Plan to fortify milk, oil with vitamin D under consideration!!!!

The National Institute of Nutrition is considering a proposal to fortify milk and oil with vitamin D, its Director B. Sesisekaran said here on Monday.

Dr. Sesisekaran was concerned about the huge burden of Vitamin D deficiency in the country, despite the abundance of sunshine in most parts. It would be easy to fortify substances rich in fat, oil and milk, with Vitamin D so that an extra dose of the vitamin can be consumed easily.

Earlier, vanaspati used to be fortified with Vitamin D, but its consumption had dropped over the years. He also pointed out that the flip side of it was that there was very little milk consumption in rural areas; as far as oil goes, the recommendation is to lower the quantity of oil consumed.

Speaking at a national conference on ‘Nutrition in Metabolic Disorders,' organised jointly by Women's Christian College and Nestle Nutrition Institute, Dr. Sesisekaran said there was a powerful interplay between nutrition and metabolic alterations that lead to metabolic disorders.

Metabolic disorders may be inborn or inherited and include disorders such as diabetes, cardio vascular disease, thyroid dysfunction and metabolic bone diseases. A large proportion of metabolic disorders go largely undetected due to lack of awareness.

D. Prabhakaran, Executive Director, Centre for Chronic Disease Control, Initiative for Cardiovascular Health Research in the Developing Countries, New Delhi, said unlike in developed countries, endocrine and metabolic disorders were predominantly caused by environmental factors in India. Metabolic disorders have been found to have a disproportionately high prevalence in the Indian population.

Finding a proper diet based on healthy foods is, hence, imperative, he added. 

BABY AFTER FULL OVARY TRANSPLANT !!!

On Dec. 10, a baby girl was born from the first-ever full ovary transplant.

The baby's mother had lost her fertility when she went into early menopause at age 15 because of another medical problem. Later in life her twin sister (the baby's aunt) donated a working ovary so that she may conceive. At age 38, she gave birth for the first time.

Dr. Sherman Silber of the Infertility Center of St. Louis and his colleagues reported the medical advance.

A handful of other children have been born from transplanted ovarian tissue, specifically the outer shell, but the technique is not always successful.

Since the baby's successful birth, doctors are anticipating using the technique to help women with fertility problems, or cancer patients who wish to protect their ovaries from chemotherapy.

Silber told Reuters that the technique of transplanting frozen ovaries may one day be used to lengthen a woman's fertility across her lifetime.

"If she's 40 or 45 when she has it transplanted back, it's still a 25- or 30-year-old ovary, so she's preserving her fertility," Silber told Reuters.

PARAMEDIC SAVES BABY BY BUILDING MAKESHIFT INCUBATOR!!!!

A INSPIRATIONAL STORY....

A paramedic in Britain saved the life of a baby girl born 14 weeks ahead of schedule by building a makeshift incubator out of a plastic bag.


Sophie Thomlinson weighed just about 600 grams when she was born in the back of an ambulance as her mother Emily, 29, was being driven to hospital during a blizzard earlier this year.

The premature baby was in need of an incubator but the equipment is too large to be installed in most ambulances, reports the Telegraph.

But paramedic Rob Dalziel, 37, was able to keep her moist by wrapping her in a yellow plastic bag usually used for disposing of hazardous medical supplies.

He then used towels to cocoon the child and keep her body temperature at a safe level and forced air into her lungs to ensure she kept breathing as the ambulance continued on to Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.
She spent two weeks in the hospital's intensive treatment unit's 'Hot Room' before being transferred to the High Dependency Unit at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Four months later Sophie has been allowed home with her mother and father Peter Hazzard, 27, in Wheatley, Oxon.

Emily said, "I was in a lot of pain and quite stressed not knowing what was going to happen. Giving birth 14 weeks premature is not ideal, especially on the side of the road."
"I was really worried and I did not know if Sophie would still be alive when we reached the hospital," she added.

BLACK PARENTS HAVE A WHITE KID !!!

Im not sure of the facts of this article but it sure makes a very interesting read!!!!!

Doctors insist tiny Nmachi is not an albino and neither of the parents has any mixed-race family history.

Dad Ben Ihegboro, 44, a railway customer services adviser, said: "We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages - not saying anything.

"The first thing I said was 'What the flip?'."

Nmachi, whose name means Beauty of God in the Nigerian homeland of parents Angela and Ben, was born at Queen Mary's Hospital in Sidcup, Kent.

Doctors there told them she is not an albino.

"She doesn't look like an albino child anyway - not like the ones I've seen back in Nigeria or in books," Ben told The Sun. "She just looks like a healthy white baby."

Ben added: "Of course, she's mine. My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn't been, the baby still wouldn't look like that.

"We don't know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist. But even then, what's with the long curly blonde hair?"
Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University, said: "In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child - and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.

"This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing."

He said that both parents would have needed some form of white ancestry for a pale version of their genes to be passed on.

"The hair is extremely unusual," Prof Sykes said. "Even many blonde children don't have blonde hair like this at birth."

Some form of unknown mutation was the most likely explanation, he added.
The couple, of Woolwich, south London, have two other children, four-year-old Chisom and sister Dumebi, two.
Mum Angela, 35, told the paper: "Nmachi's colour doesn't matter. She's a miracle baby. But still, what on earth happened here?"
Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together.


If a woman is of mixed race, her eggs will usually contain a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin. Similarly, a man of mixed race will have a variety of different genes in his sperm.

When these eggs and sperm come together, they will create a baby of mixed race.

But, very occasionally, the egg or sperm might contain genes coding for one skin colour. If both the egg and sperm contain all white genes, the baby will be white. And if both contain just the versions necessary for black skin, the baby will be black.
 
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Madurai district chosen for rabies control project

Anti-rabies serum to be available at seven GHs, 13 PHCs
Treatment for rabies will be available across Madurai district soon under a pilot project sanctioned by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD).
Under a new initiative given clearance last week at a review meeting held in New Delhi, the NICD will supply an effective anti-rabies serum (immunoglobulin) to Madurai district to treat dog bite cases.
Immunoglobulin would be available at Government Hospitals in Madurai, Usilampatti, Melur, Thirumangalam, Vadipatti, Sholavandan and Peraiyur. Besides, it would be available at the block PHCs in one or two months.

Sibal for unified entrance test for medicine, engineering

New Delhi: Efforts are underway to hold a single national-level entrance test for students to get admission into engineering, medical and commerce courses from 2013, HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said.

"Efforts will be put to hold an All-India national test in science and commerce from 2013. This will smoothen the admission process into engineering, medical, economics and commerce courses," Sibal said, addressing a meeting of the Council of School Board of Education (COBSE) here.

He said this will reduce burden on students who are appearing in multiple-tests for admission into these sources.

At the meeting, the COBSE said it has prepared a core-curriculum for senior secondary classes in science and mathematics subjects.

"There is 90 percent census among the school boards on the core-curriculum prepared on science and mathematics," Sibal said. A similar core curriculum will be prepared in commerce in three months.

Sibal had in August last year pitched for a uniform core curriculum for Mathematics and Science for all school boards. He had said a core curriculum could pave the way for a common entrance exam for admission to professional courses.

Umbrella body to oversee medical education in India - Azad

New Delhi: The government proposes to establish an umbrella body to oversee medical education in the country and to prevent scams of the kind that have hit the Medical Council of India (MCI), Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Tuesday.

Once the National Council for Human Resources in Health "comes into being, it will take care of everything", Azad said while responding to a calling attention motion in the Rajya Sabha on irregularities in the functioning of the MCI in giving approval to medical colleges.