Asia Braces for Sharp Cancer Rise




SINGAPORE) —Asia is bracing for a dramatic surge in cancer rates over the next decade as people in the developing world live longer and adopt bad Western habits that greatly increase the risk of the disease.

Smoking, drinking and eating unhealthy foods — all linked to various cancers — will combine with larger populations and fewer deaths from infectious diseases to drive Asian cancer rates up 60 percent by 2020, some experts predict.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1626477,00.html

NEPAL: Impoverished urban squatters face high risk of poor health


KATHMANDU, 23 May 2007 (IRIN) - The growing population of the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, has exacerbated the plight of the city’s estimated 50,000 squatters who are among the poorest people in Nepal, according to a study by local non-governmental organisation (NGO) Water Aid Nepal.


The major problems faced by the city’s poor are a limited supply of clean drinking water, and poor sanitation, health and hygiene, according to local NGO Lumanti.

In addition, urbanisation has contributed to making the already contaminated water of Bagmati River worse. The government has failed to manage a proper sewerage system in the city, according to Lumanti. Squatters are the most affected as they all live on land close to the river, the only available space for them.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72319



again like any other impoverished asian nation, the government has the major role to aleviate such conditions
but poverty still is on the rise

labourers exposure to raw opium pushes them towards drug addiction-

Health risks

Back on the poppy fields, lancing-and-robbing is an arduous task, which requires a poppy field labourer to work half-bowed for hours. Many labourers complain about lumbago and pain in the legs.

Moreover, extensive exposure to raw opium pushes many labourers towards drug addiction, Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) has found.

Some labourers use their fingers, instead of a flat razor, to collect raw opiates. It is common for harvesters to lick their fingers, a spokesman for MCN said.

Labourers also inhale a strong opiate odour during working hours which exacerbates their vulnerability to drug addiction. “I always feel dizzy while I work in the field,” a labourer admitted. Another worker said he started using opium regularly after he first worked on poppy fields for over a month in 2006.

It is unclear whether all poppy labourers realise the risks they are taking in their job, but Ravan from UNODC says: “If they had alternative opportunities, I don’t think they would do this intensive and risky job.”


http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=72263

Labourers also inhale a strong opiate odour during working hours which exacerbates their vulnerability to drug addiction. “I always feel dizzy while I work in the field,” a labourer admitted. Another worker said he started using opium regularly after he first worked on poppy fields for over a month in 2006.

Philippine bitter melons (Ampalaya)-natural diabetes cure


Bitter gourd / bitter melon for diabetes


Also popular among natural diabetes cures is the bitter gourd or bitter melon (Latin Momordica charantia).It is known the Hairy mordica, in India as Kerela and in the Philippines as Ampalaya.

There are two main types of bitter gourds. One is small with drak green skin that is very "knobby" or "pebbly". It typically grows to two to four inches, although I have seen versions of it from Japan that are much bigger.

This first type is generally regarded as being better for natural diabetes cures.

The second type is paler in colourr and has more even skin. It typically grows to be tween six to 12 inches or even longer.

Many years later, I met someone in the business of selling anti-allergy products and he actually discourages the use of air ionizers. His reasoning is that ionizers charge air particles in the lungs with a negative charge but the lungs are positively charged. So we end up breathing in more dust.

It makes some sense, but it does not explain why I felt better while using it.


http://www.natural-cancer-cures.com/natural-diabetes-cures.html

BETGARI, Bangladesh: In the golden haze of dawn, Mohammed Salim Sheikh walked slowly through the paddies, so frail and thin that the skirtlike lungi wrapped around his waist looked like a clown's oversize trousers.

Carrying a treatment chart in one hand and a stainless steel water glass in the other, he crossed the threshold of a house. The homemaker inside, Zahida Khatun Jharna, rose from her cooking fire, fetched his medication and filled his water glass. Then she ticked off his chart for the day and sent him home.

The routine plays out in countless villages across Bangladesh every morning, and it represents a remarkably simple but apparently effective effort to tackle a stubborn and deadly epidemic: tuberculosis, a scourge that kills 1.6 million people worldwide each year.






In a country plagued by years of corrupt and sluggish governance, Bangladesh has come up with a novel innovation to curb the disease.....
They conduct daily household surveys in their neighborhoods, hunt for patients like Sheikh who have been coughing for more than three weeks - a standard measure of detecting potential patients - coax them to get tested and, most important, administer a long and rigorous treatment.


[b]A Bangladeshi army of housewives battles tuberculosis [/b]

Second vaccine to combat cervical cancer launched in RP


Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline launched its Cervarix anti-cervical cancer vaccine in the Philippines on Saturday, making it the second company to launch a drug in Southeast Asia combating the virus that causes the disease.




Company officials refused to give Cervarix’s price in the Philippines, saying the vaccine will start selling in the country next month or October, and the price has yet to be set.

Merck’s Gardasil sells in the Philippines at 15,000 pesos (US$320; euro235) for three doses.

Bogaert said Cervarix’s price will differ in each country, depending on economic conditions.

Company officials also said they are linking up with private groups and charities to make the vaccine more accessible to poor women in Asia, where many governments have limited funds to cope with a host of health problems. – AP


http://philstar.com/index.php?Headlines&p=49&type=2& sec=24&aid=20070826139





<br><br>Post edited by: linsi, at: 2007/08/27 07:09