Convit, creator of anti-leprosy vaccine, dead
Caracas: Venezuelan physician and scientist Jacinto Convit,
creator of the anti-leprosy vaccine and one of the leading researchers in the
study of tropical diseases, died Monday in Caracas. He was 100.
Convit, the 1987 winner of Spain's Prince of Asturias Award
for Scientific Research, invented a vaccine to prevent and cure leprosy, which
in turn provided the basis for creating an immunotherapy for leishmaniasis, and
contributed to the study of other illnesses like Chagas disease.
Declared a Public Health Hero by the Pan American Health
Organisation, Convit worked and taught in the US for years.
Upon his return to Venezuela, he founded the Institute of
Biomedicine.
Among the distinctions he received was France's National
Order of the Legion of Honour in 2011.
Source:
www.zeenews.india.com/news
13.05.2014
WHO wants
action as alcohol kills 3.3 million people in 2012
London:
More than 3 million people died from using alcohol in 2012, for reasons ranging
from cancer to violence, the World Health Organisation said on Monday, as it
called on governments to do more to limit the damage.
"More
needs to be done to protect populations from the negative health consequences
of alcohol consumption," said Oleg Chestnov, a WHO expert on chronic
disease and mental health.
He
added there was "no room for complacency", warning that drinking too
much kills more men then women, raises people`s risk of developing more than
200 diseases, and killed 3.3 million people in 2012.
On
average, according to the WHO report, every person in the world aged 15 years
or older drinks 6.2 litres of pure alcohol per year. But less than half the
population - 38.3 percent - drinks, so those who do drink on average 17 litres
of pure alcohol a year.
"We
found that worldwide about 16 percent of drinkers engage in heavy episodic
drinking - often referred to as `binge-drinking` - which is the most harmful to
health," said Shekhar Saxena, director for mental health and substance
abuse at the WHO. Poorer people are generally more affected by the social and
health consequences of alcohol, he said: "They often lack quality health
care and are less protected by functional family or community networks."
The
global status report on alcohol and health covered 194 countries and looked at
alcohol consumption, its impact on public health and policy responses.
It
found that some countries are already strengthening measures to protect people
from harmful drinking. Those include increasing taxes on alcohol, limiting its
availability by raising age limits and regulating marketing.
More
countries should take similar action, WHO said. More also needed to be done to
raise awareness of the damage alcohol can do to people`s health and screen for
those who may need earlier intervention to cut down or stop. Globally, Europe
consumes the most alcohol per person. Some of its countries having particularly
high rates of harmful drinking.
A
study published earlier this year found that a quarter of all Russian men die
before they reach their mid-fifties, largely from drinking to excess. Some men
in that study reported drinking three or more bottles of vodka a week. The WHO
said global trend analyses showed that drinking has been stable over the last
five years in Europe, Africa and the Americas. But it is growing in South-East
Asia and the Western Pacific.
Source:
www.zeenews.india.com/news
13.05.2014
Be patient and tough, someday this pain will be
useful to you
Ovid
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