Month: September 2013

The low cost technology saves premature babies

GE Healthcare created the Lullaby baby-warmer, to help to save lives in a country

Premature babies have very little body fat and are unable to regulate body temperature. Every year more than 20 million babies are born prematurely or with low birth weight – and an estimated 450 of them die each hour.

Yet most of these deaths could be avoided by simply keeping them warm.

“A new-born baby wailing can generally be heard outside the room – even across the hallway. But not my baby Mine can only whimper,” says Jayalakshmi Devi.

She’s standing outside the neo-natal intensive care unit (ICU) staring at the glass box where her baby son is kept.

Born too soon, her baby boy weighs less than 1.2 pounds (0.54kgs). Doctors have given him around a 40% chance of survival.

Having lost two babies already, Jayalakshmi didn’t want to take a chance this time. After delivering her child in a rural healthcare centre three hours outside Bangalore, she brought the baby to the state run hospital in the city.

At Vanivilas hospital, the neo-natal ICU sees scores of premature babies. Most are born at home, in far off rural areas and are brought here in critical condition.

Row after row, the transparent boxes creates warmth to hold the tiny, bare-bodied babies with only an oversized diaper around them. Some of the babies are small enough to fit into your palm.

Life-saving warmth

A baby’s body temperature drops as soon as it is outside the controlled environment of the mother’s womb. So just after labor, it’s important to regulate the temperature.

The babies need incubators to help keep them alive – equipment which state-run hospitals like this one often cannot afford.

So, GE Healthcare created the Lullaby baby-warmer, to help to save lives in a country that has the highest rate of pre-term baby deaths in the world.

Low-cost innovation

It was developed in Bangalore and launched in 2009. The baby warmer costs $3,000 (£1,900) in India, 70% cheaper than traditional models.

The design includes pictorial warnings and color coding, so that even illiterate rural healthcare workers can operate the machine.

The Lullaby warmer also consumes less power than most incubators, which means cost savings for the healthcare centre.

“Where better to make a baby warmer than here – India produces a baby nearly every second,” says GE Healthcare’s Ravi Kaushik.

He believes India is an ideal innovation centre when it comes to products like this, because 70% of the population is rural and 30% is urban, and within this you all different stratas of society.

“So you can have very great world class hospitals that want and require world class medical equipment that America or Europe would require. But at the same time there is a population in rural space that would require same kind of medical attention,” says Mr Kaushik.

Where better to make a baby warmer than here -India produces a baby nearly every second”

Ravi Kaushik GE Healthcare

“So when you design a product, you have to cater to the entire plethora of needs. That allows you to almost hit the entire world because India is a small representation of that.”

Engineers at GE’s technology centre are stripping down lifesaving, high tech medical devices of all their frills to understand how to create products that are affordable.

This project is now widely quoted as an example of “reverse innovation”.

This is where large global companies design products in developing markets like India and then take the successful creation back to international markets to sell.

After success in the domestic market, GE now sells the warmer in more than 80 countries.

Bundled up

While this works for healthcare centers on a budget, it still needs continuous electricity to run.

But go further down the population pyramid, and the problems get more complex.

Women in villages give birth at home and have little access to basic healthcare or electricity.

For them, keeping babies warm means wrapping them in layers of fabric and hot water bottles, or putting them under bare light bulbs.

Many of them don’t survive.

But now a low cost baby bag is saving thousands of young lives. Called the Embrace, it emerged out of a class assignment at Stanford’s Institute of Design in 2007.

Four graduate students – Jane Chen, Linus Liang, Naganand Murty, and Rahul Panicker – were challenged to come up with a low-cost incubator design that could help save premature babies born into poverty.

The team created a sleeping bag with a removable heating element.

Using high school physics, they used phase-change material (PCM), a waxy substance that, as it cools from melted liquid to solid, maintains the desired temperature of 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 F) for up to six hours.

The end product looks like a quilted sleeping bag that is durable and portable. It requires only 30 minutes of electricity to warm up using a portable heater that comes with the product.

More importantly for mothers, it allows for increased contact with their child, unlike traditional incubators.

So it also encourages Kangaroo care, a technique practiced on newborn, especially pre-term infants, which promotes skin-to-skin contact to keep the baby warm and facilitate breastfeeding and bonding.

The infant warmer costs about $200 to make, is inexpensive to distribute, and is reusable.

Embrace is a non-profit venture. The product is not sold, but is donated to impoverished communities in need.

The invention is thought to have helped save the lives of more than 22,000 low birth-weight and premature infants.

Taking the program forward, the organization has developed a new version designed for at-home use by mothers. The model has been successfully prototyped and is currently undergoing clinical testing in India.

The organization has also set up educational program to address the root causes of hypothermia.

“We provide intensive, side-by-side training to mothers, caretakers, and healthcare workers,” says Alejandra Villalobos, director of development at Embrace.

“We develop long-term partnerships with local governments and non-profits in every community where we work.

“We believe that increased access to both technology and education is necessary to achieve our ultimate vision: that every woman and child has an equal chance for a healthy life.”

 

Google examines employees’ snacking habits to promote healthier alternatives

http://www.weightlossnote.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bad-eating-habits.JPG

Google realized that its workers were eating too much of the free candies and food which needed to be replaced with healthier alternatives at arm`s reach.

Google realized that its workers were eating too much of the free candies and food which needed to be replaced with healthier alternatives at arm`s reach.

The company conducted surveys of snacking patterns through the M and M project, collected data on the proximity of M and M bins to any given employee and conducted experiments by placing sugary foods in opaque containers and healthier snacks in glass jars.

According to the Washington Post, the search giant is known to analyze every corner of its workplace to ensure more productivity and better results.

However, some analysts question whether the free meals, napping stations and inexpensive massages make people stay in the office longer, perpetuating a work-obsessed culture that has eaten into family life and community.
While others said that with such experiments Google is trying to signal that it cares about it employees` health and its efforts are welcomed by the new employees.

Other than the candy munching habit, Google also tried to promote drinking more water by placing bottled water on eye-level shelves and behind clear glass while putting sugary sodas on the bottom shelves of refrigerators and behind frosted glass which resulted in 47 percent increase in water consumption after several weeks, reducing the sugary intake by 7 percent

 

J-K Govt organizes vaccination camp for Hajj pilgrims

The Jammu and Kashmir Government has organized a vaccination camp here for pilgrims heading for the Hajj to ensure they are protected from different diseases.

Every year, Muslims undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca as part of their religious duty and hope for salvation.

To ensure complete safety and a healthy journey, the state government decided to bear the expenses to vaccinate Hajj pilgrims this year.

Hajj pilgrims have welcomed the government`s initiative.
“Omar Abdullah (Chief Minister) announced an offering of Rs. 5,700,000 for this program. This has broug

ht great relief to the pilgrims,” said Gul Ahmad Khan, a pilgrim at the vaccination camp on Monday.

Each pilgrim received three vaccine shots, one each for Meningitis, polio and seasonal influenza.

The expenses for the first two are provided by the Government of India, while expenses for the third are borne by the state government, said Fayaz Lone, the executive officer of the State Hajj Committee.

The vaccination program has been launched at the district level where the pilgrims are being given injection for the protection from different diseases.

Authorities said over 8000 pilgrims will leave from the Kashmir valley for Mecca on September 7 for the annual pilgrimage.

Big belly raises death risk in heart attack survivors

http://topnews.in/files/big-belly101.jpgHigh waist circumference, severe obesity has been linked with the greatest risk of death in heart attack survivors, according to a research.

Professor Tabassome Simon said that the impact of obesity on long term mortality and cardiovascular complications in the general population has been the object of recent debate and much emphasis has also been given to the deleterious role of abdominal obesity.

Simon said that at the time of a heart attack, early mortality tends to be lower in obese patients, a phenomenon well known in critical care situations and described as the `obesity paradox`.

At 5 years, absolute mortality was highest in the leanest patients (BMI less than 22 kg /m2) and lowest in patients with BMI between 25 and 35 kg /m2 (i.e. overweight and mild obesity). Patients with severe obesity (BMI = 35 kg/m2) had a markedly increased mortality after 3 years. Severe abdominal obesity (waist circumference more than 100 cm in women and more than 115 cm in men) was also associated with increased long-term mortality.

Simon said that as waist circumference is strongly linked to BMI, the researchers determined the upper quartile of waist circumference within each BMI category and used both variables together to determine their respective role in association with long-term mortality.

She added that they found that both lean patients (BMI less than 22 kg/m2) and very obese patients (BMI =35 kg/m2) had an increased risk of death at 5 years: + 41 percent and + 65 percent, respectively. Being in the upper quartile of waist circumference was also an indicator of increased mortality at 5 years (+ 44 percent).

 

Listening to 30 mins of music can improve heart health

http://drkimfoster.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/music.jpgResearchers have discovered that listening to favorite music substantially improves endothelial function in Coronary Artery Disease.

The study evaluated the effects of listening to favorite music on endothelial function through changes of circulating blood markers of endothelial function: the stable end products of nitric oxide, asymmetric dimethylarginine, symmetric dimethylarginine and xanthine oxidase in 74 patients with stable CAD.

Professor Deljanin Ilic said that the combination of music and exercise training led to the most improvement in endothelial function. Improvements in endothelial function were associated with significant improvements in exercise capacity.

“Listening to joyful music for 30 minutes has been associated with improved endothelial function,” she said.

Source: Zee News

 

Men’s subconscious self-esteem related to partner’s life

Deep down, men may not bask in the glory of their successful wives or girlfriends. While this is not true of women, men’s subconscious self-esteem may be bruised when their spouse or girlfriend excels, says a study published by the American Psychological Association.

It didn’t matter if their significant other was an excellent hostess or intelligent, men were more likely to feel subconsciously worse about themselves when their female partner succeeded than when she failed, according to the study published online in the APA Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. However, women’s self-esteem was not affected by their male partners’ successes or failures, according to the research, which looked at heterosexual Americans and Dutch.

“It makes sense that a man might feel threatened if his girlfriend outperforms him in something they’re doing together, such as trying to lose weight,” said the study’s lead author, Kate Ratliff, PhD, of the University of Florida. “But this research found evidence that men automatically interpret a partner’s success as their own failure, even when they’re not in direct competition”

Men subconsciously felt worse about themselves when they thought about a time when their female partner thrived in a situation in which they had failed, according to the findings. The researchers studied 896 people in five experiments.

In one experiment, 32 couples from the University of Virginia were given what was described as a “test of problem solving and social intelligence” and then told that their partner scored either in the top or bottom 12 percent of all university students. Hearing that their partner scored high or low on the test did not affect what the researchers called participants’ explicit self-esteem – i.e., how they said they felt.

Participants were also given a test to determine how they felt subconsciously about their partners’ performance, which the researchers called implicit self-esteem. In this test, a computer tracks how quickly people associate good and bad words with themselves. For example, participants with high implicit self-esteem who see the word “me” on a computer screen are more likely to associate it with words such as “excellent” or “good” rather than “bad” or “dreadful.” Click here to see a sample of the test.

Men who believed that their partner scored in the top 12 percent demonstrated significantly lower implicit self-esteem than men who believed their partner scored in the bottom 12 percent. Participants did not receive information about their own performance.

Findings were similar in two more studies conducted in the Netherlands. The Netherlands boasts one of the smallest gender gaps in labor, education and politics, according to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Index. However, like American men, Dutch men who thought about their romantic partner’s success subconsciously felt worse about themselves than men who thought about their partner’s failure, according to both studies. They said they felt fine but the test of implicit self-esteem revealed otherwise.

In the final two experiments, conducted online, 657 U.S. participants, 284 of whom were men, were asked to think about a time when their partner had succeeded or failed. For example, some participants were asked to think about their partner’s social success or failure, such as being a charming host at a party, or a more intellectual achievement or failure. In one study, participants were told to think of a time when their partner succeeded or failed at something at which they had succeeded or failed. When comparing all the results, the researchers found that it didn’t matter if the achievements or failures were social, intellectual or related to participants’ own successes or failures – men subconsciously still felt worse about themselves when their partner succeeded than when she failed. However, men’s implicit self-esteem took a bigger hit when they thought about a time when their partner succeeded at something while they had failed.

Researchers also looked at how relationship satisfaction affected self-esteem. Women in these experiments reported feeling better about their relationship when they thought about a time their partner succeeded rather than a time when their partner failed but men did not.

Source: Medical news today

Early deaths from pollution in the US total 200,000 annually

Those who live in a particularly smoggy city in the US are able to see the pollution that surrounds them on a daily basis. But a recent study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reveals that people who live in all types of environments are at risk of pollution-related death.

The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, saw a team from MIT’s Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment track emissions from sources including industrial smokestacks, automobile tailpipes, marine and rail activities, and heating systems around the US.

In order to ascertain how many early deaths are a result of air pollution, the researchers used emissions data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Emissions Inventory, which is a catalog of emissions sources.

They used data from 2005, which was the most recent information available at the start of the study, and then divided it into six emissions sectors:

  • Electric power generation
  • Industry
  • Commercial and residential sources
  • Road transportation
  • Marine transportation
  • Rail transportation.

Results show that in total, air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths each year, with the greatest number coming from the roads – exhaust from automobile tailpipes was linked to 53,000 deaths per year.

Steven Barrett, assistant professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, says:

“It was surprising to me just how significant road transportation was, especially when you imagine [that] coal-fired power stations are burning relatively dirty fuel.”

Baltimore

One reason the researchers give for this finding is that vehicles are dense in likewise densely populated areas – which could increase the pollution exposure for large populations – whereas power plants are usually situated far from dense populations, and their emissions get deposited at a higher altitude.

Barrett says that a person whose death is pollution-related dies on average 10 years earlier than he or she otherwise would have.
Residents of Baltimore, MD, face the highest early emissions-related death rates.

When the MIT team analyzed the data on a state-by-state basis, they found that California’s residents have the worst exposure to air pollution, yielding about 21,000 premature deaths each year.

These deaths are mostly related to road transportation and emissions from both residential and commercial heating and cooking.

After mapping emissions in 5,695 cities across the US, the team found that Baltimore has the highest pollution-related mortality rate. In a given year, 130 out of every 100,000 residents will most likely die as a result of air pollution exposure.

Following closely behind automobile pollution, electricity generation emissions accounted for 52,000 early deaths each year.

The researchers note that the largest impact for deaths related to this type of pollution occurred in the east-central US and in the Midwest. They suggest a reason for this may be that Eastern power plants use coal with higher sulfur content than Western plants.

But the West Coast definitely did not escape health impacts. In Southern California alone, for example, marine-derived pollution from shipping and port activities accounted for 3,500 early deaths.

Barrett says:

“In the past 5 to 10 years, the evidence linking air-pollution exposure to risk of early death has really solidified and gained scientific and political traction.

There’s a realization that air pollution is a major problem in any city, and there’s a desire to do something about it.”

He notes that although the study is based on numbers from 2005, the results most likely represent today’s pollution health risks.

Source: Medical news today

PM concerned over quality of medical education

Expressing concern over the quality of medical education, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said a “credible regulatory” mechanism should be put in place and a “serious look” given at the curriculum.

“There is a perception of deteriorating quality. We cannot allow this situation to continue. We must put in place a credible regulatory and institutional mechanism to help develop standards in our medical education”, he said in his address at the third Convocation in Jawaharlal Institute of Post graduate Medical Education and Research here.

He said a serious look at the curriculum for medical education needs to be taken so that doctors are trained to look at health in a holistic manner that goes beyond a narrow clinical and technology-driven approach.

Observing that the country faces “serious challenges” in assuring the health and well-being of people, he said, health indicators continue to be poor and high mortality rates of infants and pregnant women have been a cause of serious concern.

Despite decades of implementing health and family welfare programmes, the country was still faced with a situation where two thirds of health expenditure was borne by people from out of their pockets, with a large proportion of this expenditure being on purchase of drugs, he said.

“Our government has decided to continue the National Rural Health Mission for the next five years. We are now proposing a new National Urban Health Mission in order to focus on the health challenges in our towns and cities,” he said in the presence of Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad and others.

Source: Zee News

3,000 more MBBS seats to be created

Government is set to create 3,000 new MBBS seats across the country taking the total number to over 48,000 in a move aimed at attaining the optimum doctor- population ratio.

As a one-time measure, the Medical Council of India, the apex medical education regulator, has allowed government and recognised private medical colleges with 10 years of standing to increase their MBBS seats.

While those medical colleges with 50 seats at present will be allowed to increase their seats to 100 and those with 100 seats now will be permitted to hike them to 150, as per the scheme. The grant of permission for new MBBS seats will be decided by July 31 following applications from various government and private medical colleges which have applied for increase of their seats.

MCI has notified a new set of regulations – the ‘Enhancement of Annual intake capacity in Undergraduate Courses in Medical Colleges for academic session 2013-14 only regulations, 2013’.

MCI will have to later carry out a physical verification and inspection of medical facilities and infrastructure at medical colleges where the seats are being increased.

There are a total of 362 medical colleges in the country, with over 45,000 MBBS seats in them across the country.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/3-000-more-mbbs-seats-to-be-created_862694.html

Botox can help treat more than just wrinkles

Botox, which is best known as a cosmetic treatment for frown lines, can also effectively treat the after effects of Bell`s palsy and other serious facial nerve problems.

Bell`s palsy results from damage to the facial nerve that controls muscles on one side of the face.

Ear-nose-throat surgeon Dr. Matthew Kircher of Loyola University Medical Center is giving patients Botox injections to treat facial nerve disorders that sometimes occur after Bell`s palsy, including unwanted facial movements known as synkinesis.

Botox injections work by weakening or paralyzing certain muscles or by temporarily blocking the nerve input into the muscles.

Facial synkinesis is the involuntary movement of one set of muscles when the patient tries to move another set of muscles. For example, when the patient blinks, the mouth smiles or grimaces.

Botox can improve the symmetry of the face and reduce muscle contractures and spasms.

Botox also is effective for platysmal banding – verticle lines that develop in the neck as a result of muscle contractions.

Kircher said that he starts out conservatively, treating patients with dilute doses.

After seeing how well the patient does, Kircher adjusts the dose if necessary.

Botox is not a cure. The drug wears off after three or four months, so patients need repeat injections.