Full Coverage: Health

31.01.2006 The Bureau of Public Health of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, in cooperation with four elementary schools from Mostar started a campaign to mark 31 January – No Smoking Day. The official slogan of the campaign is “No Smoking – Life at Its Fullest”. The campaign is organized under the Orkdal project, with support by the Nansen Dialogue Centre Mostar.

31.01.2006 Hundreds of severely mentally ill offenders in the US are mired within a healthcare system that is too slow to help and a justice system that is too quick to pass death sentences, a leading rights group said today.

31.01.2006 The leprosy eradication mission, which started at Independence reached a milestone with transmission of the disease reaching negligible levels. For the first time in 50 years, less than one in 10,000 persons contracted the disease last year

31.01.2006 Almost 8 million babies a year - around 6 per cent of total births - have a serious defect of genetic or partial genetic origin, according to a new report that says hundreds of thousands more are born with serious defects caused by exposure to alcohol, rubella or syphilis.

30.01.2006 The Netherlands British Chamber of Commerce is organising a two day fact finding mission in February for British firms who want to find out more about selling into the fast-growing Dutch health ICT market.

30.01.2006 Aravind Eye Hospital, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Prevention of Blindness, provides an entire range of eye care services from primary eye care to the State of the Art tertiary eye care, through its network of five eye hospitals with a combined bed capacity of 3,500 serving primarily two southern States, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and partly Karnataka & Andhra Pradesh.

30.01.2006 The World Bank approved today a US$46.7 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA) to support the Government of Pakistan's effort to eradicate polio. It is designed to help supply the Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) for the country's Supplementary Immunization Activities (SIAs) during 2006-07.

30.01.2006 One World South Asia (OWSA), an international civil society network online, has called for increased government role in turning integrated disease surveillance and preventive healthcare a success in the South Asian region.

27.01.2006 Capacity building and training programmes have enabled Saraswati Parajuli of Sindhupalchok district, Nepal, to set up a medical centre on Mankha highway, and to provide essential health services and medicines in her village. This is a result of the initiatives of the Local Governance Programme of UNDP Nepal.

27.01.2006 Many students applying to university in UK to study medicine or dentistry will be required to undergo a 90-minute computer aptitude test as part of their course application. The UKCAT (UK Clinical Aptitude Test) will feature verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, abstract reasoning and problem solving questions; it will not cover academic subjects

27.01.2006 Asthma sufferers may not be able to buy non-prescription inhalers in the U.S. much longer because the devices contain propellants that harm the ozone layer.

27.01.2006 With mounting criticism of Greenpeace's opposition to arrival of French ship Clemenceau to Indian ship-breaking yard Alang, the organisation seems to have modified its stand on the industry. Read this press release by Greenpeace.

22.01.2006 UNICEF is working with local organisations in quake-hit regions of Pakistan and is sending female healthcare teams to rural areas to meet the healthcare needs of the people. These healthcare teams have been specially trained in Islamabad.

21.01.2006 Environmentalists may be up in arms but many people in Alang are eagerly awaiting the arrival of the discarded and controversial French warship Clemenceau - for their bread and butter. Alang has for long been a booming graveyard of ships from the world over, a place where vessels are ripped apart for every little particle that will fetch money as scrap.

20.01.2006 The Ombudspersons of the B&H Federation, Vera Jovanovic, Esad Muhibic and Branka Raguz, reccomended the Federal Ministry of ducation and all cantonal education ministries in the Federation to secure free access to primary healthcare to all university and high school students, a right guaranteed by the federal Law on Healthcare.

20.01.2006 The Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration said that the rural health centres will be open 24 hours for improved medical services. According to an ICT spokesman, three female doctors and three male doctors have been appointed at Tarlai health centres.

19.01.2006 The Government of Albanian submitted a new, much stricter draft-Law on Tobacco and Smoking for Parliamentary review and debate. The draft will completely outlaw sale of cigarettes to children and minors younger than 18, and will present stricter rules for tobacco industry, regarding sale and advertising of tobacco products.

19.01.2006 Families in Indonesia's Aceh province, still recovering from the devastating tsunami of a year ago, are being helped tackle a new concern—avian flu.
Brazil to spend US$45m protecting poultry sector

17.01.2006 Starting this January, the three planned immunisation weeks aim to strengthen the Indian health ministryÂ’s ambitious routine immunisation programme in states that traditionally have low coverage, thus increasing national coverage to 80 per cent by December 2006.

17.01.2006 While HIV/AIDS and malaria get the most attention, Sub-Saharan Africans are suffering the devastating affects of five so-called "diseases of poverty," even though affordable means of prevention are available. In fact, a collaborative study has designed an integrated program that could treat all five diseases at once for $0.92 per person.