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| HEALTH TRIBUNE | Wednesday, October 8, 2003, Chandigarh, India |
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Neither exercise nor diet helps lower cholesterol RCT —
the best way to protect your teeth Kissing
can spread hepatitis C Antibiotics
won’t work on humans by 2015 |
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Motivation is the key to blood banks’ success IT is accepted the world over that voluntary blood donation is the foundation of a sound, safe and sustainable blood transfusion service. Truly speaking, voluntary blood donors are the bricks of the edifice called blood transfusion. Motivation has to be an integral part of the blood transfusion service. It has not so far received the required attention both in the Centre and state policies and plans. Development of blood banks, modernising them to meet the growing demand, sophisticated equipment and research on blood will be possible only if blood is available in good measure. Technology can be imported, machines can be obtained or manufactured but motivation can neither be purchased nor imported. It has to have a national character and within this national framework, motivation has to have local colour to suit the local situation and target groups. Man is not the sum total of bones, muscles and gray matter. He is also a social animal and is influenced by the behaviour pattern, social norms and values, customs and prejudices, social interests, religion and philosophy and the psychological environment in the family and the community. An individual, therefore, forms his opinion, attitude and interest within these and many other social factors. Development of motivational strategies and blood banks should go hand in hand. Lopsided development would certainly retard the growth and development of the programme. Lack of consistent and motivational strategies has been responsible for the shortage of blood in the blood banks. Blood transfusion services are at different stages of development in every state. The national policy recently announced clearly mentions in its introduction itself that "Blood transfusion service in the country is highly decentralised and lacks many vital resources like manpower, adequate infrastructure and financial base.... For quality, safety and efficacy of blood and blood products, well equipped blood centres with adequate infrastructure, trained manpower is an essential requirement." Today there are 1,659 blood banks in the country with 45.5% run by the government. It would thus seem that there is just one government blood bank for a population of more than a million. Rough estimates tell us that eight million units of blood is required. Against this requirement only 4 million units are collected — two million by way of voluntary donations and the remaining two million through replacement donations. This ratio has since improved (WHO document for the South Asian region). The presence of professional blood sellers, however, cannot be ruled out among the replacement donors in the garb of relatives/friends. This fact is supported by the WHO report which says that "All the countries admitted that the absence of paid blood sellers are not real. They exist in replacement donor category". It may be mentioned here that the Supreme Court banned the professional blood donor system in January 1998 in India. The question is whether any scientific survey has been done to assess the need of blood in the country? Have successive targets been fixed? How many blood donors are needed? What would be the time-frame? The answer to all these questions is a big "NO"? An action plan, however, is in the process of finalisation. It may answer some of the questions when implemented. Additionally, does a provision to meet a sudden disaster exist? In our country every other day there are train accidents, fires, plane crashes, etc, where multiple units of blood may be needed immediately. Fresh blood may not be available in the required quantity. Therefore, it is necessary to have reserves of plasma, serum, albumin and other components. Chandigarh is nearer the border area and the capital of two states. It should be incumbent on this city to be prepared all the time to tackle natural and man-made disasters in addition to meeting all the routine needs of safe blood. People’s participation is of paramount importance to increase the number of blood banks. Help of NGOs of repute should be sought. They should be encouraged and provided all facilities to undertake the development of blood banks. Chandigarh has yet to travel a long way to translate the mission statement of the national policy into a reality. The policy has it that blood should be collected only from "voluntary non-remunerated regular blood donor." Even today almost 50% blood comes from replacement donations. The donor base can be enlarged by recognising the following:
The writer is a former Joint Secretary, Indian Red Cross.
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Neither exercise nor diet helps lower cholesterol London: Contrary to popular belief, healthy diets or working out does not help to lower cholesterol levels, a new study has revealed. A leading cardiologist, Dr. Adrian Brady, said lifestyle changes were not enough to tackle the problem. Instead cholesterol- reducing drugs should be used more regularly and more effectively, according to a report in The Independent. "Healthy diets and exercise, of course, are good but they don’t lower cholesterol an awful lot," Dr. Brady, of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, said. "It’s sort of a popular misconception that lots of exercise is good for your cholesterol. It reduces it a wee bit, but if you run, you can reduce it by only eight or 10 per cent if you go nuts on your diet," he added. "Cholesterol is made by the liver, and it’s very much something you’re born with," Brady and his research team said. The "Performance for Life" study, which was funded by the drug company Astrazeneca, used information from GPs on 80,096 heart disease patients from across Britain, collected until March 2003. It showed that only 14,424 of those people were on the cholesterol-reducing drugs known as "statins". Between about a quarter and a half of those people being treated failed to achieve their cholesterol targets. Brady’s research,
which was presented to the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society in
Dublin, showed only 48 per cent of The patients achieving a 25 per
cent cholesterol reduction on their first drug treatment. — ANI |
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RCT
— the best way to protect your teeth ROOT canal treatment (RCT) is the only way to keep intact all the decayed teeth for life. Equally important, this system enjoys the highest success rate, from 95 to 98 per cent. However, one must know when the necessity for root canal treatment arises. Generally, when there is continuous pain or throbing while biting, acute sensitivity to hot and cold food, decay or an infection in the bone due to some injury, RCT is the only solution. If any of these problems exists, it would be better to first consult a dentist who will decide after taking an x-ray weather RCT is the ultimate remedy. Most people, without understanding the nature of the problem, start self-treatment by taking certain pain-killers which can invite other serious diseases besides aggravating the dental illness. The latest advancement in the RCT technique does not involve much time. It merely needs one to three visits to the dentist. For the RCT, the endodontist (a dentist who has specialisation in the problems of the pulp) first removes the diseased pulp and then cleans the pulp chamber and root canals. Thereafter he seals these areas putting an end to any sensitivity, pain, etc. Unlike in earlier times, there are a number of new techniques and better materials for inside cleansing and filling of the teeth. The latest techniques for root canal preparation include the rotary preparation (nickel-titanium files) which is far less painful, quick and more precise than the conventional hand instrumentation of root canals. There is now a plethora of innovative material for filling up the root canal. The thermafil system is the quickest one which can fill the root canal in less than 10 seconds. These innovations have greatly improved the quality of dental work while raising the cost of treatment only marginally. There is a general misconception that RCT is very painful. Most people do not know that like tooth extraction, RCT is performed by the application of local anaesthesia. It does not create pain; rather it stops pain forever with the removal of damaged tissue from the affected tooth. It is also baseless that RCT causes illness. RCT is totally safe and the best method to protect the decayed teeth and stop pain. Out of ignorance some people ask for the extraction of tooth when they have pain. They need to be educated about the advantages of RCT so that they do not lose their natural teeth through extraction. The writer is a
Chandigarh -based dental surgeon.
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Kissing can spread hepatitis C LONDON: Kissing or sharing toothbrushes could spread hepatitis C because people with the virus could pass it on to others through their saliva, according to University of Washington in Seattle researchers. Speaking at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents in Chicago, they said that they found traces of the virus in the saliva of people with hepatitis C and also that those with gum disease are at greater risk. For the study, the researchers tested the saliva of 12 people who were infected with hepatitis C every day for 21 consecutive days, according to a report in BBC. Of the 248 samples taken, 52 or one in five tested positive for the virus. Traces were found in the
saliva of seven of the volunteers. However, none of these tested
positive everyday. On average, they had traces of hepatitis C on seven
out of the 21 days. |
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Antibiotics won’t work on humans by 2015 London: If a leading British scientist is to be believed, all antibiotics will be useless by 2015. Professor Hugh McGavock from the University of Ulster, UK, blames the "gross over-prescribing" by doctors and in the farming industry over the last 50 years for this. "It is catastrophic. It is probably worse than Aids. We are faced not just with resistance to one antibiotic but multi-drug resistance," The Mirror quoted him as saying. "If things go on as
they are, by 2015, at the latest, we are going to have a situation
where thousands of people will die from relatively simple infections,
which nowadays are totally curable by antibiotics. I am talking about
children, teenagers and people in the prime of life. They will die
from pneumonia, they will die from septicaemia." — ANI |
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