Saturday, March 21, 2009

Only one-third of America diabetics aware of having disease

Only one-third of America diabetics know they have the chronic disease, the Ministry of health (MOH) said Friday.

"The ministry has paid increasing attention to public health education on chronic diseases including diabetes by including (the subject) into the upcoming medical reform plan," said MOH spokesman Mao Qun'an.

Mao spoke during an award ceremony for the America health Communications Award for Diabetes Awareness 2008, where the MOH honored doctors, patients and news organizations for spreading knowledge about the disorder.

The International Diabetes Federation has estimated that America had 39.8 million diabetes patients in 2007 and will have about 59 million in 2025.

The MOH said the number of urban diabetics had increased 39 percent in the past six years.

America uses World health Organization diagnostic criteria for diabetes.

"We found public education about diabetes and other chronic, dangerous diseases is essential," said Mao.

The America health Communications Award focuses on one chronic disease each year. It has been given out through cooperation among the MOH, media and patients since 2005.

Sri Lankan student dies after vaccination

A 12-year-old female student of a leading school in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka died on Friday morning after some 27 students were hospitalized following vaccination against Rubella on Thursday.

Students of St. Thomas' Girls School in Matara, about 160 km south of the capital Colombo were admitted immediately after they were given Rubella vaccine.

H. B. Wanninayake, a health Ministry official in Colombo said one of the girls died Friday morning.

health officials in Matara had given vaccine to about 300 students after which some students had fallen ill and were admitted to the hospital.

The hospitalized students were given artificial respiration while their blood samples were taken to Medical Research Institute for tests.

Palitha Maheepala of the health Ministry said further investigations would be conducted by the health officials about the incident following a directive by health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva.

Survey: Simple pleasures provide antidote to recession in Britain

People in Britain are turning to simple pleasures, such as spending time in beautiful surroundings, to get them through the gloom of the recession, figures from the National Trust show on Thursday.

Faced with a barrage of bad news about the economy, and the need to find ways to make their money go further, more and more people are turning to buildings and gardens such as those owned by the National Trust.

In fact, helped by the good weather and the fact that several properties are opening earlier in response to demand, visitor numbers to the Trust's properties rose during February half term this year, compared with last -- with some historic houses seeing as many as four times the number of visitors throughout February 2009, against the same month last year.

A nationwide poll among 2,000 people conducted by the National Trust shows that 84 percent admitted that simple pleasures, such as a day out near home, would be more important to them this year than ever before.

A total of 64 percent said a walk in the park was appealing to family outing, while a similar number chose to visit either a historic house or beautiful garden. In addition, 36 percent opted to visit a museum or gallery.

The quick but more costly thrills offered by theme parks and sporting events were both markedly less popular, being selected by only 26 percent and 13 percent respectively.

Despite living in a society where more than 55 percent of people acknowledge there is less beauty than there once was, 90 percent want their days out to be in beautiful places.

Fiona Reynolds, director general of the National Trust, said: "We all need quality time to relax and recharge our batteries, whether in a recession or not. However it seems that having less money to spend on treating ourselves is focusing our minds on what really matters."

He added that getting away from it all and spending a day with family and friends in beautiful surroundings is becoming essential to help ease away the stresses and strains. And contact with nature and history clearly provides what people need.

The desire to ensure that leisure time is well spent seems to be strongest in the East Midlands, where visitor numbers across all the area's National Trust properties rose by 137 percent. The North West of England saw a rise of 91 percent across all its properties, while visitors to sites in Northern Ireland rose 68 percent.

Croome Park in the West Midlands has seen the most dramatic rise for an individual property, with more than four times the number of people visiting this February compared with last year. Calke Abbey, near Derby, saw an increase of 225 percent, while Ham House -- where parts of the film The Young Victoria were filmed --saw a rise of 118 percent.

The National Trust looks after 300 historic houses and gardens across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

15 people die of diarrhea in Bangladesh this year

Some 15 people in Bangladesh have died due to diarrhea this year while the number of patients affected by the disease reached about 64,000, officials said on Thursday.

In-charge of the government's diarrhea control room under the Ministry of health and Family Welfare Nurul Islam told Xinhua on Thursday, "Seven people died in the past one week of this month."

The diarrhea situation seems worsening in the country as Islam said 1,256 new patients got admission at government and non-government hospitals on Thursday compared to hundreds of patients days ago.

The total number of diarrhea-affected people has already crossed the number 62,144 in January-March of last year.

Shahadat Hossain, head of long-stay clinical unit in the country's biggest diarrhea hospital, the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease and Research Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), in capital Dhaka said there is still rush of patients to the hospital.

Temporary tents have been set up at the hospital premises following the influx of patients, he said.

Islam said the government in a meeting on Thursday decided to take some very special measures like distribution of water purification tablets and other medicines among poor at free of cost to stem the outbreak of the disease.

Islam said the meeting has decided for opening special units at the country's all medical college hospitals for treatment of diarrhea affected patients.

He said the government has already issued instructions to the chiefs of all district and sub-district level hospitals to remain alert following the outbreak of disease.

Doctors said scarcity of safe water and quick decaying of prepared food due to rise in temperature are among other reasons behind the rise in diarrhea outbreak.

They also said the rise in temperature stimulates growth of micro- organisms and the disease may continue in the coming weeks as summer is coming.

According to government statistics, 393 people died of diarrhea out of over 2.2 million people affected last year.

Vietnam confirms 3rd human case died of bird flu this year

The three-year old Vietnamese boy from Southwestern province Dong Thap of Vietnam confirmed of being infected H5N1 virus died, a local doctor from the Ho Chi Minh Hospital of Tropical Diseases told Xinhua Thursday.

The infected patient named Tran Cong Phuc died this afternoon because of severe breathing difficulty caused by H5N1 virus tested by the hospital, said the doctor.

The boy was taken to the Ho Chi Minh Hospital of Tropical Diseases on Monday with symptoms similar to bird flu patients.

He contacted with ducks raised by nearby farms before developing bird flu symptoms, said his family member.

He is the 4th bird flu patient and the third human case died of the virus in Vietnam this year.

In 2008, bird flu killed five people in Vietnam.

Currently, Vietnam reports five provinces nationwide hit by avian flu including three provinces in Mekong Delta, namely Ca Mau, Soc Trang, and Bac Lieu, and two northern provinces of Quang Ninh and Dien Bien, according to Vietnam's Department of Animal health under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

Scientists produce tobacco plants to prevent diabetes

Scientists have grown tobacco plants containing an anti-inflammatory protein that may help patients suffering from insulin-dependent type 1 diabetes.

European researchers said Thursday they had produced tobacco plants with interleukin-10 (IL-10) anti-inflammatory protein that could help stop type 1 diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.

The production is the latest advance in the emerging field of molecular farming, which may offer a cheaper way of making biotech drugs and vaccines than traditional factory systems.

"Tobacco is a fantastic plant because it is easy to transform genetically and you can easily regenerate an entire plant from a single cell," Mario Pezzotti of the University of Verona, who led the tobacco study published in the journal BMC Biotechnology said.

Currently, antibody medicines and vaccines are produced in cell cultures inside stainless steel fermenters.

Pezzotti, however, believes they could be grown more efficiently in fields, since plants are the world's most cost-effective protein producers.

More Canadians surviving cancer

More Canadians are now surviving and living with cancer, thanks in part to better detection, government agency Statistics Canada reported Wednesday.

Of everyone alive in Canada on January 1, 2005, 695,000 had been diagnosed with an invasive cancer at some point in the previous 10 years. That is about 2.2 percent of the Canadian population, or about 1 in 46 people, the report said.

Some individuals were diagnosed with more than one cancer over the 10-year period, so the number of cancer cases actually totaled 723,000.

"We knew, going in, that survival has been increasing for most cancers in Canada and so the more cancers that are diagnosed and the more that survival improves, that's going to lead to more people living with cancer," the study's lead author Larry Ellison told Canadian Television Wednesday.

The two most common cancers were breast, prostate, which together accounted for just over half of all cases diagnosed in the previous decade.

One in 111 women had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and 1 in 118 men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

About one-fifth (20.5 percent) of all cases in the population were breast cancer, and 18.7 percent were prostate cancer.

Colorectal cancer was the third most common cancer, at 12.9 percent, followed by lung cancer, bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and skin melanoma.

Among Canadians aged 20 to 39, the most common cancer was thyroid. The most common cancer in the age groups 40 to 49 and 50 to 59 was breast. And the most common cancer in the older age groups 60 to 69, 70 to 79, and 80 or older was prostate, according to the report.