South Asians Must Reduce Disease Burdens to Improve Prospects



Poverty, hunger, unsanitary or unsafe conditions and inadequate health care in South Asia's developing nations are exposing their citizens to high risk of a variety of diseases which may impact their intelligence. Every year, World Health Organization reports what it calls "Environmental Burden of Disease" in each country of the world in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) per 1000 people and total number of deaths from diseases ranging from diarrhea and other infectious diseases to heart disease, road traffic injuries and different forms of cancer.



In the range of DALYs/1000 capita from 13 (lowest) to 289 (highest), WHO's latest data indicates that India is at 65 while Pakistan is slightly better at 58. In terms of total number of deaths per year from disease, India stands at 2.7 million deaths while Pakistani death toll is 318, 400 people. Among other South Asian nations, Afghanistan's DALYs/1000 is 255, Bangladesh 64 and Sri Lanka 61. By contrast, the DALYs/1000 figures are 14 for Singapore and 32 for China.

Recent research shows that there are potentially far reaching negative consequences for nations carrying high levels of disease burdens causing lower average intelligence among their current and future generations.

Published by the University of New Mexico and reported by Newsweek, new research shows that there is a link between lower IQs and prevalence of infectious diseases. Comparing data on national “disease burdens” (life years lost due to infectious diseases or DALYs) with average intelligence scores, the authors found a striking inverse correlation—around 67 percent. They also found that the cognitive ability is rising in some countries than in others, and IQ scores have risen as nations develop—a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect.”



According to the UNM study's author Christopher Eppig and his colleagues, the human brain is the “most costly organ in the human body.” The Newsweek article adds that the "brainpower gobbles up close to 90 percent of a newborn’s energy. It stands to reason, then, that if something interferes with energy intake while the brain is growing, the impact could be serious and longlasting. And for vast swaths of the globe, the biggest threat to a child’s body—and hence brain—is parasitic infection. These illnesses threaten brain development in several ways. They can directly attack live tissue, which the body must then strain to replace. They can invade the digestive tract and block nutritional uptake. They can hijack the body’s cells for their own reproduction. And then there’s the energy diverted to the immune system to fight the infection. Out of all the parasites, the diarrheal ones may be the gravest threat—they can prevent the body from getting any nutrients at all".

Looking at the situation in South Asia, it appears from the WHO data that Pakistan is doing a bit better than India in 12 out of 14 disease groups ranging from diarrhea to heart disease to intentional injuries, and it is equal for the remaining two (Malaria and Asthma).

A detailed WHO report on World Health Statistics for 2010 assesses and compares its member nations on the basis of nine criteria including mortality and burden of disease, cause-specific mortality, selected infectious diseases, health service coverage, risk factors, health workforce-infrastructure, health expenditures and demographic and socioeconomic statistics. It shows that both India and Pakistan have some serious challenges to overcome to have any chance of meeting health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs 4, 5 and 6).

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Infectious Diseases Kill Millions in South Asia

Infectious Diseases Cause Low IQ

Malnutrition Challenge in India and Pakistan

Hunger: India's Growth Story

WHO Report 2010 Blogger Analysis

Syeda Hamida of Indian Planning Commission Says India Worse Than Pakistan and Bangladesh

Global Hunger Index Report 2009

Grinding Poverty in Resurgent India

WRI Report on BOP Housing Market

Food, Clothing and Shelter For All

India's Family Health Survey

Is India a Nutritional Weakling?

Asian Gains in World's Top Universities

South Asia Slipping in Human Development

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
Here is a little trivia about India and Pakistan IQs:

According to Prof Richard Lynn's worldwide IQ data published by Webster Online dictionary, Pakistanis avg IQ rose from 81 in 2002 to 84 in 2006, while Indians's avg IQ increased by just one point from 81 to 82.

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/IQ+and+Global+Inequality?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=IQ+and+Global+Inequality&sa=Search#922

A recent UNM study linking IQs and disease burdens can be the basis for rationalizing it.

Looking at the situation in South Asia, it appears from the WHO data that Pakistan is doing a bit better than India in 12 out of 14 disease groups ranging from diarrhea to heart disease to intentional injuries, and it is equal for the remaining two (Malaria and Asthma).

Poverty, hunger, unsanitary or unsafe conditions and inadequate health care in South Asia's developing nations are exposing their citizens to high risk of a variety of diseases which may impact their intelligence. Every year, World Health Organization reports what it calls "Environmental Burden of Disease" in each country of the world in terms of disability adjusted life years (DALYs) per 1000 people and total number of deaths from diseases ranging from diarrhea and other infectious diseases to heart disease, road traffic injuries and different forms of cancer.

In the range of DALYs/1000 capita from 13 (lowest) to 289 (highest), WHO's latest data indicates that India is at 65 while Pakistan is slightly better at 58. In terms of total number of deaths per year from disease, India stands at 2.7 million deaths while Pakistani death toll is 318, 400 people. Among other South Asian nations, Afghanistan's DALYs/1000 is 255, Bangladesh 64 and Sri Lanka 61. By contrast, the DALYs/1000 figures are 14 for Singapore and 32 for China.
Riaz Haq said…
Here's an excerpt from a paper by Professor J. Philippe Rushton on IQ variations across the world:

Classical anthropology often placed South Asians and North Africans in the same taxonomic group as Europeans and designated them both as Caucasoids. But modern genetic studies, such as those by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, show the South Asians/North Africans are a surprisingly distinct "genetic cluster". They can be distinguished from Europeans to their north as well as from sub-Saharan Africans to their south and the other Asian groups to their east.

The evidence that the average IQ of the North Africans/South Asians is as low as 85 is extensive. Lynn reviewed 37 IQ studies from 16 countries such as India, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq and found an IQ range of from 77 to 96 with a median of 84. He reviewed 13 studies of immigrants from those countries in the UK and Australia and found a median IQ of 89. He reviewed 18 further studies of South Asians and North Africans in Continental Europe and found a median IQ of 84. He reviewed 9 studies of South Asians in Africa, Fiji, Malaysia, and Mauritius and found a median IQ of 88. Finally, Lynn reviewed 13 studies of select South Asian and North African high school and university students and found a median IQ of 92, eight points higher than that of general population samples.

Lynn’s finding of an average South Asian IQ of 85 has been corroborated by Jan te Nijenhuis and colleagues in Holland, who analyzed thousands of respondents including nationally representative samples. They found an average IQ of 81 for first generation Turks and Moroccans living in the Netherlands. They found an IQ of 88 for the second generation, who spoke Dutch and had been educated in the Dutch school system. They published their results in the 2004 European Journal of Personality.

Another finding of a low South Asian IQ came from a review of studies on the Gypsies (or Roma as they are now often called). This South Asian population migrated to southeastern Europe from northwest India between the 9th and 14th centuries and currently number between 4 and 10 million. Their average IQ in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, based on a review of 10 studies by Petr Bakalar, is below 80. His review was published in the 2004 Mankind Quarterly.

I too have confirmed the very low IQ for the Roma. This was in a study carried out in and around Belgrade, in Serbia. My colleagues and I individually tested 323 16- to 66-year-olds over a two-year period in three separate communities using the Raven’s Matrices, a widely-used, culture-reduced, non-verbal test of general intelligence, and four other tests usually given to children. On these tests, we found the Roma averaged at the level of Serbian 10-year-olds. (Our study was published in the January 2007 issue of Intelligence.)


http://www.vdare.com/rushton/070926_indians.htm
Riaz Haq said…
India's continued economic growth will be at risk unless quick action is taken to improve the health of its growing population, a report says carried by the BBC:

It says that India is in the early stages of a chronic disease epidemic which affects the health of both rich and poor people.

It calls for a comprehensive national health system to be set up by 2020.

The report consists of a series of studies published by the British medical journal, The Lancet.

"Rapidly improving socio-economic status in India is associated with a reduction of physical activity and increased rates of obesity and diabetes," says the paper on chronic diseases and injuries - led by Vikram Patel from the Sangath Centre in Goa.

It says that Indians are growing wealthier but exercising less and indulging in fatty foods.

They also risk injury by driving more often and faster on the country's notoriously dangerous roads, often under the influence of alcohol.

"The emerging pattern in India is characterised by an initial uptake of harmful health behaviours in the early phase of socio-economic development," Mr Patel's paper says.

He and other authors of the report argue that the problem can only be tackled by better education, because bad habits tend to decline once consumers become aware of risks to their health.

The report states that overall the poor in India are the most vulnerable to diseases - and are further burdened by having to pay for healthcare in a country where health indicators lag behind its impressive economic growth figures.

The study also says it is important that India, with its fast-growing population soon exceeding 1.2 billion, takes steps to prevent illnesses such as heart or respiratory diseases, cancer and diabetes.

It says that this can be funded by gradually increasing public expenditure and implementing new taxes on tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy foods.
Riaz Haq said…
There are reports that the use of gutka in India and Pakistan is causing growng incidence of oral cancer.

Businessweek has reported that India has the highest number of oral cancers in the world after a group of entrepreneurs known locally as “gutka barons” turned a 400-year-old tobacco product hand-rolled in betel leaves into a spicy blend sold for 2 cents on street corners from Bangalore to New Delhi. Sales of chewing tobacco, worth 210.3 billion rupees ($4.6 billion) in 2004, are on track to double by 2014, according to Datamonitor, a branch of the international research firm based in Hyderabad, India.

“Now you have an industrial version of a traditional thing” spurring demand, said Chaturvedi, who works at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, Asia’s largest cancer treatment center, and draws cartoons to warn of tobacco’s dangers in his spare time. “By the time you are experimenting with this product, you become the slave of the industry.”

India had almost 70,000 diagnosed cases of cancers of the mouth in 2008, the highest in the world ahead of the U.S. at 23,000 cases, according to statistics compiled by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.



Recent studies reported in Dawn on the subject show that Karachi has the highest incidence of oral cancer in the world. With the increasing number of oral cancer cases, the city may witness an epidemic in the coming years, medical experts believe.

A study conducted by the sociology department of Karachi University in 2006 found that 93 per cent children of 50 government and private schools in Saddar Town spent their pocket money on buying areca nut and seven per cent on betel leaf (paan) and gutka.

An Aga Khan University research titled, Socio-demographic correlates of betel, areca and smokeless tobacco use as high risk behaviour for head and neck cancers in a squatter settlement of Karachi, found that head and neck cancers were a major cancer burden in Pakistan.“They share a common risk factor profile, including regular consumption of products of betel, areca and tobacco. Use of paan, chhaalia, gutka, niswar and tobacco is acceptable in Pakistan and is considered a normal cultural practice.”
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a BBC report on pregnant women's deaths in Rajathan due to tainted UV fluids:

..The (three) doctors have been charged with negligence and irregularities in purchases of medicines.

The women died after they were given infected intravenous (IV) fluids at two hospitals in Jodhpur city.

Laboratory tests had confirmed that IV fluids supplied by a local company were "tainted", officials said.

The women died after severe haemorrhaging after they were administered with the IV fluids, authorities say.

India accounts for the highest number of maternal deaths in the world, with tens of thousands of women dying every year due to pregnancy-related problems.

...


Here's a Deccan Herald story on tainted medicines in India:

It is said that roughly 10 per cent of the medicines available in the market are counterfeit, contaminated or substandard. Profits are huge in the trade. This is a massive racket that involves not just illicit manufacturers but a long chain that includes distributors and then, of course, the shops and hospitals through which these spurious medicines are pushed. It is alleged that pharmacists selling counterfeit drugs profit from doing so. If manufactures are able to push their contaminated drugs easily, it is because hospital authorities are not vigilant. They prefer to purchase medicines from those who grease their palms rather than trusted manufacturers. The problem of contaminated medicines is not one that is confined to allopathic medicines. Testing of some samples of ayurvedic or homeopathic medicines has revealed presence of toxic metal.

Indian pharmaceutical companies export medicines to Africa and Latin America. Therefore, the manufacture of substandard drugs and contaminated fluids poses a grave public health threat that extends far beyond India’s borders. Stern action against those responsible for Jodhpur tragedy is welcome. But it must not stop there. The government must act against other manufacturers of counterfeit and contaminated medicines. The crime they are engaging in is not a minor one. It cannot be brushed aside as mere negligence as they are causing the death of people. They cannot be allowed to play with people’s lives. It is undermining the legitimacy of our medical system.
Riaz Haq said…
For those who are curious, suicides in Pakistan are among the lowest in the world.

At 3 per 100,000, the suicide rate in Pakistan is only a fifth of the suicide rate in India of 15 per 100,000, according to WHO data.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/resources/suicide_prevention_asia_chapter1.pdf

In addition to growing farmers' suicide, India has also experienced a spike in urban youth suicides.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-16/nagpur/28551501_1_suicide-note-young-suicides-students-feeling
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a story of Pakistan's 100,000 ladies health workers reaching out to rural communities:

KARACHI, Mar 16, 2011 (IPS) - At eight in the morning 30-year-old Sultana Solangi steps out of her house ready for her day’s work. Wearing a black gown that shows only her eyes, she is shod in comfortable slippers and lugs a large black bag.

She will walk through this city’s poorest communities, visiting as many as 10 homes everyday, helping to raise awareness and improve maternal and child health.

In her bag is an assortment of medical supplies: Paracetamol tablets and oral rehydration salts, bandages, condoms, contraceptive pills, iron and folic acid tablets, eye ointments, and antiseptic lotion.

Solangi, the sole breadwinner in her family of four, works as a lady health worker (LHW), employed by the government’s National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Health Care.

Launched in 1994, the programme now has a veritable army of 100,000 LHWs covering 60 percent of the population - the biggest outreach intervention in South Asia.

These women venture where few doctors dare to go, from congested cities to far-flung and underdeveloped rural areas, acting as the link between communities and the public health system.

Over the years, their work has expanded to include health campaigns like administering polio drops to children under five, plus neonatal tetanus, measles, tuberculosis, and malaria control.

LHWs are particularly important in the rural areas where three-quarters of Pakistan’s population live, and where a trip to a health centre may require a hike of a couple of hours to as much as a day. Illiteracy is widespread in these areas and often customs prevent women from seeking health services without being chaperoned by a male family member.

Solangi cited the case of Zahida Sanghi, a woman Solangi’s age but already a mother of seven. Sanghi lives in People’s Colony, a community in Larkana city in Sindh province, some 322 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi, which is part of Solangi’s coverage area.

"Zahida Sanghi was very weak and would not have survived another pregnancy. The husband is jobless. It took close to two months to convince her mother-in-law that it was all right for her to get a tubal ligation done since her family was complete. This is all part of my job," she said.

Every day, Solangi and her colleagues cover between five to 10 houses and talk to women like Sanghi about the importance of antenatal check-ups, vaccinations, safe delivery, the use and making of oral rehydration salts, and modern methods of family planning.

They also hold about eight group sessions each month where they discuss with local women issues related to mother and child health.

Yet despite the LHW programme, Pakistan remains a maternal and infant health hotspot.

The Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS), conducted from 2006 to 2007, shows an infant mortality rate of 78 deaths per 1,000 live births. It also shows a mortality rate of children under five years old of 94 deaths per 1,000 live births. This means one in every 11 children born in Pakistan dies before reaching his or her fifth birthday.

The maternal mortality rate of 276 per 100,000 live births is also far too high, and has remained virtually unchanged since 1991.

Sadiqa Jaffery, president of the National Committee on Maternal and Neonatal Health, said the statistics would be much worse without the LHWs on the ground.

"It’s been established that where LHWs are present family planning services and routine immunisation is better. The problem is that the coverage is not blanket," Jaffery said.

But Farid Midhet, founder of the Safe Motherhood Pakistan Alliance, remains unconvinced of the impact of LHWs. "Family planning is the cornerstone of women’s health services and it still eludes millions," he said.
Riaz Haq said…
Among inherited diseases, sickle cell is one reported mainly in Africa, India and the Mediterranean countries, according to an Emory University study:

Millions of people worldwide suffer from the affects of sickle cell anemia – especially those of African, Mediterranean and Indian descent. According to CDC, more than 70,000 people in the United States have sickle cell disease, mostly African Americans. Each year more than 1,000 babies are born with sickle cell disease.

The inherited disorder affects the blood’s hemoglobin, which produces stiff, misshapen red blood cells that deliver less oxygen and can disrupt blood flow, resulting in joint and organ damage and potential clots and strokes. The sickling of red blood cells is aggravated by infections, extreme hot or cold temperatures, poor oxygen intake, not drinking enough fluids and stress.

Eckman says his Center is a unique resource – the only place in the world where patients can be treated 24 hours a day, seven days a week for sickle cell. He notes that the Center functions with admissions, emergency room and short-stay center. A patient can be admitted in 10- to 15-minutes, versus three hours in an ER. Eckman says the more quickly you treat the pain, the more likely it is to be controlled.

Facts About Sickle Cell Anemia

* Sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder involving the chemical known as hemoglobin contained in red blood cells. Hemoglobin carries oxygen to all parts of the body. When sickle hemoglobin loses its oxygen, it forms long rods inside the red blood cells. This causes the red blood cell to lose its round, donut shape and form a hard, sickle, crescent shape.
* Unlike normal red blood cells that are disc-shaped and move easily through the blood vessels, sickle cells are stiff and sticky and tend to form clumps and get stuck in the blood vessels.
* The clumps of sickle cells block blood flow in the blood vessels that lead to the limbs and organs. Blocked blood vessels can cause pain, serious infections and organ damage.
* Sickle cell disease primarily affects individuals of African descent, but can affect people from Italy, Greece, Israel, India, Pakistan, Spain, Central America, the Caribbean and many other ethnic groups.
* Sudden pain throughout the body is a common symptom of sickle cell anemia. This pain is called a “sickle cell crisis.” Sickle cell crises often affect the bones, lungs, abdomen and joints.
* Early diagnosis of sickle cell anemia is very important. Children who have the disease need prompt and proper treatment.
Riaz Haq said…
US CIA's fake vaccine ploy to get bin Laden has hurt Pakistan's polio fight, reports the Wall Street Journal:

The United Nations says a reportedly fake vaccination campaign conducted to help hunt down Osama bin Laden has caused a backlash against international health workers in some parts of Pakistan and has impeded efforts to wipe out polio in the country.

A number of families across Pakistan refused vaccinations from July, when news of the reportedly fake campaign broke, to September, said Dennis King, chief of polio vaccinations in Pakistan for Unicef. "Following the early reports, some families in the provinces did refuse to have their children vaccinated citing the fake campaign as the cause," Mr. King said.

The refusals, he added, have declined since September due to vigorous campaigning by international and local health workers to ensure families they are working only to vaccinate against polio, a disease eradicated in most of the world but still prevalent in Pakistan.

Pakistan military intelligence in July detained a local doctor, Shakeel Afridi, on charges of involvement with the reportedly fake vaccination campaign, supposedly involving vaccine against hepatitis B. Pakistan officials believe the campaign was an attempt to get DNA samples from bin Laden's family to confirm his location in a house in Abbottabad.

In May, U.S. Navy SEALs raided the house, killing bin Laden. A Pakistani judicial committee has recommended Dr. Afridi be charged with treason, which carries the death penalty. He hasn't been made available to comment since his arrest.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which Pakistani officials say carried out the purportedly fake program, hasn't publicly commented. Officials familiar with the bin Laden operation say the CIA did indeed institute a mock vaccine program with a local doctor who had previously been an informant in the tribal areas. The plan was to obtain DNA from residents of the Abbottabad compound as they got a vaccine injection, helping confirm bin Laden's presence there....
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Ghulam Rasool, a laborer from Khyber, found out in March that his 18-month-old son had polio after militants had warned off health workers.

"I know my child's future has been ruined, but I won't let it happen to my other kids," he says. "Now I have brought eight children of my extended family to Peshawar to get them vaccinated despite threats."

Senior Pakistani health officials condemn Mr. Afridi's role as unethical.

"Everybody in the medical profession resented his deceptive role. Defeating polio in Pakistan is challenging anyway, and this created negative associations," says Janbaz Afridi, deputy director at Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's provincial health department in Peshawar.

Pakistan is one of the last significant polio reservoirs in the world, imperiling global eradication efforts, Unicef warns.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204190504577038781784474056.html
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan's private health care spending rises to $7.3 billion, reports Express Tribune:

Pakistanis are increasingly spending more on health, with spending rising to a total of Rs665 billion in 2011, up 14.5% over the previous year, according a to research report released by Business Monitor International (BMI), a UK-based research and consulting firm.

Within the overall sector, the largest in terms of total spending was that of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, which saw their total revenues rise to Rs456 billion in 2011, up 14.1% from the year before. The fastest growing segment was medical devices, which saw sales rise 18.1% to Rs35.5 billion. Pharmaceuticals grew a little slower, at 13.1%, to reach Rs173 billion in gross sales in Pakistan.

There are also several developments taking place within the sector that are likely to allow for even further expansion, according to BMI analysts.

In August 2011, the Drug Registration Board (DRB) approved the registration of 30 medical devices and 210 medicines after a meeting was held at the request of the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who called for the uninterrupted provision of medicines to patients. Products approved for registration included vaccines, biologicals, cancer therapeutics, drugs for the treatment of blood disorders such as thalassaemia, and devices used in cardiac procedures.

BMI points out that there are many reasons why investors, particularly those outside the country may want to consider investing in this sector. “Pakistan has one of the most liberal foreign investment regimes in South Asia, with a commitment to low tariffs and 100% foreign equity permitted,” said BMI analysts in the report.

The analysts also note that Pakistan’s rapidly growing population – currently closing in on 190 million – should also be considered an asset. “A growing population is feeding increased demand for pharmaceuticals.”
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Pakistan’s overall business environment gets a poor rating from BMI, which ranks the economy 16th out of the 18 economies that it tracks in the Asia-Pacific region. The only two economies behind Pakistan are Sri Lanka and Cambodia. “The business environment still suffers from poor infrastructure and, most problematically, an uncertain security situation that has declined considerably since March 2007,” said BMI analysts.

In addition, there are several structural challenges to the Pakistani healthcare industry itself that have little to do with the external environment of Pakistan that they operate in. “Procurement processes are bureaucratic and often lack transparency, raising the risks of corruption,” said BMI in its report.


http://tribune.com.pk/story/384773/money-and-doctors-private-healthcare-spending-in-pakistan-rises-to-7-3-billion/
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan to get closer to meeting MDGs, reports News Tribe:

...According to the reports, Pneumonia kills an estimated 1.5 million children under the age of five years every year over the world – more than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. “Here in Pakistan the lack of awareness among masses has been furthering the rise of chronic diseases, which is alarming,’ he added.

But, he adds, luckily expensive pneumonia control vaccinations are being provided free of cost at EPIcenters in the country, as the government of Pakistan is introducing pneumococcal vaccine in the EPI programme with the help of Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).

Moreover, Dr. Tariq Bhutta added that reducing child mortality rate is one of the eight MDGs, which are the world’s time bound targets for reducing poverty in its various dimensions by 2015. Pakistan is heading towards achieving that targets, while the MDG on child mortality will require urgent action to control childhood deaths by pneumonia, which is 19 percent of the all the deaths of under-five children in the country.

Dr. Bhutta said that Pneumonia kills more children than any other illness – more than Aids, Malaria and Measles combined. ‘Yet, little attention is paid to this disease. After free availability of pneumonia vaccine at all government hospitals public awareness regarding the availability of vaccine needs to be increased for the EPI program to have its full time impact.

It is worth adding that Pneumonia is a severe form of acute lower respiratory infection that specifically affects the lungs. ‘Chest X-rays and laboratory tests are done to confirm the extent and location of the Pneumonia infection and its cause,’ he said, adding that but here in Pakistan suspected cases of pneumonia are diagnosed by their clinical symptoms due to non-availability of latest technologies. This becomes severe when transformed to other organs through the bloodstream causing meningitis, bacterimia and sepsis.

Dr Bhutta further said that during or shortly after birth babies are at higher risk of developing pneumonia. The statistics of World Health Organization (WHO) show that more than 150 million episodes of pneumonia occur every year among children under five in developing countries, accounting for more than 90 per cent of all new cases worldwide. Between 11 million and 20 million children with pneumonia will require hospitalization, and almost 1.8 million will die from the disease.

But, he adds, luckily Pakistan is fortunate in the sense that pneumonia prevention vaccine has been provided free of cost by GAVI Alliance, a global NGO, to vaccinate all 5 million babies that are born every year in Pakistan. ‘A course of three injections to newborns was previously costing approximately Rs 14000, but with the funding of GAVI this treatment is available free of cost across the country for the masses. Three vaccines include the measles, Hib and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines have the potential to significantly reduce child deaths from pneumonia,’ he added.

It is to be noted that immunizations help reduce childhood deaths from pneumonia in two ways: first, vaccinations help prevent children from developing infections that directly cause pneumonia such as Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib); secondly, immunizations may prevent infections that can lead to pneumonia as a complication (e.g., measles and pertussis).

Dr Tariq Bhutta encouraged all parents to take their infants at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of ages to the government EPI center and hospitals in their vicinity for vaccination.


http://www.thenewstribe.com/2012/11/04/pakistan-to-get-closer-to-millennium-development-goals/
Riaz Haq said…
Here's Kantawala in Friday Times on India's Dengue outbreak killing Yash Chopra:

I'm still not over Yash Chopra dying from Dengue disease. I just thought I'd throw that out there. Of course it's sad that the Rom Com Don passed away and I do hope he is running through heavenly wheat fields while singing love songs to clouds and backup singers, like the many dream sequences he inspired in us all. But I would never have thought of Dengue and Bollywood in the same sentence until now (or Dengue and anything, really. It's still not so much a reality as a morbid punch-line). It just reminded me of how good India is at PR. During last year's Succubus Summer Solstice, when Dengue Mosquitoes hit the Punjab like a wife beater with Daddy Issues, we lost over 2,000 people to the disease. Judges, trainers, workers, rich, poor, women, men. We covered it (forgive me) to death in newspapers, and the news of the world was gripped with yet another Pakistan catastrophe. For six months it really was like the end of a disaster movie called Infection or Gestation Period or something clinically unimaginative.
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Last year, around this time, a water-based brain disease killed 500 children in a town in Northern India in one week. One week! It comes every year, it's just that that year was particularly bad. Now, how does a deadly, brain-eating, child specialist disease that may or may not have "come from Japan" not make it to the world's news? How? PR people. That's how. Get on that.


Here's NY Times on dengue fever in India:

NEW DELHI - An epidemic of dengue fever in India is fostering a growing sense of alarm even as government officials here have publicly refused to acknowledge the scope of a problem that experts say is threatening hundreds of millions of people, not just in India but around the world.

India has become the focal point for a mosquito-borne plague that is sweeping the globe. Reported in just a handful of countries in the 1950s, dengue (pronounced DEN-gay) is now endemic in half the world's nations.

"The global dengue problem is far worse than most people know, and it keeps getting worse," said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, the World Health Organization's lead dengue coordinator.

The tropical disease, though life-threatening for a tiny fraction of those infected, can be extremely painful. Growing numbers of Western tourists are returning from warm-weather vacations with the disease, which has reached the shores of the United States and Europe. Last month, health officials in Miami announced a case of locally acquired dengue infection.

Here in India's capital, where areas of standing water contribute to the epidemic's growth, hospitals are overrun and feverish patients are sharing beds and languishing in hallways. At Kalawati Saran Hospital, a pediatric facility, a large crowd of relatives lay on mats and blankets under the shade of a huge banyan tree outside the hospital entrance recently.

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"I'd conservatively estimate that there are 37 million dengue infections occurring every year in India, and maybe 227,500 hospitalizations," said Dr. Scott Halstead, a tropical disease expert focused on dengue research...


http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/world/asia/alarm-over-indias-dengue-fever-epidemic.xml
Riaz Haq said…
India leads the world in dengue, reports The Hindu:

Dengue, the world’s most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral disease, is taking a far bigger human toll than was believed to be the case. As many as 390 million people across the globe could be falling victim to the virus each year, according to a multinational study published by Nature on Sunday.

India emerges in the analysis as the country with the world’s highest dengue burden, with about 34 per cent of all such cases occurring here.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), incidence of dengue has shot up 30 fold in the past 50 years. Its estimate has been that globally there were 50-100 million dengue infections taking place annually.

For their study, Samir Bhatt at the University of Oxford and his colleagues used a map-based approach to model how many dengue cases were occurring in various parts of the world, thereby capturing its global distribution.

They estimated that worldwide, 96 million people suffered each year from ‘apparent infections’ where the disease was severe enough to disrupt an individual’s regular routine. In addition, there were 294 million asymptomatic infections.

With “large swathes of densely populated regions coinciding with very high suitability for disease transmission,” Asia bore 70 per cent of the apparent infections that took place, the scientists pointed out in the paper.

Africa contributed about 16 per cent of the global dengue infections and the Americas 14 per cent.

“I consider it to be the most comprehensive study of dengue disease burden to date,” said Duane J. Gubler, an internationally known expert on the disease, when asked for his views on the Nature paper.

The study’s estimate of 390 million infections was “much closer to the actual figure than the 50 million WHO is still using,” observed Professor Gubler, who is now with the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore.

“Considering that mosquito control has failed in all dengue-endemic countries, that over half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and that dengue is an urban disease, even that number may be too low,” he said in an e-mail.

The study estimated that India had the largest number of dengue cases, with about 33 million apparent and another 100 million asymptomatic infections occurring annually.

However “these are estimates and there are many gaps which we now need to fill,” cautioned Jeremy Farrar, a senior author of the study, in an e-mail. “But it would not surprise me that India was home to the most dengue [patients] globally.”

The model used in the study could help provide a framework to estimate the burden of disease. Inevitably, there were gaps in the data and one needed to extrapolate from other areas. Better data collection should be encouraged so that the estimates were as accurate as possible, said Professor Farrar, who is director of the Wellcome Trust Vietnam Research Programme and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam.

“We have a tremendous problem of dengue all over India,” said Umesh C. Chaturvedi, agreeing with the finding of the paper. A virologist who has studied the disease, he is a scientific consultant to the Indian Council of Medical Research.


http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/policy-and-issues/india-leads-the-world-in-dengue-burden-nature/article4592098.ece
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a Bloomberg story on a tourist's experience with Indian medical system:

Lill-Karin Skaret, a 67-year-old grandmother from Namsos, Norway, was traveling to a lakeside vacation villa near India’s port city of Kochi in March 2010 when her car collided with a truck. She was rushed to the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, her right leg broken and her artificial hip so damaged that replacing it required 12 hours of surgery.
Three weeks later and walking with the aid of crutches, Skaret was relieved to be home. Then her doctor gave her upsetting news. Mutant germs that most antibiotics can’t kill had entered her bladder, probably from a contaminated hospital catheter in India. She risked a life-threatening infection if the bacteria invaded her bloodstream -- a waiting game over which she had limited control, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

“I got a call from my doctor who told me they found this bug in me and I had to take precautions,” Skaret remembers. “I was very afraid.”
Skaret was lucky. Eventually, her body rid itself of the bacteria, and she escaped harm from a new type of superbug that scientists warn is spreading faster, further and in more alarming ways than any they’ve encountered. Researchers say the epicenter is India, where drugs created to fight disease have taken a perverse turn by making many ailments harder to treat.
India’s $12.4 billion pharmaceutical industry manufactures almost a third of the world’s antibiotics, and people use them so liberally that relatively benign and beneficial bacteria are becoming drug immune in a pool of resistance that thwarts even high-powered antibiotics, the so-called remedies of last resort.
Medical Tourism
Poor hygiene has spread resistant germs into India’s drains, sewers and drinking water, putting millions at risk of drug-defying infections. Antibiotic residues from drug manufacturing, livestock treatment and medical waste have entered water and sanitation systems, exacerbating the problem.
As the superbacteria take up residence in hospitals, they’re compromising patient care and tarnishing India’s image as a medical tourism destination.
“There isn’t anything you could take with you traveling that would be useful against these superbugs,” says Robert Moellering Jr., a professor of medical research at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

-----------
India is susceptible because it has many sick people to begin with. The country accounts for more than a quarter of the world’s pneumonia cases. It has the most tuberculosis patients globally and Asia’s highest incidence of cholera.
Most of India’s 5,000-plus drugmakers produce low-cost generic antibiotics, letting users and doctors switch around to find ones that work. While that’s happening, the germs the antibiotics are targeting accumulate genes for evading each drug. That enables the bugs to survive and proliferate whenever they encounter an antibiotic they’ve already adapted to.
India’s inadequate sanitation increases the scope of antibacterial resistance. More than half of the nation’s 1.2 billion residents defecate in the open, and 23 percent of city dwellers have no toilets, according to a 2012 report by the WHO and Unicef.
Uncovered sewers and overflowing drains in even such modern cities as New Delhi spread resistant germs through feces, tainting food and water and covering surfaces in what Dartmouth Medical School researcher Elmer Pfefferkorn describes as a fecal veneer..


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/drug-defying-germs-from-india-speed-post-antibiotic-era.html
Riaz Haq said…
Here's a TOI story on link between low IQ and poverty:

Poverty and the all-consuming fretting that comes with it require so much mental energy that the poor have little brain power left to devote to other areas of life, according to the findings of an international study published on Thursday.


The mental strain could be costing poor people up to 13 IQ (intelligence quotient) points and means they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions that amplify and perpetuate their financial woes, researchers found.

"Our results suggest that when you are poor, money is not the only thing in short supply. Cognitive capacity is also stretched thin," said Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan, part of an international team that conducted the study.

In a series of experiments, researchers from Harvard, Princeton and other universities in North America and from Britain's University of Warwick found that pressing financial worries had an immediate impact on poor people's ability to perform well in cognitive and logic tests.

Far from signalling that poor people are stupid, the results suggest those living on a tight budget have their effective brain power, or what the researchers called "mental bandwidth", dramatically limited by the stress of making ends meet.

On average, someone weighed down by money woes showed a drop in cognitive function in one part of the study that was comparable to a 13 point dip in IQ, and similar to the performance deficit expected from someone who has missed a whole night's sleep.

"Previous views of poverty have blamed (it) on personal failings, on an environment that is not conducive to success," said Jiaying Zhao, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

"We are arguing that the lack of financial resources itself can lead to impaired cognitive function," she said. ...
---
The researchers studied two very different groups - shoppers at a mall in New Jersey in the United States, and sugar cane farmers in rural India.

In the mall study, they gathered dozens of low and middle-income shoppers and subjected them to a battery of tests to measure IQ and impulse control.

Half of the participants were first asked to think about what they would do if their car broke down and the repair cost $1,500 - designed to kick off worries about money. It was among these people that performance dipped significantly.

In India, the researchers found that farmers had diminished cognitive performance before getting paid for their harvest compared to afterwards, when their coffers have been replenished.

"One month after the harvest, they're pretty rich, but the month before - when the money has run out - they're pretty poor," Mullainathan said in a report of the research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.

"What we see is that IQ goes up, (when they are rich)... errors go way down, and response times go way down."

He said the effect in India was about two-thirds the size of the effect in the mall study - equal to around nine or 10 IQ points difference from one month to the next.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/Poverty-reduces-brain-power-US-India-study/articleshow/22151485.cms
Riaz Haq said…
Antenatal and postnatal care for women in rural Pakistan has improved dramatically, thanks in part to the work of women like Shagufta Shahzadi, a skilled birth attendant trained under a UNICEF-supported programme.

KASUR DISTRICT, Pakistan, 3 December 2014 – “My biggest pleasure is to see that the mother and child are both healthy after the delivery,” says Shagufta Shahzadi, 30, a skilled birth attendant (SBA) who lives and works in Nandanpura village, Kasur district, in Pakistan’s Punjab province.

“There is a huge difference between services provided by a trained birth attendant and an untrained traditional midwife. A skilled person knows how to prevent and deal with complications during pregnancy, at the time of delivery and delivering postnatal care for mother and child.”

A day’s work for Shagufta could include delivering a baby, advising pregnant women on prenatal care, walking to the neighbouring village to provide postnatal care to a mother and the newborn. She takes a lot of pride in her work and feels a sense of achievement in the fact that due to her services, there hasn’t been a case of a pregnant mother or newborn death in her area over the last year.

Looking back at the struggle she had to make throughout her life, Shagufta recalls, “I was two months old when my father passed away. My mother raised me and my sister with the little money she earned by stitching cloths. Her resources were meagre, yet she made sure that we both completed our matriculation. Thereafter, we completed our respective trainings. My sister became a lady health worker, and I became a skilled birth attendant.”

------------

“Due to the positive results of this programme, the Government of Pakistan has scaled up the initiative across the country,” says Dr, Tahir Manzoor, Health Specialist at UNICEF Pakistan. “In Punjab province, more than 5,000 women have been trained and are performing valuable services within their own communities. We can already see the positive impact of their services and are certain that it will improve the scenario of mortality and morbidity for mothers and new born children in Pakistan over the next few years.”

Shagufta believes that ensuring health and safety for mother and child is imperative.

“If mothers and children are healthy, the entire society will be healthy. The future generations will be healthy," she says. "We must try to save lives, as life is precious, and you only get it once.”


http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/pakistan_78038.html
Riaz Haq said…
Dailytimes | #ImranKhan to perform ground-breaking of #Karachi's cancer hospital on Dec 29 - #PTI http://go.shr.lc/2hjSPmp via @Shareaholic

The ground-breaking ceremony of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Karachi would be held on December 29, 2016.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf's chairman Imran Khan, who is also Chairman Board of Governors Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust will lay the foundation stone.

In February this year, the then Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Shareef had granted a 20 acre plot for the construction of the cancer hospital in Defence Housing Authority located at the Karachi-Hyderabad Super Highway.

A statement of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust said, "The construction of a comprehensive cancer diagnosis and treatment facility in Karachi will not only provide the most modern cancer treatment to the people of Sindh, but will also help raise healthcare standards and provide training and employment opportunities in the region."

It is Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust's third Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in the country. Trust has already established two hospitals - one in Lahore and the other is in Peshawar.
Riaz Haq said…
Global Burden of Disease Study: India at 154, lags behind Bangladesh
India also lags behind Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal but ahead of Pakistan

http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/global-burden-of-disease-study-india-at-154-lags-behind-bangladesh-117052000010_1.html

India's healthcare access and quality (HAQ) index has increased by 14.1, up from 30.7 in 1990 to 44.8 in 2015.

India (44.8) lags behind Sri Lanka (72.8), Bangladesh (51.7), Bhutan (52.7) and Nepal (50.8) and ranks above Pakistan (43.1) and Afghanistan (32.5).

The HAQ index, based on death rates for 32 diseases that can be avoided or effectively treated with proper medical care, also tracked progress in each nation compared to the benchmark year of 1990.

As per the study, India has performed poorly in tackling cases of tuberculosis, diabetes, chronic kidney diseases and rheumatic heart diseases.

The journal lists India among the biggest underachievers in Asia in health care access.

Switzerland topped the health index, followed by Sweden and Norway. China stood 82nd and Sri Lanka 73rd.

Among the developed nations, those who did not perform well include the US and the UK.

Riaz Haq said…
India world’s leprosy epicentre, despite its ‘elimination’ in 2005
Leprosy cases with severe deformities have increased by 50% increase in the past six years, indicating that many cases of the curable disease are being detected late. This rising trend of late diognosis is a cause for concern, especially after the government had declared leprosy had been eliminated from India in 2005. WHO norms say leprosy is eliminated if the prevalence of the disease is less than one case per 10,000 people.
According to the WHO, 60% of the 2,12,000 people detected with leprosy globally in 2015 were from India. WHO norms say leprosy is eliminated if the prevalence of the disease is less than one case per 10,000 population. In 2005, India achieved statistical elimination of leprosy with a national prevalence rate of 0.96. The prevalence rate declined to 0.66 in 2015-16. The next step is eradicating the disease, when not a single case is reported.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/india-world-s-leprosy-epicentre-despite-its-elimination-in-2005/story-vIjQfcp2QuBdh9yfptD2AM.html


From the early 1960s on, Pfau helped lead the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre, transforming what was once a tiny makeshift dispensary into the hub for a system of 157 medical centers across the country, often in remote regions. With the partnership of the Pakistani government, Pfau developed the country's National Leprosy Control Programme and extended her efforts to include treatments for blindness and tuberculosis.

"We are like a Pakistani marriage," Pfau told the BBC of her occasionally strained collaboration with state officials. "It was an arranged marriage because it was necessary. We always and only fought with each other. But we never could go in for divorce because we had too many children."

But that partnership paid dividends. By 1996, the World Health Organization declared that leprosy had been controlled in Pakistan. The country's Dawn newspaper reports that last year, just 531 patients were in treatment for leprosy nationwide — down from 19,398 in the early 1980s.

For her efforts, Pfau earned the country's second-highest civilian honor, the Hilal-e-Imtiaz, in 1979. And she ultimately came to enjoy a celebrity in Pakistan on par with another nun known the world over for her work with the sick and the poor: Mother Teresa.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/10/542588725/ruth-pfau-beacon-for-pakistan-s-leprosy-patients-dies-at-87
Riaz Haq said…
#Indians have smaller #brains, reveals study. “Indian brains are smaller in size when compared to MNI (Montreal Neurological Institute) template used as the standard, created using Caucasian brains" #India #neuroscience #brain
http://toi.in/N2vnQa76/a24gk via @timesofindia

This will help in early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s and other brain ailments.

The research has been published in Neurology India, a peer-reviewed publication.

Riaz Haq said…
Condoms 'too big' for #Indian men. A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that #condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of men in #India. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6161691.stm

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

It has led to a call for condoms of mixed sizes to be made more widely available in India.

The two-year study was carried out by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

Over 1,200 volunteers from the length and breadth of the country had their penises measured precisely, down to the last millimetre.

The scientists even checked their sample was representative of India as a w
Riaz Haq said…
When an I.Q. Score Is a Death Sentence
The Supreme Court declared it was unconstitutional to execute intellectually disabled people. On Thursday, we’re set to do it anyway.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/death-penalty-mental-disability.html

Dr. Cornell’s testing found Mr. Johnson’s I.Q. score was 77 — bordering on the 70 to 75 range traditionally considered the threshold for intellectual disability. He concluded that Mr. Johnson was not intellectually disabled.

Instead, he wrote, “Corey Johnson suffered from a severe learning disability which impaired his intellectual development and prevented him from succeeding in school,” as well as emotional disturbance due to the unstable, often abusive upbringing he had endured.


Without an expert’s opinion to affirm their client’s disability, which would have legally excluded him from execution, Mr. Cooley and his co-counsel, John McGarvey, asked jurors to consider his severe mental deficits as mitigating factors in considering whether to sentence him to death.

“Now, I’m not intending to suggest at this juncture or any other juncture that Corey Johnson is mentally retarded,” Mr. McGarvey told the jury.

Dr. Cornell is a gifted and qualified psychologist, and his work on youth aggression and violence in educational settings has been widely praised. But while he has published a range of articles on gifted children, bullying, familial dynamics and depression, a curriculum vitae reviewed by The New York Times did not appear to list any publications or special projects in intellectual disability.

After testing Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cooley recalled, “Dr. Cornell told me that Corey Johnson’s I.Q. is within two points of the borderline for mental retardation” and that he “instead had a severe learning disability.”

But there is reason to believe Mr. Johnson’s I.Q. score was mistakenly inflated.

J. Gregory Olley, a celebrated scholar of intellectual disability, first heard of Mr. Johnson’s case years after his conviction, when his defense team asked Dr. Olley to evaluate their client.

Dr. Olley is a psychologist and a clinical professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and has spent his career researching and publishing extensively in his area of expertise, including the chapter on intellectual disability and the criminal justice system in the latest edition of the American Psychological Association’s Handbook of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. His evaluation of Mr. Johnson included an in-depth review of his educational and testing records, and hours of interviews with Mr. Johnson, his friends, family, and associates, many of whom had never been approached by Dr. Cornell.

When Dr. Olley reviewed Mr. Johnson’s files, he spotted a flaw. I.Q. tests measure intelligence relative to an age-based reference group. And because I.Q. scores have risen over time — a curious fact observed by the intelligence researcher James Flynn — older versions of various tests will yield inflated results because they reflect a comparison with population norms from many years ago instead of today. Adjusting for the so-called Flynn effect is common practice among clinicians reviewing I.Q. test results obtained from older tests.
Riaz Haq said…
World #SnakeDay: #India is the #Snakebite Capital of the World with one million reported snakebites every year that kill ~60,000 and leave 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh #Indians permanently disabled. There's deteriorating quality, rising costs of antivenom. #disease https://weather.com/en-IN/india/biodiversity/news/2022-07-16-world-snake-day-snakebite-a-neglected-tropical-disease-in-india

Poor waste management practices in our cities lead to a thriving rodent population, which in turn leads to a thriving population of snakes, albeit those of just commensal species such as cobras, rat snakes, Russell’s vipers and a few others. Still, the urban residents have little to fear when it comes to snakebites.

The story in rural India is vastly different — akin to two diametrically opposite ‘Indias’ within the same geographic boundary. Our country leads the world in snakebite figures, deaths from snakebite, and even cases of loss of life function.

Now, on the occasion of World Snake Day — observed annually on July 16 to increase awareness about the different species of snake all around the world — we attempt to understand the ground reality of human-snake conflict in India.

India records over 10 lakh snakebites every single year, which kill ~60,000 individuals and leave another 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh people with permanent disabilities. Studies have demonstrated that 94% of the victims are farmers, most of which belong to the most economically productive age groups.

These are staggering figures for a disease that the World Health Organisation (WHO) rightly calls a ‘Neglected Tropical Disease’. However, they are only an unfortunate fraction when compared to the number of snakes that are cruelly and brutally killed in conflict every day across the country.

One cannot help but wonder how India, one of the first countries in the world to develop antivenom over a century ago, remains frozen in time when it comes to safeguarding its citizens from snakebite. A myriad of problems surround the issue of human-snake conflict, and very few have attempted to address it, unlike the conflicts with mega-fauna such as tigers, elephants, bears and others.

Challenges that coil the human-snake conflict in India
The complexity of snakebite begins with the very fact that India, as a tropical country, is blessed with a diversity of snakes rivalled by few others. Among more than 300 species of snakes found in the country, nearly 50 are venomous, of which 18-20 are medically significant — meaning they can cause loss of life or morbidity in their victims if untreated.

Despite these many medically significant species, the lone antivenom available in India only targets the four most commonly found venomous species. This effectively ignores those parts of the country where none of these four species are found. Further, for nearly a decade now, it has been common knowledge that the venom of snakes, even within the same species, varies by region significantly enough to render the antivenom ineffective in several places.

Snake venom, produced at the lone source in the country, has been severely critiqued for its deteriorating quality and increasing costs by the antivenom manufacturers. In turn, herpetologists and venom research scientists have long been urging the pharmaceuticals to upgrade their own processes for the manufacture of antivenom, which will need significantly lower quantities of venom and at least addresses the issue of costs of venom.

Beyond all of these issues, the major hurdle at the hospital stage for the victim, is the lack of availability of antivenom, and the fact that snakebite is a medico-legal case which hoists far more bureaucratic hoops for a victim and their family to jump through. If one were to bypass these hurdles still, they are often faced with a medical fraternity that is so poorly equipped to treat snakebites that victims are often shuttled between hospitals, only for several to succumb in transit.

Riaz Haq said…
#India confirms #Asia's first #monkeypox death. The 22-year-old #Indian man died on Saturday in #Kerala. It's only the fourth known fatality in the world from the disease in the current outbreak. #Modi #Disease #BJP #Hindutva #Health https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-confirms-its-first-monkeypox-death-2022-08-01/


India confirmed its first monkeypox death on Monday, a young man in the southern state of Kerala, in what is only the fourth known fatality from the disease in the current outbreak.

Last week, Spain reported two monkeypox-related deaths and Brazil its first. The death in India is also the first in Asia. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency on July 23.

The 22-year-old Indian man died on Saturday, Kerala's revenue minister told reporters, adding that the government had isolated 21 people who had come in contact with him.

"The person reached Kerala on July 21 but visited a hospital only on July 26 when he displayed fatigue and fever," Minister K. Rajan said, adding that there was no reason to panic as none of the primary contacts were showing symptoms.

Kerala's health minister, Veena George, told reporters on Sunday that the man's family told authorities the previous day that he had tested positive in the United Arab Emirates before returning to India.

India's federal health ministry had no comment on the death, except for saying that the government had formed a task force of senior officials to monitor monkeypox cases in the country, where local media have reported at least five infections.

The WHO said late last month 78 countries had reported more than 18,000 cases of monkeypox, the majority in Europe.

It says the monkeypox virus causes a disease with less severe symptoms than smallpox and occurs mainly in central and west Africa. The disease is transmitted from animals to humans.

Human-to-human transmission happens through contact with bodily fluids, lesions on the skin or on internal mucosal surfaces, such as in the mouth or throat, respiratory droplets and contaminated objects.
Riaz Haq said…
Lancet Study: Non-infectious diseases cause early death in Pakistan
BY MUNIR AHMED, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 01/19/23 4:04 AM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-study-non-infectious-diseases-cause-early-death-in-pakistan/

Pakistan has considerable control over infectious diseases but now struggles against cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer as causes of early deaths, according to a new study published Thursday.

The Lancet Global Health, a prestigious British-based medical journal, reported that five non-communicable diseases — ischaemic heart disease, stroke, congenital defects, cirrhosis, and chronic kidney disease — were among the 10 leading causes of early deaths in the impoverished Islamic nation.

However, the journal said some of Pakistan’s work has resulted in an increase in life expectancy from 61.1 years to 65.9 over the past three decades. The change is due, it said, “to the reduction in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases.” That’s still 7.6 years lower than the global average life expectancy, which increased over 30 years by 8% in women and 7% in men.

The study says “despite periods of political and economic turbulence since 1990, Pakistan has made positive strides in improving overall health outcomes at the population level and continues to seek innovative solutions to challenging health and health policy problems.”

The study, which was based on Pakistan’s health data from 1990 to 2019, has warned that non-communicable diseases will be the leading causes of death in Pakistan by 2040.

It said Pakistan will also continue to face infectious diseases.

“Pakistan urgently needs a single national nutrition policy, especially as climate change and the increased severity of drought, flood, and pestilence threatens food security,” said Dr. Zainab Samad, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Aga Khan University, one of the authors of the report.

“What these findings tell us is that Pakistan’s baseline before being hit by extreme flooding was already at some of the lowest levels around the globe,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at IHME. “Pakistan is in critical need of a more equitable investment in its health system and policy interventions to save lives and improve people’s health.”

The study said with a population approaching 225 million, “Pakistan is prone to the calamitous effects of climate change and natural disasters, including the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and catastrophic floods in 2010 and 2022, all of which have impacted major health policies and reform.”

It said the country’s major health challenges were compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and last summer’s devastating flooding that killed 1,739 people and affected 33 million.

Researchers ask Pakistan to “address the burden of infectious disease and curb rising rates of non-communicable diseases.” Such priorities, they wrote, will help Pakistan move toward universal health coverage.”

The journal, considered one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world, reported on Pakistan’s fragile healthcare system with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. The study was a collaboration with a Karachi-based prestigious Aga Khan University and Pakistan’s health ministry.

The study also mentioned increasing pollution as one of the leading contributors to the overall disease burden in recent years. Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore was in the grip of smog on Thursday, causing respiratory diseases and infection in the eyes. Usually in winter, a thick cloud of smog envelops Lahore, which in 2021 earned it the title of the world’s most polluted city.
Riaz Haq said…
Countries by IQ - Average IQ by Country 2023

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-iq-by-country

Bhutan: 87.94 Rank 68 among 199 countries

Sri Lanka: 86.62 Rank 79

Pakistan: 80 Rank 120

India: 76.24 Rank 143

Bangladesh: 74.33 Rank 150


-----------

Here are the 10 countries with the highest IQ:

Japan - 106.48
Taiwan - 106.47
Singapore - 105.89
Hong Kong - 105.37
China - 104.1
South Korea - 102.35
Belarus - 101.6
Finland - 101.2
Liechtenstein - 101.07
Germany - 100.74

---------

Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a measure of human intelligence. People who want to have their IQ measured take standardized tests and receive a score that ranks their intelligence level. The higher one's IQ score, the more intelligent that person is considered to be.

IQ and Education: Two Sides of the Same Coin

IQ scores typically reflect the quality of education and resources available to people in their local geographic region. Areas of the world with lower IQ scores are typically poorer and less developed, particularly in the area of education, compared to countries with higher IQ scores. Many researchers also use IQ to determine the smartest countries in the world. The IQ map above shades each country depending on how high the average IQ score is. A darker shade of violet indicates a lower IQ score. Conversely, countries with a higher average IQ score appear red-orange in color.
Riaz Haq said…
Richard Lynn: A controversial author with racist takes on South Asian intelligence

https://www.tbsnews.net/thoughts/richard-lynn-controversial-author-racist-takes-south-asian-intelligence-497026

Areas of the world inhabited by people with lower IQ scores are typically poorer and less developed, particularly in the area of education, compared to countries with higher IQ scores, according to a report titled "Average IQ by Country 2022", co-authored by Richard Lynn.

According to the report, which was published by the World Population Review, the top 10 countries with the highest average IQ include mostly white and Southeast Asian nations.

The views exhibited through Richard's works have often been critiqued as "eugenicist" and frankly, "racist".

His "unapologetic" yet blatant show of sexism and white supremacy even cost him the emeritus title as psychology professor at Ulster University back in 2018.

Richard Lynn is notoriously infamous as an English psychologist and author who believes that nations with high average IQs must subjugate or eliminate lower-IQ groups in order to preserve their dominance.

His "Average IQ by Country 2022" report lists Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong (China), China, South Korea, Belarus, Finland, Liechtenstein, Netherlands and Germany as the top 10 countries with the highest average IQ.

On the other hand, he has ranked Southeast Asian nations lowest in this very list, implicating a pejorative discrimination between the Southern and South Eastern ethnicities.

The report named Nepal as "the worst intelligent nation" among 199 countries with an IQ score of 42.99.

According to the study, Bangladesh ranked 150th on the global list with an average IQ of 74.33 points.

India stood at the 143rd position in the list with a score of 76.74. Pakistan ranked 120th with a score of 80. Sri Lanka stood at the 79th position with a score of 86.62.

Afghanistan stood at 103rd place with a score of 82.12. Bhutan with an average score of 87.94 stood at 68th place. Myanmar stood at 52th position with a score of 91.18.

However, the World Population Review, on which the study was published leaves a footnote reading, "It bears mentioning that Lynn's studies, while comprehensive, tend to spark considerable debate.

"Some researchers dispute the techniques Lynn employs to calculate estimates when hard data is lacking.

"Others claim Lynn, an unabashed eugenicist, misinterprets his data to support conclusions that are both scientifically inaccurate and supportive of white supremacy."

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