By: Monica Gupta,
on 7/2/2016
आरओ पानी – एक सच्चाई सुन रहा है ना तू क्यो R.O. रहा हूं मैं घर पर एक जानकार आई हुई थी. उन्होनें अपना नया घर बनवाया है. बातों बातों में उन्होनें पूछा कि आपने कौन सा R.O. लगवाया है. मैने मना किया क्योकि मेरा आर ओ के प्रति मन नही बन रहा था. कारण था […]
The post आरओ पानी – एक सच्चाई appeared first on Monica Gupta.
Add a Comment
By: Clare Hanson,
on 1/17/2016
After the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, hardly anyone contests that the World Health Organization (WHO) made fatal mistakes during the crisis. It reacted too late and did too little to contain the outbreak before it got out of control. And it once again exposed its deeply entrenched dysfunctions that make it so difficult for the organization to live up to its role as the central standard setter, coordinator and crisis manager in global health
The post The exception should become the rule in the World Health Organization appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Lizzie Furey,
on 11/9/2015
Two studies published this year yield conflicting results on whether fortifying flour with essential vitamins and minerals improves anemia prevalence. One study published in the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) showed that each year of flour fortification was associated with a 2.4% decrease in anemia prevalence among non-pregnant women.
The post Can flour fortification programs reduce anemia? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: JulieF,
on 10/26/2015
It is every human being’s right to enjoy a state of complete mental, physical, and social well being on this planet. However, health is also a right that is unequally distributed throughout the world due to lack of access to proper healthcare facilities and professionals, lack of sanitation, feeble vaccination delivery systems, and treatment-oriented healthcare systems rather than preventative systems.
The post Why global health matters appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Catherine Fehre,
on 11/21/2014
Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity around the world. With the announcement of vape as our Word of the Year, we have put together a timeline of the history of e-cigarettes.
1963
Herbert A. Gilbert patents a non-tobacco cigarette that heats a nicotine solution and produced steam, but it is never manufactured.
1979
Dr. Norman Jacobson, one of the pioneers of the word “vaping,” develops the Favor cigarette, a way to inhale nicotine with no smoke.
2003
Chinese pharmacist Hon Lik first develops an electronic alternative to traditional cigarettes.
2004
The first e-cigarettes, a Chinese invention, comes from the Ruyan company.
2007
E-cigarettes enter the US market.
February 2012
Nicotine and Tobacco Research publishes a study, entitled “Electronic Cigarettes: Effective Nicotine Delivery After Acute Administration,” which explores nicotine intake with different electronic cigarette devices.
June 2013
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency will regulate e-cigarettes as medicines from 2016 when new European tobacco laws come into force.
December 2013
Nicotine and Tobacco Research publishes a study, entitled “Secondhand Exposure to Vapors From Electronic Cigarettes.” It reveals that “using an e-cigarette in indoor environments may involuntarily expose non-users to nicotine, but not to toxic tobacco-specific combustion products.”
December 2013
“World leading tobacco experts argue that a recently published World Health Organization (WHO)-commissioned review of evidence on e-cigarettes contains important errors, misinterpretations, and misrepresentations, putting policy-makers and the public in danger of foregoing the potential public health benefits of e-cigarettes.”
September 2013
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) urges the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “issue a rule to regulate all tobacco products, including cigars, little cigars, e-cigarettes and others.”
15 January 2014
The Chicago City Council voted to regulate electronic cigarettes the same as traditional cigarettes, which “prohibits the use of e-cigarettes in public places, requires stores selling them to keep them behind the counter, and prohibits their sale to minors.”
26 January 2014
The UK bans e-cigarettes for people under 18.
February 2014
The European Parliament approves regulations on e-cigarettes. “Beginning in mid-2016, advertising for e-cigarettes would be banned in the 28 nations of the European Union, as it already is for ordinary tobacco products. E-cigarettes would also be required to carry graphic health warnings and must be childproof. The amount of nicotine would be limited to 20 milligrams per milliliter, similar to ordinary cigarettes.”
March 2014
Journal of Psychiatric Research reports on e-cigarette use within different age groups and finds that “a notable proportion of adolescents and young adults who never smoked cigarettes had ever-used e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use was not consistently associated with attempting to quit tobacco among young adults. Adults most often reported e-cigarettes as a substitute for tobacco, although not always to quit. Reviewed studies showed a somewhat different pattern of e-cigarette use among young people (new e-cigarette users who had never used tobacco) versus adults (former or current tobacco users).”
14 April 2014
A US congressional report surveys the marketing tactics of e-cigarette companies, which directs sales towards youth, and calls on the FDA to set regulations for e-cigarette marketing.
24 April 2014
The FDA proposes regulations on e-cigarettes, which gives them authority over e-cigarettes and expands its’ authority over tobacco products. The AAP still urges the FDA to protect young people from the effects of e-cigarettes.
April 2014
A proposal from the FDA requires e-cigarettes to “undergo an agency review,” which would ban e-cigarette sales to minors and require e-cigarettes to have warning labels.
April 2014
The AAP releases a statement on the dangers of e-cigarette poisoning in children.
4 May 2014
The AAP surveyed a random sample of adults, and according to the research presented, “the vast majority of young adults who have used the devices believe they are less harmful than regular cigarettes…”
12 May 2014
Tobacco Control BMJ releases a study on e-cigarette use and individuals with mental health conditions.
May 2014
A study for Nicotine and Tobacco Research finds that the vapors from e-cigarettes contain “toxic and carcinogenic carbonyl compounds,” and the amount of formaldehyde in the vapors is similar to the amount reported in tobacco smoke.
2 June 2014
A study titled “Exposure to Electronic Cigarette Television Advertisements Among Youth and Young Adults”, found that “exposure of young people ages 12 to 17 to e-cigarette ads on TV increased 256% from 2011 to 2013. Young adult (ages 18 to 24) exposure increased 321% over the same period.”
25 June 2014
The White House alters the wording of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tobacco regulations, allowing the online sale of e-cigarettes.
26 June 2014
The British Medical Association (BMA) calls to ban e-cigarette use in public. Doctors and medical students decide that e-cigarettes may lead to nicotine addiction.
July 2014
The BBC bans the use of e-cigarettes in all its offices and studios.
August 2014
A study from Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “there is a risk of thirdhand exposure to nicotine from e-cigarettes,” although the exposure levels differ depending on the brand of the devices used.
August 2014
A study from Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “in 2013, over a quarter million never-smoking youth had used e-cigarettes. E-cigarette use was associated with increased intentions to smoke cigarettes.”
24 August 2014
The American Heart Association (AHA) calls on the FDA for more research on e-cigarettes, to apply the same regulations on e-cigarettes as tobacco and nicotine products, and to create new regulations to prevent access, sale, and marketing to youth.
26 August 2014
A World Health Organization (WHO) report states that e-cigarettes need regulation to “impede e-cigarette promotion to non-smokers and young people; minimize potential health risks to e-cigarette users and nonusers; prohibit unproven health claims about e-cigarettes; and protect existing tobacco control efforts from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.”
The WHO reports that “governments should ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and outlaw tactics to lure young users.”
4 September 2014
The New England Journal of Medicine’s findings state that “like conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes may function as a ‘gateway drug’ that can prime the brain to be more receptive to harder drugs.”
October 2014
A study for Nicotine and Tobacco Research states that “over 75% of US adults reported uncertainty or disapproval of the use of e-cigarettes in smoke-free areas. Current cigarette smokers, adults aware or have ever used e-cigarettes were more supportive to exempting e-cigarettes from smoking restrictions.”
Headline image credit: Vaping an electronic cigarette by Jon Williams. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.
The post A brief history of the e-cigarette appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 8/5/2014
The Ebola outbreak affecting Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and now Liberia is the worst since this disease was first discovered more than 30 years back. Between 1976 and 2013 there were less than 1,000 known infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC), March to 23 July 2014 saw 1201 likely cases and 672 deaths. The ongoing situation for these four West African countries is extremely dangerous, and there are fears that it could spread more widely in Africa. The relatively few intensive care units are being overwhelmed and the infection rate is likely being exacerbated by the fact that some who become ill are, on hearing that there is no specific treatment, electing to die at home surrounded by their family. The big danger is that very sick patients bleed, and body fluids and blood are extremely infectious.
American Patrick Sawyer, who was caring for his ill sister in Nigeria, has died of the disease. Working with the Christian AID Agency Samaritan’s Pulse in Monrovia, Dr Kent Brantly from Texas and Nancy Writebol from North Carolina are thought to have been infected following contact with a local staff member. Both are symptomatic but stable as I write this (July 31).
Ebola cases are classically handled by isolation, providing basic fluid support, and “barrier nursing”. Ideally, that means doctors and nurses wear disposable gowns, quality facemasks, eye protection and (double) latex gloves. That’s why it is so dangerous for patients to be cared for at home. And, even when professionals are involved, the highest incidence of infection is normally in health care workers. A number of doctors have died in the current outbreak. If there’s any suspicion that travelers returning from Africa may be infected, it is a relatively straightforward matter in wealthy, well-organized countries like the USA to institute appropriate isolation, nursing, and control. That’s why the CDC believes that the threat to North America is minimal. As for so many issues, the problem in Africa is exacerbated by poverty and the social disruption that goes with a lack of basic resources.
The fight against Ebola in West Africa… 4 months after the first case of Ebola was confirmed in Guinea, more than 1200 people have been infected across 3 West African countries. This biggest Ebola outbreak ever recorded requires an intensification of efforts to avoid it from spreading further and claiming many more lives. Photo credits: ©EC/ECHO/Jean-Louis Mosser. EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection. CC BY-ND 2.0 via European Commission DG ECHO Flickr.
Given that this disease is not a constant problem for humans, where does it hide out? Fruit bats are thought to be the natural and asymptomatic reservoir, though, unlike the hideous and completely unrelated Hendra and Nipah viruses that have caused somewhat similar symptoms in Australia and South East Asia, there is no Ebola virus in bats from those regions. And, while Hendra and Nipah are lethal for horses and pigs respectively, Ebola is killing off the great apes including our close and endangered primate relatives, the Chimpanzees and Gorillas. The few human Hendra infections have been contracted from sick horses that were, in turn, infected from fruit bats. An “index” (first contact) human Ebola case could result from exposure to bat droppings, or from killing wild primates for “bush meat” a practice that is, again, exacerbated by poverty. And, unlike Hendra, Ebola is known to spread from person to person.
The early Ebola symptoms of nausea, fever, headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, and general malaise are not that different from those characteristic of a number of virus infections, including severe influenza. But Ebola progresses to cause the breakdown of blood vessel walls and extensive bleeding. Also, unlike the fast developing influenza, the Ebola incubation period can be as long as two to three weeks, which means that there must be a relatively long quarantine period for suspected contacts. Fortunately, and unlike influenza and the hideous (fictional) bat-origin pathogen depicted in the recent movie Contagion, Ebola is, in the absence of exposure to contaminated body fluids, not all that infectious. Unlike most such Hollywood accounts, Contagion is relatively realistic and describes how government public health laboratories like the CDC operate. It’s worth seeing, and has been described as “the thinking person’s horror movie.”
Along with comparable EEC agencies and the WHO, the CDC currently has about 20 people “on the ground” in West Africa. Other support is being provided by organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross, and so forth. At this stage, there are no antiviral drugs available and no vaccine, though there are active research programs in several institutions, including the US NIH Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Though there is no product currently available, it would be a big plus if all African healthcare workers could be vaccinated against Ebola. Apart from develop specific “small molecule” drugs, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that bind to proteins on the surface of the virus may be useful for emergency treatment and to give those in contact “passive” protection for three or four weeks. Such “miraculous mAbs” can now be developed and produced quickly, though they are very expensive.
What is being done? Neighboring African countries are closing their borders. International agencies and governments are providing more professionals and other resources to help with treatment and tracking cases and contacts. Global companies have been withdrawing their workers and all nations are maintaining a close watch on air travelers who are arriving from, or have recently been in, these afflicted nations.
What is this Ebola catastrophe telling us? In these days of global cost-cutting, we must keep our National and State Public Health Services strong and maintain the funding for UN Agencies like the OIE, the WHO, and the FAO. High security laboratories (BSL4) at the CDC, the NIH and so forth are a global resource, and their continued support along with the training and resourcing of the courageous, dedicated physicians and researchers who work with these very dangerous pathogens, is essential. Humanity is constantly challenged by novel, zoonotic viruses like Ebola, Hendra, Nipah, Sin Nombre, SARS, and MERS that emerge out of wildlife reservoirs, with the likelihood of such events being increased by extensive forest clearing, ever increasing population size and rapid air travel. We must be indefatigably watchful and prepared. Throughout history, nature is our worst bioterrorist.
Peter C. Doherty has appointments at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis. He is the 2013 author of Pandemics: What Everyone Needs to Know, which looks at the world of pandemic viruses and explains how infections, vaccines and monoclonal antibodies work . He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physisology or Medicine for his discoveries concerning “The Cellular Immune Defense”.
What Everyone Needs to Know (WENTK) series offers a balanced and authoritative primer on complex current event issues and countries. Written by leading authorities in their given fields, in a concise question-and-answer format, inquiring minds soon learn essential knowledge to engage with the issues that matter today.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post How threatened are we by Ebola virus? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Lauren,
on 7/19/2010
Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University, where he is also the Director of the Program in Psychoanalysis and the Health Science Initiative. His new book, Obesity: The Biography, traces the history of obesity from the ancient Greeks to the present day, acknowledging that its history is shaped by the meanings attached to the obese body, defined in part by society and culture. In the excerpt below we learn about “globesity”.
The view that fat spreads across the map, spread by chickens or by genetic transmission across generations, means that there could be populations free from obesity. This fantasy of the Enlightenment physicians, of utopias where obesity could not exist because of the very nature of its inhabitants, their diet, the activities, reappears today with the public health model of globesity. The “French diet” and the “Chinese diet” as cures for obesity: all assume populations without even the potential for obesity. In 2001, the World Health Organization stated that there was a brand new pandemic of “globesity” sweeping the world. What is labeled as “globesity” is in fact the more recent iteration of an obsession with bodily control and the promise of universal health. Its modern iteration, however, comes with an unstated and complex history. If, said the ancients, you would only eat well, sacrifice to the gods, and avoid beans, then your health would improve or simply never decline. There have always been changes in eating patterns. Perhaps in the twenty-first century these changes speed around the world more quickly than in the past. But the notion of a world in decay due to the growth of girth carries with it odd and complex subtexts. What the central implications of “globesity”?
“Globesity,” according a publication of the Pan American Health Organization in 2002, “places the blame not on the individual but on globalization and development, with poverty as an exacerbating factor.” The focus on what have been called earlier in the twentieth century “disease of extravagance” postulates a model not so much of change but of invasion – a Gresham’s Law of Food in which the bad drives out the good. It is a modern version of “degeneracy theory,” with the new assumption that the ills of the world are to be traced directly back to the developed world. In this way it is a dietary version of the basic global warming thesis: developed nations destroyed their environment and now they are invading the rest of the world, corrupting it. “Nature” was benign, even kind; now it has become threatening. “Globesity” argues that inherently healthy eating practices have been corrupted by the expansion of development and the resultant poverty. “Fat” is a product of globalization and modernity. The utopian “undeveloped” world, in Enlightenment jargon, the world of the “noble savage,” is a world in which “diseases of extravagance” could not exist, as they are a reflex of a “civilized” model of exploitation and capitalism. The “cure” for “Globesity” in the twenty-first century is “natural” or “slow” food as a prophylactic against obesity as well as illness…It is a return to the inherently “healthy” eating practices of the Edenic past.
Such views have a relatively long history. The French food writer, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, could write as late as 1825 that &ldq
Why study the South? What makes this peculiar region important from the point of views of Americans, or people abroad wanting to know more about the American experience? The South experienced changes and phenomena central to how the United States evolved over time.
The post How the South was made appeared first on OUPblog.