atlas site (www.proteinatlas.org) hosts 11,274 antibodies and 9,103,793 images. The project leader, Prof Mathias Uhlen, has been quoted in various fora as saying, ''We are trying to map the building blocks of life.'' His colleague, Fredrik Ponten, in an email interview to TOI, points out three stages of work: Preparing antibodies, matching them with the proteins in various tissues, and utilising the information to develop diagnostic tools and therapies.
Why was an Indian team selected for the process? Ponten says, ''Our work can only be evaluated by skilled pathologists who understand the microscopical landscape.
Dr Sanjay Navani was selected, based on his knowledge of surgical pathology and immunohistochemistry, which is fundamental for interpretation of what cells and tissues actually do.''
Dr Navani admits there was scepticism initially. ''The field of immunohistochemistry expertise itself is small in India. Here, we were training pathologists for the first time in the field. Yet, in the first month itself, we more than met the standards and volumes expected of us.'' Ponten concurs: ''The volume of images that are being evaluated every day at the Indian site is unheard of in the rest of the world and, as such, adds to the uniqueness of this successful project.'' More than 8 million images have been evaluated at the Mumbai site — the largest effort made by a single group of surgical pathologists ever.
Incidentally, the Atlas has spawned a rush for research work as well. The Swedish team, on special requests from research scientists in India who work in tandem with Dr Navani, has sent several samples of validated antibodies. ''Such research in India is very expensive, but the Atlas team has been generous enough to share its samples with Indian students and researchers,'' Dr Navani adds
Read more: Life vs death: Lab uses DNA to fight cancer - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Life-vs-death-Lab-uses-DNA-to-fight-cancer/articleshow/6916940.cms#ixzz15AlnV3vz
Article
MUMBAI: The simplicity of Lab Surgpath's office in Mumbai Central gives no indication of the cutting-edge work being done there. The six i-Macs bunched up in a corner of the largely bare office, however, provide the answer when they are switched on: Hitherto unseen high-definition images of normal and cancer cells start flashing rapidly on the screen.
It's here that a part of the ambitious sequel to the Human Genome project — the sequencing of the complex human DNAs — is being played out. Called the Human Protein Atlas (HPA), the sequel's Mumbai chapter is being handled by surgical pathologist Dr Sanjay Navani and his 10-member team of doctors.
Headquartered in Sweden, the Atlas is envisaged as a natural progression to the Genome project. The effort is to map each protein's behaviour in normal and cancer tissues. Once the proteins and the genes on which they occur are correlated, it would be easier to spot an anomaly that causes a disease. Once the antibody for each protein is known, preparing medications would be easier — a concept gaining popularity through the term 'personalized medicine'.
On November 15, 2010, when the HPA team presents the half-mark of its project in Stockholm — the sequencing of half the human proteome — Lab Surgpath's team of pathologists will also take a bow. They have painstakingly validated and documented the profiles of over 10,000 antibodies that the Swedish team has so far produced.
''The validation is an online exercise, as India has stringent rules governing the transfer of biological samples,'' says Dr Navani, who is among the handful of pathologists in the country practising surgical pathology (the study of human tissues under a microscope) and immunohistochemistry (in which proteins in tissues are detected using antibodies). So, teams in Stockholm's Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm and Uppsala University prepare slides of normal and cancer tissues. They use various antibodies generated within the project to stain the tissue: A dark stain would mean the sample has a particular protein while a lighter one would mean poor concentration of that protein.
At the Lab Surgpath office, pathologists such as Dr Naila Khan and Dr Tushar Patil study the stained samples and grade the antibodies on high-definition computer screens — their efficacy as well as their usefulness in diagnosing a particular form of cancer such as cancer of the ovary, breast or others. ''The HPA has provided us an excellent way to educate ourselves,'' say Dr Khan and Dr Patil.
The team works in batches, and follows a system of counter-checking each other's work. ''So, a sample graded by Dr Naila could be further validated by Dr Patil or an international expert,'' says Dr Navani, who until the start of the project worked with Breach Candy Hospital.
At present, the Human Protein Atlas site (www.proteinatlas.org) hosts 11,274 antibodies and 9,103,793 images. The project leader, Prof Mathias Uhlen, has been quoted in various fora as saying, ''We are trying to map the building blocks of life.'' His colleague, Fredrik Ponten, in an email interview to TOI, points out three stages of work: Preparing antibodies, matching them with the proteins in various tissues, and utilising the information to develop diagnostic tools and therapies.
Why was an Indian team selected for the process? Ponten says, ''Our work can only be evaluated by skilled pathologists who understand the microscopical landscape.
Dr Sanjay Navani was selected, based on his knowledge of surgical pathology and immunohistochemistry, which is fundamental for interpretation of what cells and tissues actually do.''
Dr Navani admits there was scepticism initially. ''The field of immunohistochemistry expertise itself is small in India. Here, we were training pathologists for the first time in the field. Yet, in the first month itself, we more than met the standards and volumes expected of us.'' Ponten concurs: ''The volume of images that are being evaluated every day at the Indian site is unheard of in the rest of the world and, as such, adds to the uniqueness of this successful project.'' More than 8 million images have been evaluated at the Mumbai site — the largest effort made by a single group of surgical pathologists ever.
Incidentally, the Atlas has spawned a rush for research work as well. The Swedish team, on special requests from research scientists in India who work in tandem with Dr Navani, has sent several samples of validated antibodies. ''Such research in India is very expensive, but the Atlas team has been generous enough to share its samples with Indian students and researchers,'' Dr Navani adds
Read more: Life vs death: Lab uses DNA to fight cancer - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Life-vs-death-Lab-uses-DNA-to-fight-cancer/articleshow/6916940.cms#ixzz15AlnV3vz
23 lakh kids aged below 5 died in one year in India
Kounteya Sinha, TNN, Nov 13, 2010, 02.49am IST
Article
Tags: NEW DELHI: Around 23 lakh children, aged 1-59 months, died in India in 2005 alone. Of these, more than 60% were from five causes — pneumonia, prematurity and low birthweight, diarrhoeal diseases, neonatal infections and birth asphyxia and birth trauma. Two causes accounted for 50% (6.7 lakh) of all deaths at 1-59 months —pneumonia 3.7 lakhs and diarrhoeal diseases 3 lakhs. This has been revealed in a study by the Registrar General of India published in British medical journal " The Lancet" on Saturday morning.
According to its authors, each of the major causes of neonatal deaths can be prevented or treated with known, highly effective and widely practicable interventions, raising concerns that the neonatal death rate in India is not falling fast enough.
The study says that in children aged 1-59 months, girls in central India had a five times higher mortality rate (per 1000 livebirths) from pneumonia than did boys in south India and four times higher mortality rate from diarrhoeal diseases than did boys in west India.
The study makes another vital observation — social preference for boys probably affects survival for girls. States with higher mortality rates in girls than in boys aged 1-59 months were also those with lower female-to-male sex ratio for second births after a boy (a measure of selective abortion of girls).
This finding also implies that less frequent use of health services by girls than by boys occurs in the same states in which selective abortion of female fetuses is common. Professor Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research in Toronto and one of the study's lead authors, says the yearly child mortality rates in India have fallen between 1.77% and 2.73% in the past two decades.
Despite this decrease, the United Nations estimates that about 23.5 lakh children died in India in 2005 — 20% of all deaths in children younger than 5 years worldwide, more than in any other country. Prof Jha said, "Large differences in overall child survival between India's diverse regions have been previously documented. However, no direct measurement of the major causes of death in neonates (less than one month) and at ages 1-59 months has been done and how these causes of death vary across India's regions is unknown."
Read more: 23 lakh kids aged below 5 died in one year in India - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/23-lakh-kids-aged-below-5-died-in-one-year-in-India/articleshow/6916912.cms#ixzz15AkiTYxE
Article
Tags: NEW DELHI: Around 23 lakh children, aged 1-59 months, died in India in 2005 alone. Of these, more than 60% were from five causes — pneumonia, prematurity and low birthweight, diarrhoeal diseases, neonatal infections and birth asphyxia and birth trauma. Two causes accounted for 50% (6.7 lakh) of all deaths at 1-59 months —pneumonia 3.7 lakhs and diarrhoeal diseases 3 lakhs. This has been revealed in a study by the Registrar General of India published in British medical journal " The Lancet" on Saturday morning.
According to its authors, each of the major causes of neonatal deaths can be prevented or treated with known, highly effective and widely practicable interventions, raising concerns that the neonatal death rate in India is not falling fast enough.
The study says that in children aged 1-59 months, girls in central India had a five times higher mortality rate (per 1000 livebirths) from pneumonia than did boys in south India and four times higher mortality rate from diarrhoeal diseases than did boys in west India.
The study makes another vital observation — social preference for boys probably affects survival for girls. States with higher mortality rates in girls than in boys aged 1-59 months were also those with lower female-to-male sex ratio for second births after a boy (a measure of selective abortion of girls).
This finding also implies that less frequent use of health services by girls than by boys occurs in the same states in which selective abortion of female fetuses is common. Professor Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research in Toronto and one of the study's lead authors, says the yearly child mortality rates in India have fallen between 1.77% and 2.73% in the past two decades.
Despite this decrease, the United Nations estimates that about 23.5 lakh children died in India in 2005 — 20% of all deaths in children younger than 5 years worldwide, more than in any other country. Prof Jha said, "Large differences in overall child survival between India's diverse regions have been previously documented. However, no direct measurement of the major causes of death in neonates (less than one month) and at ages 1-59 months has been done and how these causes of death vary across India's regions is unknown."
Read more: 23 lakh kids aged below 5 died in one year in India - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/23-lakh-kids-aged-below-5-died-in-one-year-in-India/articleshow/6916912.cms#ixzz15AkiTYxE
All HIV patients to get second-line treatment free
Kounteya Sinha & Dhananjay Mahapatra, TNN, Nov 13, 2010, 02.48am IST
NEW DELHI: All HIV patients put on first line antiretroviral therapy (ART) before 2004 but who became resistant to those drugs will now receive the life saving second line treatment free of cost from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
This is irrespective of whether the patients were receiving first line ART in a government centre or a private hospital. This major policy shift was finalised by NACO on Thursday night.
Till now, NACO only provided second line treatment to those HIV patients who were part of its ART centres and had become resistant to first line drugs. Those patients on first line treatment in private hospitals or clinics were not eligible.
Second line treatment is tremendously expensive and not affordable for the common man. Also, it was only available in NACO's ART centres. So, patients who did not get first line treatment in NACO's ART centres perished if they became resistant.
Solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam informed a Supreme Court Bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia, Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar that the health ministry took this decision on Friday. He informed the SC that details of the decision would be intimated through an affidavit in two weeks.
So what happens to those who were put on first line ART post-2004 but have become resistant to first line drugs? Expert committees in the 10 centres of excellence presently in charge of giving second line treatment will take a call.
ART is the only known treatment that inhibits HIV. The drugs slow down the replication of HIV and immune deterioration is delayed leading to an improvement in the survival and quality of life.
While first line drugs cost NACO Rs 5,000 per patient per year, second line cost them Rs 35,000 per patient per year. Patients, however, get the treatment free of charge.
India is home to an estimated 2.3 million HIV patients of which 6 lakh would require to be on ART. At present, 3.55 lakh HIV patients are receiving first line treatment in 285 NACO ART centres.
Ten centres have rolled out second line ART to 1,701 HIV patients. Five more centres in Nagpur, Pune, Salem, Aurangabad and Surat have been trained to start second line ART while two centres in Vijayawada and Hubli are being prepared.
India rolled out second line ART for the first time on December 1, 2008 in Mumbai's J J Hospital and Chennai's Tambaram ART centre.
Resistance to first line treatment mainly happens because of poor adherence to the treatment regimen. If not put on second line immediately, most of these patients die within a few years.
A CD-4 count test is used to gauge immunity levels of an HIV-infected patient and to assess whether damage caused by the virus requires life-saving ART. The CD-4 count in healthy adults ranges from 500 to 1,500 cells per cubic millimetre of blood. In HIV infected people, it goes down by 60 cells per cubic millimetre of blood per year as HIV progresses. ART is administered when an HIV positive person registers a CD-4 count under 200.
Read more: All HIV patients to get second-line treatment free - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/All-HIV-patients-to-get-second-line-treatment-free/articleshow/6915022.cms#ixzz15AjZ6V00
NEW DELHI: All HIV patients put on first line antiretroviral therapy (ART) before 2004 but who became resistant to those drugs will now receive the life saving second line treatment free of cost from the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO).
This is irrespective of whether the patients were receiving first line ART in a government centre or a private hospital. This major policy shift was finalised by NACO on Thursday night.
Till now, NACO only provided second line treatment to those HIV patients who were part of its ART centres and had become resistant to first line drugs. Those patients on first line treatment in private hospitals or clinics were not eligible.
Second line treatment is tremendously expensive and not affordable for the common man. Also, it was only available in NACO's ART centres. So, patients who did not get first line treatment in NACO's ART centres perished if they became resistant.
Solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam informed a Supreme Court Bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia, Justices K S Radhakrishnan and Swatanter Kumar that the health ministry took this decision on Friday. He informed the SC that details of the decision would be intimated through an affidavit in two weeks.
So what happens to those who were put on first line ART post-2004 but have become resistant to first line drugs? Expert committees in the 10 centres of excellence presently in charge of giving second line treatment will take a call.
ART is the only known treatment that inhibits HIV. The drugs slow down the replication of HIV and immune deterioration is delayed leading to an improvement in the survival and quality of life.
While first line drugs cost NACO Rs 5,000 per patient per year, second line cost them Rs 35,000 per patient per year. Patients, however, get the treatment free of charge.
India is home to an estimated 2.3 million HIV patients of which 6 lakh would require to be on ART. At present, 3.55 lakh HIV patients are receiving first line treatment in 285 NACO ART centres.
Ten centres have rolled out second line ART to 1,701 HIV patients. Five more centres in Nagpur, Pune, Salem, Aurangabad and Surat have been trained to start second line ART while two centres in Vijayawada and Hubli are being prepared.
India rolled out second line ART for the first time on December 1, 2008 in Mumbai's J J Hospital and Chennai's Tambaram ART centre.
Resistance to first line treatment mainly happens because of poor adherence to the treatment regimen. If not put on second line immediately, most of these patients die within a few years.
A CD-4 count test is used to gauge immunity levels of an HIV-infected patient and to assess whether damage caused by the virus requires life-saving ART. The CD-4 count in healthy adults ranges from 500 to 1,500 cells per cubic millimetre of blood. In HIV infected people, it goes down by 60 cells per cubic millimetre of blood per year as HIV progresses. ART is administered when an HIV positive person registers a CD-4 count under 200.
Read more: All HIV patients to get second-line treatment free - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/All-HIV-patients-to-get-second-line-treatment-free/articleshow/6915022.cms#ixzz15AjZ6V00
India in grip of obesity epidemic
NEW DELHI: India is now in the grip of an obesity epidemic and the trend needs to be immediately arrested by taxing junk food, restricting food ads and making food labelling clearer, according to a study.
The study that looked at the burden of overweight citizens in six countries -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa -- has found that between 1998 and 2005, India's overweight rates increased by 20%.
Currently, almost 1 in 5 men and over 1 in 6 women are overweight. In some urban areas, the rates are as high as 40%.
Published in the Lancet on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the study warns that low-income countries cannot cope with the health consequences of wide scale obesity.
When compared to the other five countries, the percentage of adult women and men who are overweight in India was found to be lowest -- 14% and 18%, respectively. In comparison, 23% women and 32% men are overweight in China.
"However in absolute numbers, the burden would be mammoth in India and China," experts said.
According to estimates in the study, the annual cost of broad-based prevention strategies tackling obesity and other health threats, such as alcohol consumption, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol, would be less than $2 per person per year in India and China, less than $3 per head in Brazil and around $4 per person in South Africa, Russia and Mexico.
Upto 4,42,000 life years could be gained through a combination of prevention programmes in India every year. The cost-effectiveness ratio of a prevention strategy would be $268 per life year gained in good health in India and $380 in China, the study said.
OECD lead author Michele Cecchini said, "The results varied across countries surveyed. Seven in 10 Mexican adults are overweight or obese, while nearly half of all Brazilians, Russians and South Africans are also in this category. China and India report lower levels of obesity, but are also rapidly moving in the wrong direction. Low- and middle-income countries have far fewer health care resources to deal with the consequences of obesity, which include higher rates of cardiac disease, cancer and diabetes."
Obesity is the root for several non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Another study in the Lancet on Thursday predicts that by 2030, nearly 70% of all global deaths will be from non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, and respiratory and heart disease. Of these 70% of deaths, 80% will be in the less wealthy nations like India.
According to WHO, NCDs -- principally cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases -- caused an estimated 35 million deaths in 2005. This figure represents 60% of all deaths globally, with 80% of deaths due to noncommunicable diseases occurring in low- and middle-income countries, and approximately 16 million deaths involving people under 70 years of age.
The total deaths from NCDs are projected to increase by a further 17% over the next 10 years. The greatest increase will be seen in the African region (27%) and the Eastern Mediterranean region (25%). The highest absolute number of deaths will occur in South-East Asia.
Up to 80% of heart disease, stroke and type-2 diabetes and over a third of cancers can be prevented by eliminating shared risk factors, mainly tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol.
Read more: 'India in grip of obesity epidemic' - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-in-grip-of-obesity-epidemic/
The study that looked at the burden of overweight citizens in six countries -- Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa -- has found that between 1998 and 2005, India's overweight rates increased by 20%.
Currently, almost 1 in 5 men and over 1 in 6 women are overweight. In some urban areas, the rates are as high as 40%.
Published in the Lancet on Thursday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the study warns that low-income countries cannot cope with the health consequences of wide scale obesity.
When compared to the other five countries, the percentage of adult women and men who are overweight in India was found to be lowest -- 14% and 18%, respectively. In comparison, 23% women and 32% men are overweight in China.
"However in absolute numbers, the burden would be mammoth in India and China," experts said.
According to estimates in the study, the annual cost of broad-based prevention strategies tackling obesity and other health threats, such as alcohol consumption, smoking, high blood pressure and cholesterol, would be less than $2 per person per year in India and China, less than $3 per head in Brazil and around $4 per person in South Africa, Russia and Mexico.
Upto 4,42,000 life years could be gained through a combination of prevention programmes in India every year. The cost-effectiveness ratio of a prevention strategy would be $268 per life year gained in good health in India and $380 in China, the study said.
OECD lead author Michele Cecchini said, "The results varied across countries surveyed. Seven in 10 Mexican adults are overweight or obese, while nearly half of all Brazilians, Russians and South Africans are also in this category. China and India report lower levels of obesity, but are also rapidly moving in the wrong direction. Low- and middle-income countries have far fewer health care resources to deal with the consequences of obesity, which include higher rates of cardiac disease, cancer and diabetes."
Obesity is the root for several non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Another study in the Lancet on Thursday predicts that by 2030, nearly 70% of all global deaths will be from non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, and respiratory and heart disease. Of these 70% of deaths, 80% will be in the less wealthy nations like India.
According to WHO, NCDs -- principally cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancers and chronic respiratory diseases -- caused an estimated 35 million deaths in 2005. This figure represents 60% of all deaths globally, with 80% of deaths due to noncommunicable diseases occurring in low- and middle-income countries, and approximately 16 million deaths involving people under 70 years of age.
The total deaths from NCDs are projected to increase by a further 17% over the next 10 years. The greatest increase will be seen in the African region (27%) and the Eastern Mediterranean region (25%). The highest absolute number of deaths will occur in South-East Asia.
Up to 80% of heart disease, stroke and type-2 diabetes and over a third of cancers can be prevented by eliminating shared risk factors, mainly tobacco use, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol.
Read more: 'India in grip of obesity epidemic' - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-in-grip-of-obesity-epidemic/
Friday, November 12, 2010
eGovernance Standards Portal
The Government of India has launched the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) with the intent to support the growth of e-governance within the country. The Plan envisages creation of right environments to implement G2G,G2B,G2E and G2C services.
To ensure Interoperability among e-Governance applications, Government of India has setup an Institutional mechanism for formulation of Standards through collaborative efforts of stakeholders like Department of Information Technology(DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Standardization Testing and Quality Certification( STQC), other Government departments, Academia, Technology Experts, Domain Experts, Industry, BIS, NGOs etc. In this process there is a provision of formal Public review also.
The e-Governance Standards portal ( http://egovstandards.gov.in )
To ensure Interoperability among e-Governance applications, Government of India has setup an Institutional mechanism for formulation of Standards through collaborative efforts of stakeholders like Department of Information Technology(DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Standardization Testing and Quality Certification( STQC), other Government departments, Academia, Technology Experts, Domain Experts, Industry, BIS, NGOs etc. In this process there is a provision of formal Public review also.
The e-Governance Standards portal ( http://egovstandards.gov.in )
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
JJ hospital to start an e-library
Pratibha Masand, TNN, Nov 9, 2010, 06.27am IST
MUMBAI: All the latest medical information will now be just a click away for doctors and doctors-to-be at the JJ Hospital and Medical College as the hospital is setting up a first of its kind e-library, which will start functioning within a month.
The government has given the college permission to start the e-library in an unused computer training centre on the hospital premises. "The library will have around 2,000 medical journals for under-graduate, post-graduate and nursing students to look through. This will help them with research and in making dissertations. Also, the library will be accessible to professors, associate professors and lecturers," said Dr T P Lahane, dean of JJ Hospital.
There are 25 computers in the training centre and around 450 computers have been assigned to doctors, which will be connected to the library.
Earlier, the hospital would subscribe to a few journals, which would take a long time to arrive. The new e-library is going to make life more easy for students. "Right now, we have to manually search the library for information on topics for a project. It takes time and often, it doesn't work. The e-library will allow us to get information within seconds," said a final-year MBBS student in JJ.
According to doctors, the library is going to be a useful tool for everyone in the hospital. "Doctors like to read about latest developments in their fields. We also try to include new practices in our treatments, which we read about in foreign journals," said a senior doctor from the hospital.
SOURCE: Times of India
MUMBAI: All the latest medical information will now be just a click away for doctors and doctors-to-be at the JJ Hospital and Medical College as the hospital is setting up a first of its kind e-library, which will start functioning within a month.
The government has given the college permission to start the e-library in an unused computer training centre on the hospital premises. "The library will have around 2,000 medical journals for under-graduate, post-graduate and nursing students to look through. This will help them with research and in making dissertations. Also, the library will be accessible to professors, associate professors and lecturers," said Dr T P Lahane, dean of JJ Hospital.
There are 25 computers in the training centre and around 450 computers have been assigned to doctors, which will be connected to the library.
Earlier, the hospital would subscribe to a few journals, which would take a long time to arrive. The new e-library is going to make life more easy for students. "Right now, we have to manually search the library for information on topics for a project. It takes time and often, it doesn't work. The e-library will allow us to get information within seconds," said a final-year MBBS student in JJ.
According to doctors, the library is going to be a useful tool for everyone in the hospital. "Doctors like to read about latest developments in their fields. We also try to include new practices in our treatments, which we read about in foreign journals," said a senior doctor from the hospital.
SOURCE: Times of India
HEALTH EDUCATION LIBRARY FOR PEOPLE (HELP)
Patient education is an integral part of health care delivery across medical centers in developed countries thus encouraging active patient participation and ensuring far better compliance and patient satisfaction.
It was this very dream that inspired Dr. Aniruddha and Dr. Anjali Malpani, who founded HELP in 1997, with a dream to make each and every individual in this country aware of his rights and responsibilities as a patient, of ways people could reduce the burden of health care expenses by planning and educating themselves "before" a serious medical problem could strike their family, and how doctors and patients could join hands to achieve health for all.
What started as a resource center eleven years back, with a modest collection of material on patient education, in their day care center at Om Chambers, has grown into India's only largest patient education center housing more than 11,000 authentic books on possibly every aspect of health and diseases, along with pamphlets, health care magazines, and an exhaustive audiovisual section too.
HELP was also documented to be the world's largest Free library on consumer health information in the Limca book of records. State of the art infertility specialists to the world, Founders and visionaries for HELP, our Medical Directors have paved the path for the new "patient-centric health care"revolution in India.
SOURCE:http://www.healthlibrary.com/
It was this very dream that inspired Dr. Aniruddha and Dr. Anjali Malpani, who founded HELP in 1997, with a dream to make each and every individual in this country aware of his rights and responsibilities as a patient, of ways people could reduce the burden of health care expenses by planning and educating themselves "before" a serious medical problem could strike their family, and how doctors and patients could join hands to achieve health for all.
What started as a resource center eleven years back, with a modest collection of material on patient education, in their day care center at Om Chambers, has grown into India's only largest patient education center housing more than 11,000 authentic books on possibly every aspect of health and diseases, along with pamphlets, health care magazines, and an exhaustive audiovisual section too.
HELP was also documented to be the world's largest Free library on consumer health information in the Limca book of records. State of the art infertility specialists to the world, Founders and visionaries for HELP, our Medical Directors have paved the path for the new "patient-centric health care"revolution in India.
SOURCE:http://www.healthlibrary.com/
OLDMEDLINE is Another Year Older with the Addition of the 1946 CLML Citations.
November 01, 2010 [posted]
OLDMEDLINE is Another Year Older with the Addition of the 1946 CLML Citations
More historical journal citations are now in MEDLINE®/PubMed® with the addition of over 48,000 citations from the 1946 Current List of Medical Literature (CLML). The National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) has been converting information from older print indexes that were the precursors to Index Medicus. When the original MEDLINE database made its debut in 1971, it contained citations to journal articles published from approximately 1966 forward. The 1946 CLML represents the 20th year going back in time to enhance access to the older biomedical literature. With the addition of the 1946 CLML citations, the OLDMEDLINE subset contains over two million citations.
NLM also continues the work of mapping the original keywords assigned to these older references so that current MeSH® terms (Medical Subject Headings) are added to the records and available for searching in PubMed.
Additional information about the OLDMEDLINE data project is available.
Source: NLM Tech Bull. 2010 Nov-Dec;(377):e1.
OLDMEDLINE is Another Year Older with the Addition of the 1946 CLML Citations
More historical journal citations are now in MEDLINE®/PubMed® with the addition of over 48,000 citations from the 1946 Current List of Medical Literature (CLML). The National Library of Medicine® (NLM®) has been converting information from older print indexes that were the precursors to Index Medicus. When the original MEDLINE database made its debut in 1971, it contained citations to journal articles published from approximately 1966 forward. The 1946 CLML represents the 20th year going back in time to enhance access to the older biomedical literature. With the addition of the 1946 CLML citations, the OLDMEDLINE subset contains over two million citations.
NLM also continues the work of mapping the original keywords assigned to these older references so that current MeSH® terms (Medical Subject Headings) are added to the records and available for searching in PubMed.
Additional information about the OLDMEDLINE data project is available.
Source: NLM Tech Bull. 2010 Nov-Dec;(377):e1.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Asia’s premier health portal
Medindia.com (or .net) is Asia’s premier health portal providing a range of services to both healthcare consumers and the medical professionals. Medindia has a net presence of seven years and was started as a social mission to provide the consumers with essential health related information in simple language. Over the years it has evolved into Asian regions most comprehensive portal in the health sector in terms of content, viewer ship, technology leadership and domain expertise.
The portal is headed by eminent doctors with a team of editors, programmers and designers. The site recommends registration to fully utilize its services that are all free. The popular areas include electronic medical records, Health Info, Calculators and Interactives. Doctors, hospital administrators and conference organizers are able to create free online homepages without technology/internet expertise. The search directories have over 200,000 entries of Doctors, Dentists, Hospitals, Medical colleges, Chemists, Surgical suppliers and Pharmaceuticals from all over India.
Source:http://www.medindia.net/
The portal is headed by eminent doctors with a team of editors, programmers and designers. The site recommends registration to fully utilize its services that are all free. The popular areas include electronic medical records, Health Info, Calculators and Interactives. Doctors, hospital administrators and conference organizers are able to create free online homepages without technology/internet expertise. The search directories have over 200,000 entries of Doctors, Dentists, Hospitals, Medical colleges, Chemists, Surgical suppliers and Pharmaceuticals from all over India.
Source:http://www.medindia.net/
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