Polio
vaccine being given under army cover in Pakistan
Islamabad:
Polio workers continued to administer polio drops Thursday under the protection
of the army in Pakistan's Khyber tribal region in the fourth phase of polio
vaccination drive.
Under
the protective cover of the army and Frontier Corps personnel, the polio
workers administered vaccine to children less than 10 years of age in the
Malikdin Khel area Thursday.
Militants’
activities in the region have rendered Malikdin Khel volatile and a no-go area
for sometime.
The
polio workers said each phase has a target of over 75,900 children.
The
fourth phase is currently in progress and, despite adverse circumstances, the
polio campaign has achieved 60 percent of the target so far, the report said.
About
120,000 children have been vaccinated in various parts of the Khyber region
since the campaign started in 2012.
Wazir
Akbar of the National Staff Transmission of Polio in the Khyber tribal area
said that polio drops were administered to about 26,878 children during the
current phase, which started May 6.
The
drive will go on till the end of this month.
Akbar
added that “the army and the Frontier Corps (FC) were providing security cover
to the teams that were carrying out the campaign”.
He
said the situation in Bara has improved as only two polio cases were reported
so far in 2014, as compared to 14 in 2013.
The
Khyber tribal area, especially Bara, remained inaccessible to polio workers due
to terrorist threats.
Pakistan
will put into effect from June a WHO recommendation that requires all
travellers from this south Asian country to carry a polio vaccination
certificate.
Last
week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended the measure due to the
alarming increase in the number of polio cases in the country (61 so far
compared to the total of 91 in 2013).
16.05.2014
Now, a blood
test to predict premature delivery
Toronto:
In view of the fact that a lot of pregnant women get hospitalised because of
false labour pain, researchers have developed a new blood-based diagnostic test
to determine whether or not women with threatened pre-term labor (TPTL) would
give birth prematurely.
The
diagnostic test accurately predicted whether 70 percent of female study
participants with TPTL would or would not give birth prematurely.
"We
want to develop a test that can differentiate between true and false labour so
that women in true labour can receive the appropriate medical care while women
in false labour will receive supportive care and be discharged," said
professor Stephen Lye from Mount Sinai Hospital in Canada.
The
current premature labour diagnostic test, fetal fibronectin (fFN) test is
easily influenced by factors that can cause false positives.
Thus,
many women are ineligible for fFN testing.
In
an effort to develop a method that can be used in all cases, scientists used
microarrays to study differential whole blood gene expression associated with
spontaneous premature birth within 48 hours in women admitted with TPTL - an
important window for the clinical management of TPTL.
Blood
samples were collected prior to treatment from 150 TPTL women. The fFN test was
also performed on eligible participants (60 women), and the results were
compared.
The
researchers discovered that a set of nine genes, coupled with clinical blood
data, could classify whether 70 percent of participants would or would not have
a spontaneous premature birth within 48 hours of hospital admission.
In
addition, the nine genes coupled with clinical blood data outperformed the fFN
test.
The
study appeared in the journal PLOS ONE.
16.05.2014
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