Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono wants families to stop at two children to prevent a burgeoning population overwhelming schools and services. Asih, a cleaner in Tangerang, near Jakarta, is stopping at seven.

"In my family, we always had a lot of children, and as long as we still had something to eat, why do family planning?" said Asih, 35. "Now I have two children in primary school and more that will have to go in the next few years and I have no money to pay school fees. Seven kids are enough."

Facing slower investment and one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the Asia-Pacific region, the government is concerned the demographic dividend that attracts companies seeking a young, cheap workforce will become an economic time bomb. As Indonesia's growth slows, the world's fourth-most- populous nation isn't generating enough quality jobs to keep up with the population, the International Labour Organization said.

That prospect has brought the revival of a birth-control program begun 46 years ago by former President Suharto, who managed to halve the fertility rate to about 2.6, where it's been stuck ever since. The government wants to cut the rate to the replacement level of 2.1 within two years to prevent the 250 million population doubling by 2060.

"We have to go back to the policies of the Suharto era, to make strong campaigns and bring the fertility rate down," said M Sairi Hasbullah, head of Indonesia's statistics bureau for East Java province. "It's not going to be easy to provide food, education, health facilities and infrastructure for 500 million people. It's a big danger for Indonesia."

The government increased the budget for family planning programs almost fourfold since 2006, to 2.6 trillion rupiah ($214 million) in 2013, funding everything from training rural midwives via text messages, to persuading Muslim clerics to encourage vasectomies. The measures extend efforts dating back to 1968, when Suharto set up the National Family Planning Institute to provide advice and contraceptives.

While Southeast Asia's largest economy is trying to slow population growth, other countries in the region are trying to increase it. Singapore offers cash handouts and extended maternity leave to encourage its citizens to have more kids, while China has loosened its 34-year-old one-child policy that has saddled the nation with an aging labor force.

"Indonesia is seen by other countries as an opportunity because of its population," said Aris Ananta, who has published books on Indonesian demographics and is currently a senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. "It's an asset. The government is shifting its responsibilities if it's blaming population growth" for a failure to provide enough infrastructure or jobs, he said.

About 19.6 percent of Indonesian youths between the ages of 15 and 24 were jobless in 2012, compared with about 16 percent in the Philippines, according to the ILO. Unemployment, inflation and the so-called youth bulge, a phenomenon where a large share of the population is comprised of children and young adults, contributed to the Arab Spring protests that ousted leaders in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt in 2011.

Indonesia's labor force will grow 11.2 percent this decade through 2020, while its population will increase about 11.5 percent, according to Bank of America Corp. The high proportion of young adults — about 50 percent of Indonesians are aged below 30 — has attracted companies such as L'Oreal SA, the world's largest cosmetics maker, which opened its biggest factory globally in West Java in 2012 to supply products to Southeast Asia.

source: azstarnet.com

The H7N9 Influenza outbreak in the People's Republic of China has been classified by the European Centres of Disease Control as a "significant long-term threat". The World Health Organization has asked for "vigilance". Once again, are we to sit back and watch a potentially disastrous virus spin out of control?

Remember the Swine Flu outbreak, or Influenza A H1N1 in 2009? Remember the response from the World Health Organization? To remind our readers, no quarantine was imposed, no travel restrictions, just "vigilance" while the WHO informed us about the stages the pandemic was passing through until it became a pandemic. The pharmaceutical companies meanwhile rubbed their hands in glee as vaccines were sold, to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars and the more widespread the pandemic became, the more vaccines they sold, and thereafter medicines to reduce the symptoms of the virus once caught.

Now in the People's Republic of China we are witnessing a highly pathogenic strain of Bird Flu (the same type of flu which killed between 50 and 100 million people after the First World War - Spanish flu), namely H7N9. Known as a strain which affected poultry, the virus appeared in early 2013 in the People's Republic of China and disappeared during the summer, reappearing again as the weather became cooler in the Autumn and winter.

To date H7N9 has produced some 220 cases and 55 deaths, rendering the vast majority of victims in critical condition and the death rate indicates some 25 per cent of cases - a quarter of all those infected have died, placing this strain on a level with the Black Death (Bubonic plague) in medieval times.

While the WHO is claiming that there has been no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission, and while the majority of cases are among humans with a history of exposure to poultry (in poultry markets or breeding poultry at home), it is also true that some cases are among those who have no history of exposure to poultry.

With the Chinese New Year looming at the end of January, and with the World Health Organization once again sitting back and watching, like some perverted voyeur, let us wait and see what happens. Obviously, yet again, there is nothing anyone can do about it, because if our health authorities relegate themselves to vigilance and inaction, all we can do is sit back and wait, to become infected with a deadly virus, or not. And if not, what about next time?

One thing the scientific community agrees upon: it will happen, a deadly strain of the Influenza virus will mutate and will create a deadly pandemic. It is not a question of if, but when. If the World Health Organization were more proactive, then there would not be so much to worry about.

It is almost as if the pharmaceutical lobby is asking for a pandemic to spread across the world, so that the pharma companies can make billions out of selling their "products" (as they name them). Surely that could never happen? Or could it?

source: english.pravda.ru

US Embassy Chargé d'Affaires Kristen Bauer and the Jakarta administration on Monday launched the Community Empowerment of People against Tuberculosis (CEPAT) health program in Jakarta. The program supports community-based outreach and care for Tuberculosis (TB) via the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

"USAID's CEPAT program supports Indonesian organizations and local communities to combat TB and to save lives," said Bauer in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

She said the US was partnering with the Health Ministry and was committed to supporting its TB program.

"Together, we will ensure more people are diagnosed, and support TB-positive patients in completing their treatment," Bauer said.

To increase the number of people who are tested, treated and cured for TB in Jakarta, the US supports several Indonesian organizations including Jaringan Kesehatan/Kesejahteraan Masyarakat (JKM).

The Family Welfare Movement team, or Tim Penggerak Pembinaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK) of Jakarta Special Province (DKI) hosted today's event to demonstrate its support of the work to fight TB in Jakarta.

Indonesia remains among the top five countries globally with the highest incidence of TB. There are around 450,000 new TB cases and 65,000 TB-related deaths in Indonesia every year. Multi-drug resistant strains of TB are on the rise. Approximately 30 percent of Indonesia's estimated TB cases are not detected, and many patients are diagnosed late.

Last year, USAID recognized Indonesia's global leadership in the fight against TB in ceremonies in Washington DC and Jakarta, highlighting Indonesia's progress in achieving its Millennium Development Goals for TB.

The CEPAT program works with communities and local organizations to reach people who live in urban slums, displaced and mobile populations and people with reduced immunity due to malnourishment or HIV infection.

CEPAT works in DKI Jakarta, West Java, East Java, West Nusa Tenggara, North Sumatra, West Sumatra, Papua, and West Papua provinces.(ebf)

source: www.thejakartapost.com

BEIJING: China has reportedly downgraded H7N9 bird flu in humans, dropping its description as "infectious" in new guidelines on how to deal with the disease, even as new cases spike with the onset of winter. The National Health and Family Planning Commission described it as a "communicable acute respiratory disease" in its 2014 diagnosis and treatment protocols. In the 2013 version it was considered as an "infectious disease". The Beijing Times yesterday quoted an unnamed Beijing disease control centre official saying that health authorities decided to "make the downgrade" on the basis that nearly a year of analysis had shown H7N9 was "not strongly infectious". The H7N9 human outbreak began in China in February 2013 and reignited fears that a bird flu virus could mutate to become easily transmissible between people, potentially triggering a pandemic.

The guidelines come as human cases undergo a seasonal spike, with 95 cases confirmed in mainland China so far this month according to an AFP tally of reports by local authorities. More than half have been in the eastern province of Zhejiang, with 24 in Guangdong in the south. So far seven patients have died in mainland China this year. That compares with 144 confirmed cases, including 46 deaths, in the whole of 2013 according to official statistics. It was not clear whether the rise in cases and decrease in fatality rate so far are due to the virus becoming more widespread and possibly less severe, or detection and treatment improving.

Cases and deaths dropped significantly after the end of June, but have begun to pick up with the onset of winter. "So far, most cases have been sporadic and there were some cluster outbreaks among family members," the commission said in the guidelines. "But there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission yet," it said, although it added that "limited" and "unsustained" infections could not be ruled out. In the past China has been accused of trying to cover up disease, particularly Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed about 800 people around the world in 2003. The World Health Organization (WHO) has more recently praised its openness and response to the outbreaks of bird flu. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl told AFP: "There's been an increase in the number of cases, not deaths. The deaths haven't increased that much. "This is winter, and all influenza viruses disseminate much more easily, much more widely, in winter, so it is not unexpected to see more cases," he said. The health commission guidelines shortened the disease's incubation period from seven days to three to four days, and the Beijing Times said hospitals would reduce the quarantine time for suspected exposures accordingly.

The health commission also inserted the phrase "particularly the elderly" in its description of those vulnerable to the virus, who it specifies are those who have had contact with poultry or have been to a live poultry market in the week before showing symptoms. A spate of bird flu cases since the beginning of the year in China has experts watching closely as millions of people and poultry are on the move ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, the world's largest annual human migration. China has reported more than 50 H7N9 infections in 2014 after the strain jumped from birds to people for the first time last year. The virus remains hard to catch and most cases have been linked to contact with poultry, but scientists worry that could change if it mutates into a form that allows it to spread easily among people. For those who track influenza, the holiday, which begins Jan. 31, is always worrying because it comes during the winter months when flu typically rages. Add that to hundreds of millions of people – and often birds – crammed together on buses and other forms of transportation going home, and it's always a bit of a gamble.

China estimates 3.6 billion trips will be taken over the holiday season. "This is the first winter we've seen H7N9. We are in uncharted territory," said Gregory Hartl, World Health Organization spokesman in Geneva. "We have seen an upstart in cases, which we are attributing basically to the fact that it's winter. That combined with a lot of movement of people in crowded trains with chickens could give rise to a lot more infections, but we've also seen in past years where it hasn't." The first H7N9 cases were reported in late March near Shanghai, and more than 200 others have since been identified, including some 50 deaths. A 31-year-old doctor became one of the latest fatalities, raising fears he may have been infected at the hospital where he worked, but none of his patients or other close contacts have reported flu symptoms, according to the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Health and Family Planning. — AFP

source: news.kuwaittimes.net

Leprosy (also called as Hansen's disease) is one of the most dreadful diseases prevalent all over the world. It has tortured the human race all through history and has had a huge impact on various aspects of human life.

It's been over three decades since multiple drug therapy (MDT) was first used to treat leprosy, yet millions of victims still live a crippled, poor quality of life due to leprosy infection. As per the 2011 statistics, India rank's number one by contributing about 58.1 per cent of new leprosy cases detected worldwide. Read what the Indian health minister has to say about eradication of leprosy in India.

Today, on 26 January—recognised as the World Leprosy Day, we discuss why the world is still not free from the disease and what are the recent advancements in leprosy treatment so far. Read more about the stigma associated with leprosy.

Challenges to be met:

• Leprosy, till date, remains an ignored problem that gets detected at later stages because of lack of awareness of its early symptoms. Hence, there is a need for speedy and accurate diagnostic tests which can detect the disease in early stages, especially in remote areas.
• Multiple drug therapy (MDT) has been the mainstay of leprosy treatment right since it was first used in 1980s. In fact, the significant decrease in incidence of leprosy was possible only because the drugs clofazimine, rifampicin and dapsone, used for treating leprosy, were made freely available to everyone by the World Health Organization (WHO). But, with prolonged use of drugs, resistance is a huge concern and threat to control leprosy. Finding newer drugs is therefore critical.
• The mode of transmission of the disease is still unknown. For complete eradication of the disease, interrupting its transmission is also very important.

Advances in treatment of leprosy

Focusing mainly on the three aspects mentioned above, remarkable advances in management of leprosy have emerged from research point of view. Read about the efforts of India to fight leprosy.

• Last year in Brazil, the lab OrangeLife introduced a new test for diagnosing leprosy. The test is rapid and similar to a pregnancy test. A drop of blood from the patient is taken on a reactive strip to detect the presence of antibodies against leprosy causing bacteria. The test provides 90% accurate results and looks promising as a diagnostic tool in remote areas, where a large number of people are silent carriers of the disease.
• Leprosy is a disease that affects the nerves causing loss of sensation. Because initial symptoms of the disease are often misleading, detection of thickened and enlarged nerves can help in its early diagnosis. Earlier, confirmation of nerve damage was extremely difficult. But, recent advances in imaging techniques including the use of ultrasonography (USG) have made assessment of structural changes in nerves possible.
• Extensive research is carried out in various parts of the world to develop newer drugs for effectively treating leprosy, especially in people who become drug resistant over a period of time. Of all the drugs in the initial stages of testing, the drug moxifloxacin has been found to be the most active agent against leprosy causing bacteria. Other drugs including rifapentin, clarithromycin and minocycline are also proposed to be included in the new drug therapy for treatment of leprosy.
• The best approach to eliminate the disease is vaccination, and a lot of research in vaccine development is also going on. As a part of their strategy to fight leprosy, American Leprosy Missions initiated vaccine research in 2011. After completion of their toxicology studies this year, they will begin with safety trials in 2015.

With concerted efforts of WHO, all health care providers, local governments and researchers, the barriers to eradication of leprosy will surely be eliminated and the world will see an unprecedented improvement in leprosy eradication, just as it witnessed in case of polio. Read more about the views of WHO at international leprosy summit in 2013.

References:

• P Narasimha Rao, Suman Jain. Newer management options in leprosy.
• Sunil Dogra, Tarun Narang & Bhushan Kumar. Leprosy – evolution of the path to eradication
• World health Organisation: Enhanced Global Strategy for Further Reducing the Disease Burden due to Leprosy. (2011-2015)
• Rapid diagnostic test promises end to leprosy torment (http://www.bbc.co.uk/)
• American leprosy Missions (http://www.leprosy.org/)
• Leprosy 2013 – The Problem and the Solutions

source: health.india.com

Global leaders -- from politicians and CEOs to academics and Nobel laureates -- will gather next week in Davos, Switzerland for the 44th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. At this year's forum, which runs from January 22-25 and will focus on the theme The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business, health and wellness will be a bigger focus of the conversation than ever before.

The forum's first-ever health summit will feature 25 sessions on topics including mental health, personalized medicine, health systems in emerging economies, and other pressing public health issues. More than 2,000 participants representing over 100 nations will take part in the discussions, many of which will focus on the intersection between health and broader economic and social issues.

"The time is right to elevate the conversation on health," said Robert Greenhill, managing director and chief business officer at the Forum, in a press release. "For the past few years, the critical state of the financial system absorbed much of Davos participants' attention. This year, there is a sense that the global economy is out of intensive care and embarking on rehabilitation. As we ask how metaphorically to improve the economy's health, literally improving the population's health is a good place to start."

Mental health issues will be a particular focus of the conversations. The global costs of poor mental health and its repercussions are estimated at $16 trillion over the next 20 years, according to the World Economic Forum. The World Health Organization has estimated that at least 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression, and that it is the leading cause of disability worldwide.

But the participants at Davos won't just be talking about health -- they'll be actively encouraged to make healthy decisions of their own. As part of the Davos health challenge, participants will be encouraged to make healthy choices when it comes to food, sleep and physical activity, and to track their activity for the week using Jawbone fitness trackers.

Some of the week's notable speakers on technology and health-related panels include Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer; Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini; Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group; actor Matt Damon; and Peter Salovey, president of Yale University.

Arianna Huffington and Mika Brzezinski are taking The Third Metric on a 3-city tour: NY, DC & LA. Tickets are on sale now at thirdmetric.com.

source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Humans face the very real risk of a future without antibiotics, a world of plummeting life expectancy where people die from diseases easily treatable today, scientists say.

Experts tracking the rise of drug resistance say years of health gains could be rolled back by mutating microbes that make illnesses more difficult and expensive to cure and carry a higher risk of death.

Some say the threat to wellbeing is on the scale of global warming or terrorism -- yet resistance is being allowed to spread through an entirely preventable means

-- improper use of antibiotics.

"It is a major public health problem," Patrice Courvalin, who heads the Antibacterial Agents Unit of France's Pasteur Institute, told AFP.

"It is about more than not being able to treat a disease. It will erase much progress made in the last 20-30 years."

Without antibiotics to tackle opportunistic bacteria that pose a particular risk for people who are very ill, major surgery, organ transplants or cancer and leukaemia treatment may become impossible, he explained.

"In some parts of the world, already we have run out of antibiotics," said Timothy Walsh, a professor of medical microbiology at Cardiff University.

"In places in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, possibly Russia, Southeast Asia, central South America, we are at the end game. There's nothing left. And unfortunately there is nothing in the pipeline either."

Resistance to drugs emerges through changes in the bacterium's genetic code -- altering the target on its surface to which antibiotics would normally bind, making the germ impenetrable or allowing it to destroy or "spit out" the antibiotic.

These super-germs triumph through Darwinian pressure, helped by humans.

The wrong antibiotics, taken for too short a period, in too low a dose or stopped to early, will fail to kill the altered microbes.

Instead, the drugs will indiscriminately damage other bacteria and give the resistant strain a competitive advantage -- allowing it to dominate and spread.

At the base of the problem is doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or unnecessarily, and the ease with which medicines can be obtained without a script in some parts of the world, including Asia and Africa.

As much as 70 percent of antibiotics are given for viral infections, against which they are wholly ineffective, the experts say.

Then there is the problem of farmers in countries like the United States adding antibiotics to animal feed to help herds grow faster.

Compounding all of this is the rise in global travel -- a boon for bacterial spread, and a sharp drop in antibiotics development blamed on a lack of financial incentives for the pharmaceutical industry.

A return to the pre-antibiotic era?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says drug resistance "threatens a return to the pre-antibiotic era".

"Many infectious diseases risk becoming untreatable or uncontrollable," it states in a factsheet on antimicrobial resistance.

A case in point: some 450 000 people developed multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB in 2012 and 170,000 died from it. MDR TB does not respond to the most potent TB drugs -- isoniazid and rifampin.

Nearly 10 percent of MDR cases are thought to be of the even deadlier XDR (extensively drug resistant) variety which does not respond to a yet wider range of drugs.

Like other drug-resistant microbes, MDR and XDR TB can be transferred directly between people -- you can get it even if you have never taken antibiotics in your life.

"Antibiotic resistance is an emerging disease and a societal problem. The use you can make of an antibiotic depends on the use made by others," said Courvalin.

Another worry for health planners today is the spread of a multi-drug resistant strain of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae -- a common cause of infections of the urinary tract, respiratory tract and bloodstream, and a frequent source of hospital outbreaks.

In some parts of the world, only the carbapenem antibiotics class remains effective, but now signs are emerging of resistance even to this last line of defence.

Antibiotics are thought to have saved hundreds of millions of lives since Alexander Fleming first discovered penicillin in 1928.

But even Fleming's own warnings of impending drug resistance went unheeded, and now scientists say peop

le may start dying from infections like meningitis and septicaemia that are eminently curable today.

"If we keep going like this, the vast majority of human bacterial pathogens will be multi-resistant to antibiotics," said Courvalin.

The answer? Prudent drug use -- better and faster diagnosis to determine whether an infection is viral or bacterial and whether it is even susceptible to treatment.

Farmers must stop feeding antibiotics to their livestock, and hospital and individuals improve their hygiene to prevent bacterial spread.

Yet few experts believe the damage can be undone.

"The bugs have become very sophisticated, they've become very complex," said Walsh.

"You can decrease resistance or reduce it, but never completely reverse it."

source: www.nst.com.my

And the U.S. didn't even make the top 20. The Netherlands came out on top because of low diabetes rates, low food prices and nutritional diversity. Chad landed last on the list for its costly, unhealthy food options.

Thanks in part to a diet that places the emphasis on vegetables and dairy products, the Netherlands has been named the healthiest country in the world to eat.

Though the country is better known for its liberal drug laws than its cuisine, the Dutch diet ranked the healthiest out of 125 countries in a wide sweeping report out of Oxfam that looked at factors like food availability, affordability, food quality and obesity rates.

According to the index "Good Enough to Eat," the Netherlands emerged the leader thanks to relatively low food prices, low prevalence of diabetes, and better nutritional diversity than its European rivals.

Overall, the list is dominated by European countries, with France and Switzerland tying for second place, followed by Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden tying for third.

Notable absentees include the UK, Canada and the U.S.

Asian giants South Korea and Japan, meanwhile, performed the best when it comes to healthy eating habits and food availability, given their lower rates of diabetes and obesity and equally low rates of malnutrition in children.

At the other end of the spectrum, Chad landed dead last on the list, due to high food prices, poor nutritional value as well as limited sanitary conditions that includes access to clean water.

Second from the bottom are Angola and Ethiopia.

Interestingly, when it comes to unhealthy eating habits, Saudi Arabia was the lowest scoring country, ranking the worst for its high prevalence of diabetes -- a whopping 18% of the population is diabetic. A third of the population is also considered obese.

The fattest country on the list is Kuwait, where 42% of the population is obese.

To compile their ranking, researchers looked at figures from eight studies published out of international groups like the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Labor Organization.

Meanwhile, a 2006 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition concluded that a healthy traditional Dutch diet -- defined as a high intake of vegetables, fruit, dairy products and potatoes -- was more feasible and healthier for the longevity of older Dutch women, compared to a Mediterranean diet.

Here are the top countries for healthy eating, according Oxfam's "Good Enough to Eat," index:

1. Netherlands
2. France, Switzerland
3. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden
4. Australia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal

Source: www.nydailynews.com