Shillong-based Chillibreeze Solutions Pvt Ltd a content and design service provider, used its in-house expertise to produce the comic – A Tale of Two Magic Potions – which aims to educate school children on the disease which affects every part of the country, specially the Northeast.

In what may be considered as the first-ever health comic book in the country, the book, a director of the company, Nishi Viswanathan, explains, is intended to educate while entertaining school-going children on the virulence of the disease.

The Chillibreeeze solutions kicked off its Malaria awareness campaign recently by distributing the comic book among Class V students of three schools in Shillong where the company is headquartered.

To gauge the effectiveness of the comic book, the Chillibreeze staff conducted pre-distribution and post-distribution quizz contests with attractive prizes to boot.

The chillibreeze staff first explained the format of the contest to the students before giving them 10 minutes to complete the multiple choice questions.

Source :- Here comes a comic book to spread Malaria awareness

A beautiful smile not only enhances your appearance but also boosts your self confidence and self esteem considerably. Lot of emphasis is being given to smile in beauty pageants, TV shows, movies, etc. therefore more and more people wish to have a great “Hollywood Smile”. The craze of having a beautiful smile has definitely increased the popularity of dental makeovers and cosmetic dentistry.

Cosmetic dentistry procedures that play a very important role in the smile makeovers are Teeth Whitening, Porcelain Veneers, Dental Implants, Dental Bonding, Tooth-Colored Fillings, Porcelain Inlays/Onlays, Dental Crowns, Invisalign Gum Reshaping, and Dental Bridges. The entire process of dental makeover is customized according to the dental condition of the person. The cosmetic dentists first conduct some dental examinations to identify the dental problems of the person and thoroughly study the medical dental history.

The smile makeover plan is formulated after the complete assessment of the dental reports of the person. As smile makeover has a huge impact on your appearance it is advisable not to take any risk and visit only a renowned cosmetic dentist who have years of experience in the field. Professional Cosmetic dentists have solution to most of your dental problems that adversely affect your smile, such as chipped, cracked, discolored, and unevenly spaced teeth.

Cosmetic dentists not only help to enhance the aesthetics of your smile but also help to restore your oral health. There are many patients who hesitate to go for smile makeovers because they think the overall cost of the procedure is very high. But, nothing is worth a million dollar smile and above all nowadays there are many cosmetic dentistry financing plans which can help you with cost factor.

Cosmetic dentistry is a perfect combination of art and science therefore it is very important that the cosmetic dentist that you select not only qualified and skilled but have an artistic touch. If you are looking for a cosmetic dentist who has expertise in the latest cosmetic dentistry techniques and help in getting the most natural-looking results then you must browse through http://www.invisaligntopdentist.com.

Source :- Cosmetic Dentistry Guide

The Worldwide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN) will provide the comprehensive and rigorous evidence base needed for policy makers to select the best anti-malarial treatments and to formulate strategies to control the critical problem of resistance wherever it arises.

“With this critical mass of data, we will have powerful evidence to help inform decisions by policy makers,” says Dr. Philippe Guerin, Director of WWARN and an epidemiologist in the Centre for Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford.

“It is crucial that we provide all patients with access to the right drugs at the right time.”

Malaria is preventable and treatable, yet a million people die from malaria each year, most of them children.

About 2.5 billion people, or 40 per cent of the world’s population, are at risk of the disease.

These people mainly live in the poorest countries of the world, those least able to provide effective controls against the disease.

Prevention of infection is one important facet of malaria control, but with no vaccine against malaria, treatment relies on anti-malarial drugs. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared that the emergence of resistance to these drugs is a crucial problem, which could seriously undermine efforts to control the disease.

WWARN will integrate the efforts of researchers, NGOs and public health experts in malaria-endemic areas around the world.

Four years in planning, the initiative was born in the scientific community as malaria scientists became aware that broad collaboration was critical to achieving the long-term goal of eliminating the disease. The international collaborative effort will be administered and supported from Oxford University.

WWARN will work in close collaboration with WHO to enhance anti-malarial resistance surveillance. The tie-up will provide a platform for all malaria scientists to share results, improving the coverage, quality, and timeliness of the available data. This will give an up-to-the-minute picture of the effectiveness of anti-malarial drugs at national, regional and global levels, and enable policy makers to respond more quickly to early signs of resistance.

“We need to gather the very best intelligence to alert the malaria community to signs of resistance and mobilise our best weapons on the frontline,” says Professor Carol Sibley, Scientific Director of WWARN.

While the Plasmodium parasite that causes malaria has been resistant to older drugs such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine for some time, evidence emerging from Cambodia suggests the parasite is even developing a tolerance to artemisinin.

This recently developed drug, made from a Chinese herb, is the best line of defence against malaria and it is critical that we contain any resistance to artemisinin.

“We need readily accessible, quality assured and up-to-date information on anti-malarial drug resistance if we are to eliminate malaria. WWARN will provide this essential intelligence,” says Nick J. White, Professor of Tropical Medicine at Mahidol University in Thailand and Oxford University, and Chair of the Board of WWARN.

Current guidelines stipulate that artemisinin should be given in combination with other anti-malarials to protect as much possible against the development of drug resistance.

However, this advice is being undermined by the lack of access to artemisinin combination therapies, their cost and the prevalence of poor quality drugs in many parts of the world. One recent study from South East Asia found that 195 anti-malarial drug samples out of 391 were fake.

“This situation is the best way to ensure the malaria parasite rapidly develops resistance to our best treatments,” Poor quality or fake drugs expose the malaria parasite to smaller amounts of the drug which gives the parasite the opportunity to evolve ways to evade the drug,” says Dr. Guerin.

Source :- Gates foundation grant to combat malaria drug resistance

As part of an anti-tobacco initiative by the Indian Dental Association (IDA) at least 5,000 dental clinics across India will be enabled to double up as counselling and intervention centres for those hooked to tobacco.

The initiative has been launched so as to catch patients at the right time and pursue a “scientific approach” to help them get rid of their addiction, the IDA said.

“For the past 30 years we have seen loads of money invested into awareness campaigns not yielding results, and the habit of tobacco consumption has gone up 60 per cent in the last decade itself,” said IDA Secretary General Dr Ashoke Dhoble.

“As telling people about health hazards associated with tobacco has not helped, we have decided to address the difficulty faced by people in quitting consumption,” he said.

As part of the programme, applications have been invited from volunteering dentists to spot such cases and act as interventionists.

“Dentists are the first people tobacco addicts approach seeking help for addressing foul mouth smell and discolouring of teeth. So we thought they could act as interventionists and work at the pre-addiction stage,” Dhoble told PTI.

The dental association will be launching 5,000 (Tobacco Intervention Initiative CentresTIIC) across the country in the next two years. Fifty-six TIICs were set up across Maharashtra this week.

The programme will require voluntary dentists to clear an online exam to test whether they have sound knowledge of the problem before giving them certificates to operate intervention centres and on clearing the exam they will receive an orientation at NIMHANS, Bangalore on how to go about the process.

“The dentists, besides touching on the issues of cancer and heart problems for tobacco consumers, will focus on counselling them to end their addiction,” Dhoble said.

The members of the initiative will be allowed access to a central website, where they can register their observations, compile data and seek help from experiences of other members.

Source :- Dental clinics to act as counselling centres for tobacco users

Heart failure is a common and serious chronic illness. A large number of patients with heart failure also have anaemia, which is most likely a complication from poor heart function.

The aim of this study was to assess the impact of anaemia on the clinical outcomes of chronic heart failure (CHF) by a meta-analysis and systemic review of published literature.

A total of 97,699 patients with CHF were identified from the published studies. From a collective analysis, researchers found that when anaemia occurs, it worsens patient prognosis, making them more likely to be hospitalized or die from heart failure.

“Health professionals may need to improve current practices to better treat anaemia in patients with chronic heart failure” said Lexin Wang, study co-author and head of the cardiovascular group at Charles Sturt University (CSU), in Australia.

Even with contemporary medical treatment, the mortality rate from CHF is still high, reaching 40 percent in very sick patients, said a CSU release.

Given the clear association between anaemia, mortality rate and hospitalization rate, optimal treatment of anaemia, on top of other heart-failure-specific therapies, may reduce the rate of mortality and further improve patient’s prognosis.

These findings will appear in Congestive Heart Failure journal.

Source :- Anemia linked with higher death risk in heart patients

The disclosure that making a swine flu vaccine is proving more difficult than experts first thought came as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and WHO chief Margaret Chan met today with representatives from about 30 pharmaceutical companies to discuss the subject.

After the meeting, Ban declared that solidarity was the key to resolving the swine flu outbreak, urging governments to make sure all countries have access to drugs and vaccines. He also said virus samples and flu data must be shared and “self-defeating” measures like trade and travel bans should be avoided.

“We do not yet know how far and how fast it will spread, how serious the illness will be and, indeed, how many lives will be lost,” Ban told WHO’s annual assembly in Geneva.

“Global solidarity must be at the heart of the world’s response. (It) must mean that all have access to drugs and vaccines” he said.

Health officials from around the world are meeting here this week to discuss the outbreak that has infected 9,830 people in over 40 countries, killing at least 79 of them.

Source :- WHO: No swine flu vaccine available for months

Researchers from Cardiff University and King’s College in London have carried out the study and found a crucial link between later retirement and the onset of Alzheimer’s disease ‘The Times’ reported.

According to the researchers, keeping the mind active for as long as possible can help to postpone mental decline.

“The intellectual stimulation that older people gain from the workplace may prevent a decline in mental abilities, thus keeping people above the threshold for dementia for longer,” the study’s co-author Simon Lovestone said.

The researchers came to the conclusion after analysing the retirement patterns of some 382 men, whom they identified as those with “probable” Alzheimer’s disease.

Subsequently, they compared the retirement dates of the subjects and found that every extra year worked postponed the onset of dementia symptoms by nearly six weeks in those who worked till 65 or beyond.

And, in contrast to earlier studies, the researchers found that the quality or duration of the men’s education or the type of work they did had no impact on the age of onset of the disease.

Source :- Work till 65 or beyond ‘to stave off Alzheimer’s’

Your cosmetic dentist will guide you with entire process of smile makeover and give you a briefing on the various aspects of your smile. Apart from the color and alignment of the teeth another very important thing that contributes to a beautiful smile is the length of the tooth. With age the teeth tend to wear and tear and this reduces the length of the teeth which results in a gummy smile. During a smile makeover treatment cosmetic dentist reshape and lengthen the shorter teeth with composite bonding or porcelain veneers. Your cosmetic dentist will also implement laser dentistry procedures to modify your gum line. Teeth lengthening will give you long and square teeth and a beautiful and radiant smile.

Another very important thing that has a great effect on how your smile looks is the tooth proportions. Your cosmetic dentist will verify if all your teeth are in correct proportion so that you get a balancing smile. The well-shaped smile comprises of nicely shaped and well proportioned teeth. Cosmetic dentistry can help to get a white, bright, and beautiful smile. So, with Cosmetic dentistry in existence you don’t need to worry about crooked and overlapping teeth that spoil your smile. In case you have missing teeth that adversely affect the appearance of your smile then your cosmetic dentist will also perform dental implants, bridges or partial dentures as a part of the makeover process.

Find a local dentist in Cupertino

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Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Universities of Toronto and Washington found that smoking kills 467,000 people every year, high blood pressure (BP) claims 395,000 lives and being overweight accounts for 216,000 deaths.

The effects of smoking work out to be about one in five adult deaths in US while high BP is responsible for one in six deaths.

It is the most comprehensive study yet to look at how diet, lifestyle and metabolic risk factors for chronic disease contribute to mortality in the US.

“The large magnitude of the numbers for many of these risks made us pause,” said Goodarz Danaei, doctoral student at HSPH and study co-author.

“To have hundreds of thousands of premature deaths caused by these modifiable risk factors is shocking and should motivate a serious look at whether our public health system… is currently focusing on the right set of interventions,” said Majid Ezzati, Associate Professor at HSPH and study co-author.

The researchers also found large effects from a series of other preventable dietary and lifestyle risk factors said a Harvard release.

Source :- Smoking, high BP main causes for deaths in US

Meat-eaters who preferred their steak very well done were almost 60 percent more likely to get pancreatic cancer compared to those who ate steak less well done or did not eat steak, according to the study presented Tuesday at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Denver.

In the study, researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health (UMSPH) analysed data on the meat intake, preferred cooking methods and doneness preferences of nearly 63, 000 participants taking part in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Multi-Center Screening Trial. Over the course of nine years, 208 developed pancreatic cancer.

Researchers then estimated carcinogen intake based on overall meat consumption and doneness preferences. Those with highest intake had 70 percent higher risk than those with the lowest intake according to the study.

Frying, grilling or barbecuing meat to the point of charring can form carcinogens, which do not form when meat is baked or stewed, explained Kristin Anderson, an associate professor at the UMSPH.

Anderson suggesting cooking meat thoroughly enough to kill bacteria but avoiding charring. The precursors of cancer-causing compounds can also be reduced by microwaving the meat for a few minutes and pouring off the juices before cooking it on the grill.

“We cannot say with absolute certainty that the risk is increased due to carcinogens formed in burned meat” Anderson said. “However those who enjoy either fried or barbecued meat should consider turning down the heat or cutting off burned portions when it’s finished.”

Source :- Eating charred meat may increase risk of pancreatic cancer