Country News

Japan’s population declines by record 244,000 in 2013

The number of Japanese births hit a record low in 2013 while the death rate was the highest since the end of World War II, according to health ministry estimates.

Ministry officials determined the nation’s population fell by a record 244,000 for the year by deducting the number of births from the number of deaths.

“The trend of population decline will likely continue for a substantially long period of time,” a ministry official said.

It is the seventh consecutive year Japan has experienced a decrease in its population.

According to the estimates released on Dec. 31, the number of babies born in 2013 fell by 6,000 from the previous year to 1,031,000, the lowest number since such statistics became available in 1899. The ministry cited the decline in the number of women still in their childbearing years.

Meanwhile, 1,275,000 people–up 19,000 from the previous year–died in 2013, reflecting the aging of Japanese society.

The Japanese population declined for the first time in 2005. In 2006, the country saw a short-lived increase, but it has been falling steadily since 2007.

The fertility rate–the number of children a woman is expected to give birth to in her lifetime–was 1.41 in 2012. The ministry estimated that figure remains unchanged for 2013.

The statistics also showed that 663,000 couples married and 231,000 divorced in 2013.

Source: Asia and Japan watch

A girl dies in Ireland after pharmacy refuses to give her EpiPen

A teenage girl has died outside a pharmacy in Ireland after a staff member refused to give her family an EpiPen to inject her for a nut allergy because she didn’t have a prescription.

Emma Sloan, 14, was out for dinner in Dublin with her family when she accidentally ingested a sauce containing nuts that she mistook for curry, the Irish Herald reported.

The teenager suffered a severe allergic reaction but was not carrying an EpiPen, which delivers a shot of adrenaline that can reverse the effects of a severe, fast-acting reaction known as anaphylactic shock.

The family went to a nearby pharmacy and pleaded for an EpiPen but Emma’s mother, Caroline Sloan, said a male staff member refused to give them one without a prescription.

“He told me I couldn’t get it without a prescription. He told me to bring her to an A&E,” she told the newspaper.
Mrs Sloan said she tried to take Emma to Temple Street Hospital, but her daughter collapsed and died on the way.
“She died on the footpath. A doctor was passing and tried to help and put her into the recovery position. Ambulance and fire brigade men worked on her. But she was gone,” Mrs Sloan told the Herald.

“My daughter died on a street corner with a crowd around her. “I’m so angry I was not given the EpiPen to inject her. I was told to bring Emma to an A&E department. Emma was allergic to nuts and was very careful. How could a peanut kill my child?
“I want to appeal to parents of children with nut allergies to make sure their child always carries an EpiPen with them.”

Regulations prohibit the dispensing of EpiPen injections without a prescription, the Irish Herald reported.
Mrs Sloan said she had gone to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet with Emma and her two other daughters on Wednesday evening for a family meal.

While Emma was usually extremely careful about what she ate, on this occasion she overlooked a sign that warned a sauce contained nuts, Mrs Sloan said.

“Emma has always been very careful and would check the ingredients of every chocolate bar and other foods to be sure they didn’t contain nuts,” she told the newspaper.

“She had a satay sauce. She thought it was curry sauce because it looked like curry sauce and smelled like curry. I’m not blaming the restaurant because there was a sign reading ‘nuts contained’ but it wasn’t noticed. After a while, Emma began to say, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’.”

Police and the pharmacy regulatory body, the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland, have launched an investigation into the girl’s death.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

45 deaths due to Japanese Encephalitis in UP, Bihar in 2013

A total of 45 deaths due to Japanese Encephalitis (JE) have been reported from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar during this year, parliament was told Tuesday .

All the deaths have been in eastern UP, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

He said while the two eastern UP districts of Gorakhpur and Basti reported 277 cases, 14 were reported from Bihar.

JE is a mosquito-borne disease, the symptoms of which include fever, headache and convulsions. It has a high mortality rate among children.

Azad said a national programme for prevention and control of JE was started with a multi-pronged strategy in 60 high endemic districts of five states, including UP and Bihar.

Some of the aims of the programme were strengthening and expansion of JE vaccination in affected districts, strengthening of surveillance, vector control, access to safe drinking water and proper sanitation facilities to the target population in affected areas, he said.

During the current year, an amount of Rs.346.9 million and Rs.603.83 million is allocated to the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar respectively for controlling the disease, he added.

Source: News track India

Norway’s Army Goes Vegetarian to Combat Climate Change

The Norwegian military announced on Tuesday that it’s putting its soldiers on a new diet. In an effort aimed not at cutting waistlines, but combating climate change, the army is imposing a vegetarian diet once a week for its troops.

The goal is to cut its consumption of environmentally unfriendly foods, like meat, as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization attributes 18 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions to livestock farming. “It’s a step to protect our climate. The idea is to serve food that’s respectful of the environment,” a military spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

The “meatless Monday” vegetarian diet has already been tried at one army base in the country and the military will soon extend it to all of its troops, including those deployed overseas, according to AFP. The army estimates the new diet will cut the force’s meat consumption by 150 tons a year.

Source: slate

Kuwait discovers first MERS virus case: ministry

Kuwait has discovered its first case of the MERS corona virus for a citizen who is in “critical condition,” the health ministry said on Wednesday.

“The first case of corona virus has been discovered in the country for a citizen who was moved to the Infectious Diseases Hospital in critical condition,” the ministry said, quoted by the official KUNA news agency.

The patient was a 47-year-old man who suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, said the statement. It did not say how he might have been infected.

His infection makes Kuwait the fifth state in the Gulf to report cases of MERS, which has already killed 64 people worldwide, the majority of them in Saudi Arabia.

Two fatalities have been reported in Qatar and one in Oman.

The World Health Organization said on its website on Monday that it has been informed of 153 laboratory-confirmed MERS cases worldwide so far, including the 64 deaths.

Experts are struggling to understand the disease, for which there is no vaccine.

It is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8,273 people, nine percent of whom died.

Like SARS, MERS appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering from a temperature, coughing and breathing difficulties.

But it differs in that it also causes rapid kidney failure, and the extremely high death rate has caused serious concern.

In August, researchers pointed to Arabian camels as possible hosts of the virus.

And the Saudi government said on Monday that a camel in the kingdom has tested positive for MERS, the first case of an animal infected with the corona virus.

Source: Global post