“When Brazil has the technology, no economic crisis, exchange rate fluctuations, nor unilateral decision from a company can put patient treatment at risk,” media sources quoted Padilha as saying.

“We only managed to broaden the flu vaccination range because 90 percent of vaccines are already produced in Brazil,” he said.

Brazil also announced 27 partnerships with public and private labs to produce biopharmaceuticals, including an allergy vaccine, a growth hormone, a cicatrizing drug, and medications to treat cancer, arthritis and diabetes.

Through the partnerships, Brazil expects to produce a total of 25 biopharmaceutical drugs.

Padilha hailed the advances in drug production, saying that just “two years ago, the country did not produce insulin or biopharmaceuticals for cancer and inflammatory diseases”.

The Brazil-made vaccines will be made possible thanks to French company Sanofi Pasteur transferring the technology to Brazil’s Butantan Institute, in Sao Paulo.

H1N1 cases emerged across world again this year after a 2009 pandemic of the virus that killed 20,000 people in several countries.

“Following a World Health Organisation advisory, the (central) government has asked all the border states of the country to carry out non-stop polio vaccination among the children entering the country,” Tripura Health Minister Tapan Chakraborty told IANS.

He said: “We have already started polio vaccination among the children aged up to five years. Permanent polio vaccination centres have been set up at various checkposts along the India-Bangladesh border with Tripura.”

“Children coming into India with their parents or relatives would be administered the polio vaccine in border areas. Indian children would also be vaccinated when they enter India after visiting any country,” said Gautam Debnath, district immunisation officer of West Tripura.

“This year-long vaccination programme has been undertaken to declare India a polio-free nation by the next year,” Debnath told IANS.

Though the World Health Organisation (WHO) took India off the list of polio endemic countries in February 2012, it will declare it “polio free” only if no fresh case is reported till the end of this year.

Polio (poliomyelitis) is a highly infectious disease caused by a virus that invades the nervous system and can cause irreversible paralysis in a matter of hours.

“The polio risk in our neighbouring countries is very high. Since the disease is very infectious, the Indian children, who are free from the ailment, can be affected while visiting such countries,” the official added.

According to the official, large-scale population movements including children across the borders might spread the polio disease.

Polio is a crippling and potentially fatal infectious disease. There is no cure, but there are safe and effective vaccines against it. The strategy to eradicate polio is therefore based on preventing infection by immunising every child until transmission stops.

“The organisational method has been developed in such a way that no child up to five years of age can enter India through immigration unless he or she has been administered the polio vaccine,” Debnath added.

Quoting the directives of the union ministry of health and family welfare, the official said that permanent polio vaccination centres have either already been set up or being set up at all the checkposts along the India’s border with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan, Nepal, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

India has a 15,106 km land border and a 7,516 km coastline.

This will finally be accomplished in July, when the ministry of health and family welfare begins a survey on mental health disorders.
Aiming to cover all states and Union territories, the large-scale survey, to be conducted by Bangalore-based National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), is projected to be the first of its kind. Dr Mathew Varghese, professor and head of psychiatry, NIMHANS, says the survey will take at least a year to be completed as the plan is to go beyond just the numbers. “We will also look at how to plan and utilise services.”

Around this time of the year poachers, with a torch in one hand and a bag in the other, slosh around marshy fields and open areas sodden with rain, hunting for frogs and their meaty hind legs. However, forest officials have issued an advisory which claims that eating frog meat could lead to an exotic cocktail of illnesses, ranging from cancer to kidney failure to paralytic strokes.

The advisory calls humans the “greatest predator” of frogs and their indiscriminate killing is drastically reducing the amphibians’ population.

“Massive toxic recalcitrant residues from agrochemicals biomagnified in the food chain get accumulated in fat deposits of frogs. Continuous consumption of frogs could trigger paralytic strokes, cancers, kidney failures and other deformities,” the advisory reads.

Over the years, the Indian Bullfrog and the Jerdon’s Bullfrog have been colloquially re-christened ‘Jumping Chicken’ in Goa. Both species have been hunted for their meat, which although contraband, is cooked and sold on the sly and eaten in several restaurants and homes.

A single frog is sold for up to Rs.250 and only its meaty hind legs are cooked and eaten.

Listed in Schedule-I of threatened species, which also include the tiger, the croaking of the humble frog once the monsoon begins would ordinarily help attract its female mate. But in Goa, with the passion and demand for frog meat increasing, the mating call also attracts village boys and adults, who almost ritualistically head for frog hunts every year, risking a stringent punishment of a Rs.25,000 fine and/or imprisonment up to three years under the Wildlife Protection Act.

Needless to say, although awareness about the importance of the frog for the region’s ecological balance has increased, arrests and deterrents have failed to stop eager ‘froggers’.

The forest department now feels that if not the fear of a fine or arrest, at least a cancer cautionary could stop people from killing and eating frogs.

“It is a health hazard in a way because the frogs exist in the fields and their bodies accept agrochemicals which are used liberally in fields. These are cancerous elements. We are hoping that people will take note of it,” a wildlife official told reporters.

Miguel Braganza of the Botanical Society of Goa says that the warning might just be a deterrent.

“Health risks may have been amplified to deter people from eating frogs because punitive action just does not seem to work,” Braganza said.

Animal conservationists like Clinton Vaz have been at the forefront of the Save the Frog campaign for years now. He says that along with the Indian Bullfrog and the Jerdon Bullfrog species, the Indian Pond Frog, Grass Frog and the Common Indian Toad are also occasionally poached.

“An insatiable demand at restaurants for illegal frog meat has ensured a lucrative return to the poacher for a pair of frog legs,” Vaz claims.

“That means a person with HIV can live for a minimum of another 20 years if he or she adheres to the Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART),” says S.I. Ahmed, a physician and leading AIDS activist of the region.

“It’s like blood pressure,” says Barman. “If you are on drugs you’re safe. If not, you may suffer a stroke.”

Ahmed, though, is skeptical of figures available abroad that people have gained up to 36 additional years with ART. “That’s because we have more secondary infections here,” says Ahmed.

Assam now requires about 1,000 units (of 350ml each) of blood on a daily basis.

The availability figures, though, are dismal and stand at about 650 units, which makes it easier for professional blood donors such as Anowar (name changed) to operate.

Anowar, allegedly in cahoots with people operating at the Mangaldoi civil hospital who new about his HIV status, is believed to have spread the virus to at least four people at Mangaldoi over the past months.

D.P. Bajaj, chairman of the blood bank of Marwari Hospital and Research Centre in the city, blames the government and “some private hospitals” for the state of affairs.

“The shortfall in the blood supply is a result of lack of awareness among people but let’s not forget that some people in government hospitals promote professional donors because they get a cut of the money such donors make,” he says.

Assam has 62 licensed blood banks of which the state health department runs 25, central government agencies run 11 and private organisations run 26.

It is in such a scenario that chief minister Tarun Gogoi today announced that the state would “closely monitor all blood banks, both government and private, to make the system foolproof”.

“We welcome the decision but I hope the government doesn’t end up harassing private hospitals while turning a blind eye to government set-ups,” says Bajaj.

The situation, meanwhile, seems grim. While most in the health department have gone into silent mode since the Mangaldoi incident hit the headlines, sources said the licences of at least five private blood banks in the state were not being renewed “for not adhering to national blood bank policy guidelines”.

“Let’s also talk about the government-owned blood banks here,” says Bajaj. “We have reservations about the operating procedures of many of them. Not maybe the one at Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) but many others. There is no accountability in government-run blood banks. It’s been 48 hours at least since the Mangaldoi story broke and not one person has been brought to book.”

Establishments such as the Mangaldoi civil hospital are believed to be conducting blood transfusions based on “spot tests”, when the minimum time required to thoroughly test a unit of blood would take about six hours. Mandatory tests would include not just tests for HIV but also Hepatitis B and C, malaria and sexually transmitted diseases.

Hafiz Ali (name changed), whose wife was a recipient of Anowar’s blood, for example, yesterday told The Telegraph that the transfusion took place almost immediately “after Anowar was put through a test”. “If this is what happened it would be absolutely wrong,” said U.C. Dutta, head of the blood bank at GMCH, who was a member of the eight-member team that visited Mangaldoi today.

It is, of course, an entirely different matter that the hospital authorities allegedly knew of Anowar’s status but allowed him to donate blood to various patients.

The privately-run B. Nanavati Hospital (BNH) and the Bangalore-based Health Care Global Enterprises Ltd (HCG), Asia’s largest cancer care network, have joined hands for the 30-bed BNH-HCG Cancer Centre at Vile Parle.

According to Deepak Patkar, consultant radiologist at the centre, every year Mumbai reports 110.4 new cases of cancer in women each year per 100,000 population (110.4/100,000), according to the Population Based Cancer Registry.

“The numbers of such cases are expected to rise manifold in the next two decades and early diagnosis of cancer leads to better medical outcome and quality of life,” Patkar told IANS on the sidelines of a round-table on the subject.

Of the 110.4/100,000 cases, breast cancer accounts for the bulk of total incidence, at a stupendous 32.3/100,000 new cases every year.

A distant second is cervical (14.1), ovary (7.1), lung and corpus uteri (3.8 each), oral (3.5), bladder and oesophagus (2.9 each), non-Hodgkin Lymphoma (2.8) and stomach (2.7).

In view of this data, the BNH-HCG Cancer Centre has set up the cancer centre not only to diagnose but also provide advanced multi-speciality treatment for all types of cancers among women under a single roof, Patkar explained.

Recently, Mumbai had seen celebrities like Manisha Koirala, Lisa Ray and Gautami under treatment for cancer. Hollywood star Angelina Jolie famously opted for a preventive intervention because of a genetic propensity to breast cancer.

The centre’s Digital Mammogran and Automated Breast Volume, an innovative ultrasound imaging system designed to provide 3-D views of the breast tissue for screening cancer, would prove to be a boon, given the high incidence of cancer among women in Mumbai.

“Breast cancer incidence is on an alarming rise among urban women in their early 40s. But 90 percent of these are curable with optimal therapy if diagnosed early,” said Bhavana Parikh, the centre’s consultant medical oncologist.

“With advancements in cancer treatment, we are now able to to preserve the organs since quality of life is as important as survival,” added the centre’s consultant surgical oncologist Sanjay Dudhat.

Patkar said that the centre would offer all cancer diagnosis, care and treatment facilities with special subsidised rates for women from economically weaker sections, for a wider reach.

“We are yet to ascertain exactly how many persons had contracted HIV after undergoing blood transfusion in Mangaldoi civil hospital. The number of persons testing HIV+ may go up as a number of patients had undergone blood transfusion in the past two to three years,” Darrang DCP, Sohrab Ali, said.

People staged a protest outside the hospital on Friday. Meanwhile, Gogoi has ordered an inquiry and sought a report in 30 days. Ali has also ordered a magisterial probe into the incident. Sources said that it was a local youth who had tested HIV+ in April this year after having undergone transfusion in the hospital last year. He tracked down the source — a donor — through an RTI query. He then helped a female patient use the RTI to find out the donor when she underwent blood transfusion. Following this, the donor underwent a test wherein he was found to be testing HIV+.

Efforts to make this treatment possible have been limited by a dearth of insulin-producing beta cells that can be removed from donors after death, and by the stubborn refusal of human beta cells to proliferate in the laboratory after harvesting.

The new technique by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis uses a cell conditioning solution originally developed to trigger reproduction of cells from the lining of the intestine.

“Until now, there didn’t seem to be a way to reliably make the limited supply of human beta cells proliferate in the laboratory and remain functional,” said Michael McDaniel, professor of pathology and immunology.

“We have not only found a technique to make the cells willing to multiply, we’ve done it in a way that preserves their ability to make insulin,” McDaniel said.

The current method for harvesting human islets, which are comprised primarily of the insulin-producing beta cells, makes it necessary to find two or three donors to extract enough cells to produce an adequate supply of insulin to treat a single patient with diabetes.

Lead author Haytham Aly, a postdoctoral research scholar, reported on his work with beta cells and was approached by Thaddeus Stappenbeck, associate professor of pathology and immunology, who studies autoimmune problems in the gut.

Stappenbeck had developed a medium that causes cells from the intestine’s lining to proliferate in test tubes.

“He said, why don’t you try it, and he gave us some samples. We put the solution in our freezer for a month or so, and when we finally gave it a try, we were amazed at the results: human beta cells in Dr Stappenbeck’s solution reproduced at a rate that was 20 times higher than beta cells in a solution that contained the sugar glucose,” Aly said.

The ability to produce large quantities of human beta cells in the laboratory gives the researchers hope that they could one day be transplanted into patients with type 1 diabetes.

The advantage of Stappenbeck’s solution may be that it is designed to activate multiple growth signalling pathways in cells, according to the researchers. Earlier attempts to make beta cells proliferate focused on one or two growth pathways. The solution also activates genes that help prevent beta cells from dying.

South Asians in Edmonton, the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta, will participate in the DIL Walk coming Saturday which will feature a free lunch, doctors on hand to check blood pressure, and advice from dieticians.

The event is being organised by the DIL Walk Foundation to create awareness about heart diseases and a healthy lifestyle.

Though DIL here is an acronym for Do It for Life, ‘dil’ also means heart in Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.

Research shows that South Asians – people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka – are five times more susceptible to cardiovascular diseases and develop heart diseases at an average of 10 years earlier than the Caucasian population in Canada, according to the Edmonton Journal.

Among the factors behind this, diet is one, say doctors.

“We often use breads such as roti or naan, the way many use a fork and knife,” Ken Kalia, a resident of the Mazankowski Heart Institute in Edmonton, was quoted as saying.

“Easily you’re putting in 100 to 200 calories per roti and some will go through six or eight of these, separate from their regular meal.”

According to Sudheer Sharma, a cardiologist at the CK Hui Heart Centre at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, it is not culturally prevalent among South Asians to work out in a gym or use a treadmill, which leads to them leading a sedentary lifestyle.

“In the olden days, the large belly of a South Asian was a sign of prosperity,” the report quoted him as saying. “If you were thin, you were poorer and worked harder.”

South Asians number around 50,000 in Edmonton and represent the largest ethnic group in that Canadian city.

Dua’s layer sits at the back of the cornea, which previously had only five known layers. Dua and his colleagues discovered the new body part by injecting air into the corneas of eyes that had been donated for research and using an electron microscope to scan each separated layer.

The researchers now believe that a tear in Dua’s layer is the cause of corneal hydrops, a disorder that leads to fluid buildup in the cornea. According to Dua, knowledge of the new layer could dramatically improve outcomes for patients undergoing corneal grafts and transplants.

“This is a major discovery that will mean that ophthalmology textbooks will literally need to be re-written,” Dua says. “From a clinical perspective, there are many diseases that affect the back of the cornea which clinicians across the world are already beginning to relate to the presence, absence or tear in this layer.”

The study appears in the journal Ophthalmology.