Bill Gates
commends India’s effective anti-polio campaign
Expected
to be the hardest, polio eradication was made possible in India thanks to
social mobilisation and mapping of houses refusing the vaccine, according to
Microsoft’s Bill Gates. ‘The two things that were done super well were social
mobilization and mapping where the houses were,’ Gates, who has made global
health and, in particular, the total eradication of polio his top priority this
year, said in a media interview published Friday.
‘Dealing
with refusals is a huge part of this,’ he told the Washington Post. Usually
there are 10 to 20 percent refusals, but rumours like that the US government
uses vaccination campaigns to sterilise Muslim women lead to much higher
refusals. ‘When somebody would refuse to take the vaccine, they would mark it
down and they would have either a political leader or religious leader come in
and convince them,’ Gates said.
Gates,
who is in Washington to talk to members of Congress about his mission, believes
wiping out a disease like polio is ‘completely achievable. Perhaps even by the
end of 2013’. The Bill Gates Foundation, he said, was also able to cut down the
childhood death rate due to diarrhoea, respiratory disease and malaria – ‘all
vaccine preventable stuff’ -by over 50 percent in some places in India by just
training the mother.
‘But
the worker has to engage with the patient, hopefully speak the same language or
be of the same caste so that they’re willing to trust the advice that they’re
getting,’ Gates was quoted as saying. Polio was paralysing 360,000 children a
year around the world when the World Health Organization started its
eradication mission in 1988. It was brought down to below 10,000 by 2000 and
stayed flat from 2000 to 2010.
‘And
so in 2010, the polio community got together and said, ‘Look, are we going to
succeed or not?’ And so there were a lot of improvements made, those led to
finally getting done in India in 2011.’ Gates was quoted as saying. ‘And India
was expected to be the hardest and the last.’
20.05.2013
Beware of high stress jobs, they may
lead to death
A stressful job can change the way body handles fat,
resulting in raised cholesterol levels and even a heart disease, almost fatal
for anyone. According to Spanish researchers, stressful situations affect how
the body metabolises fat – ultimately leading the body with too much ‘bad’
cholesterol,’ reports dailymail.co.uk.
New research shows that stress can lead to dyslipidemia,
which is a disorder that alters the levels of fats and lipoproteins in the
blood. Researchers at the Virgen de la Victoria Hospital in Malaga and the
Santiago de Compostela University analysed the relationship between job stress
and different parameters associated with how fatty acids are metabolised in the
body.
Specifically, people who suffered from job stress were more
likely to suffer from abnormally high levels of bad cholesterol, excessively
low levels of good cholesterol (the ‘good’ cholesterol) and were more likely to
develop blocked arteries. ‘One of the mechanisms that could explain the
relationship between stress and cardiovascular risk could be the changes in our
lipid profile, which means higher rates of plaque accumulation (leading to
hardening) of the arteries,’ said Carlos Catalina, clinical psychologist and an
expert in work-related stress.
20.05.2013
The beginning is the most important part of the work
PLATO
No comments:
Post a Comment