25 March, 2015

India needs political will to eradicate TB: Study

Mumbai: Only with political will and commitment, backed by sufficient resources, can India effectively control tuberculosis (TB) that kills over three lakh people every year, says a Mumbai-based senior doctor.

Unless this happens, TB will continue to be India's silent epidemic and a death sentence for poor people, Zarir Udwadia, consultant physician at P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre, Mumbai, warned. Twenty years ago, it was widely believed that India was successfully on its way to controlling its alarming TB epidemic.

Yet, each year, India has 22 lakh new cases, more than three lakh deaths, and economic losses of $23 billion (Rs. 143,123 crore) from TB, making it India's biggest health crisis, Udwadia wrote in the article published in the journal The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal).

At the heart of this crisis is the failure of India's Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) to engage and monitor the country's large and unregulated private sector, he pointed out. According to him, considering India's massive TB crisis, the RNTCP's annual budget of Rs.500 crore remains derisory. The RNTCP spends the least on each TB patient among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) - $28 (Rs.1,741.32), compared with $107 (Rs.6,654.32) in China and $264 (Rs.16,418) in Brazil.

"India needs to do much more if it seriously wants to control its TB epidemic," he said.

Patients with TB in India "typically flit between an unsympathetic public sector and an exploitative private sector until they are too sick or impoverished to do so, all the while continuing to transmit and spread tuberculosis in crowded home and work environments," Udwadia said. India must work at providing every TB patient with free and accurate diagnosis and the right treatment, whether in the public or the private sector. When TB is diagnosed, patients and their families must receive counselling, nutrition, and economic support, Udwadia said.

He also added that India desperately needs new drugs for the growing population of patients with more extreme forms of drug resistant TB, who have nearly exhausted the available first and second line drugs.

Source: www.zeenewsindia.com

25.03.2015

Emotions can dictate how you eat

London: A new book has observed that emotions can dictate how you eat and also demonstrates what kind of eater one is.

Hypnotherapist Marisa Peer in her new book suggests that there are different kinds of eaters like one can be an emotional eater or a habitual eater or a destructive eater or an angry eater, the Daily Express reported.

Emotional eaters find temporary relief from loneliness, boredom and sadness when they fill their stomachs with refined carbohydrates. The feeling of fullness from eating soft, sweet foods such as cake and ice cream leads to a temporary feeling of satisfaction and calmness.

Habitual eaters will eat whenever they are given the opportunity, without being aware of whether they are actually hungry.

Destructive eaters often feel uncomfortable if they are not in control of their own eating, whereas, angry eaters like crunchy or chewy foods because they find chewing hard helpful when they are feeling tense or wound up.

Source: www.zeenewsindia.com

25.03.2015

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly

 John F. Kennedy