Outrage in NA over maid’s murder Call for stern action against child labour
ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: The National Assembly voiced outrage on Monday over the alleged murder of a young maid by torture at the house of a lawyer in Lahore, demanding, in a unanimous resolution, “severest” punishment for the perpetrators of the crime.
Members from all parliamentary groups condemned the incident and called for stern action against child labour and domestic violence, after the house observed oneminute silence for 12-year-old Shazia Masih, television pictures of whose wounds have sent shock waves across the country.
But Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi did not grant ANP member Bushra Gohar’s request that Minorities Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, who is a Christian, lead a prayer in the house for the victim, ruling that prayers be better left reserved for the members of the house and their relatives.
Mr Bhatti later moved the consensus resolution which condemned the murder, expressed sympathies with the victim’s family and demanded “the severest punishment” for the culprits.
Most of the day’s sitting was consumed by speeches, made on points of order, mainly about the Lahore case, before the house was adjourned until 10am on Tuesday.
As done in the resolution, several members praised President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif for taking personal interest in the case that some said overcame initial police hesitation to move against the accused.
But PML-Q’s Begum Atiya Inayatullah regretted what she called “silence” of the lawyers’ community over the case in which a former president of the Lahore Bar Association was the main accused, and demanded that the government promptly move against what she saw as a “gang” engaged in abusing children.
Asiya Nasir of the JUI said hundreds of thousands of children suffered torture every year. She called for an explanation -- which did not come -from the labour and social welfare ministers about what was being done to check such practices.
An independent member from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Zafar Baig Bhittani, came out with what he himself said would “appear as an unreasonable” suggestion to seek help from the Pakistani Taliban who, he claimed, would eliminate such practices within six months.
But the suggestion was condemned by PML-Q’s Sardar Bahadur Khan Sehar who blamed the situation on a perceived brutalisation of the society over the past 30-35 years and drew attention to the reported “sale” of children in southern Punjab to be employed for camel races in the Gulf.
PPP’s Nawab Yousuf Talpur, in a passionate speech, com plained for the second time within a week about what he called “extreme injustice” being done to Sindh because of alleged denial of its due share from the Indus river and said the situation would aggravate if a planned power plant was set up on the ChashmaJhelum Link Canal in Punjab.
Water and Power Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf denied the allegation, saying the Indus River System Authority (Irsa) was giving each province its due share under the 1991 water-sharing accord and that the proposed power project would use water only from Punjab’s share.
A PPP member, Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor, said three districts of the former Bahawalpur state also suffered severe water scarcities and were on the verge of a “revolt”. He counselled that the matter be taken up with Irsa members rather than being politicised.
MQM’s Wasim Akhtar urged the federal government to take notice of what he called a worsening law and order situation in Sindh, particularly abductions for ransom in Karachi and other areas, after accusing the provincial government of not doing enough to improve the situation.
PML-Q’s Marvi Memon alleged that violence and burning of houses in Miro Khan Lehari village in Sindh was political victimisation of her party’s followers at the behest of what she called the “noble royalty of Nawabshah”. She walked out of the house in protest.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 26-01-2010
Sprucing up the dead is big business in Taiwan
TAIPEI (Taiwan): Turns out that designing computer chips and marketing flat screen televisions are not the only desirable jobs in Taiwan, one of Asia’s high-tech hubs.
There’s also embalming.
When a funeral home advertised 10 openings recently, some 2,000 people applied.
The main attraction: the money.
A licensed embalmer with a college degree earns up to New Taiwan dollars 1.2 million ($37,500) a year at Lung Yen Life Service, the upscale funeral home that was seeking new workers. That’s equal to the pay for a junior engineer in Taiwan and more than twice as much as a hairdresser. It’s almost as much as the average pay for an embalmer in the US, where incomes are much higher.
The industry has also run advertising campaigns in recent years to try to change the perception that the business of handling corpses is unpleasant.
“In the past, if you told your parents you wanted to work in the funeral business, they would have passed out,” said Fung Chia-li, a manager at Chin Pao San Group, another Taiwanese funeral home. “Now it is considered a decent job, though probably not as respected as teachers or engineers.” Funerals are lavish in Taiwan, often involving weeks of ceremonies and elaborate processions with brass bands, dancing girls and hired mourners, who are paid handsomely to weep their hearts out for someone else’s deceased relative. Embalming can include massaging the body with perfumed oils or a new hair style — anything from conservative to punk.
According to the Interior Ministry, the funeral industry on this island of 23 million people generated about NT$50 billion ($1.6 billion) in revenues last year. That was more than $12,000 per corpse — about 75 per cent of the average annual income — an indication of how seriously Taiwanese take their funerals.
Cremation has overtaken more expensive burials in recent years, but funeral homes have kept revenues from falling by upgrading their services and building lavish structures to house the ceramic urns containing the ashes of the dead, Fung said.
The bodies are still embalmed for the funeral service before cremation.
Her funeral home sells a shoebox-size urn space for up to NT$500,000. The urns are placed in towers with marblepaved lobbies in a 247-acre (100-hectare) cemetery facing the Pacific Ocean. When lit up at night, the towers look like monuments.
“The funeral process is a unique part of Chinese culture, a form of filial piety extended to ancestor worship in the belief their spirits can protect offspring in generations to come,” Fung said.
There are about 1,100 licensed embalmers in Taiwan. Their work often includes other funeral-related services and ceremonies as well.
Big money was one of the things that drew Yuan Chengyi, 43, to a job at Lung Yen Life Service some five years ago. That was when the former beautician discovered that working on dead bodies paid more than working on live ones.
Sprucing up the dead requires more skill than helping the living get ready for the big night out, said Yuan, who would not reveal how much she now makes.
“The skin of an iced body is extremely fragile and will peel off if not handled with care,” she said. “And only a first-rate massage can relax a dead body and bring a peaceful expression to its face.” Embalming is widely performed in the West, but Taiwanese funeral parlours — known for meticulous customer service — seem to have refined the art to new levels. Lung Yen offers what sounds like an upscale spa treatment. Priced at NT$55,000 ($1,700), it includes shampoo, oil massage, liberal applications of makeup, and a hair cut of choice.
Relatives can watch.
After sitting through the two-hour process of bathing and massaging her 91-yearold mother-in-law at a morgue recently, Wu Ai-hua said the short-lived embalming before the cremation was well worth it.
“We were very moved ... to see her getting this last measure of peace and dignity,” she said.
Another factor drawing people to the funeral industry was the Japanese film “Departures,” said Samantha Niu, a manager at Lung Yen Life Service. The 2009 Oscar winner for best foreign film tells the story of a jobless cellist finding dignity and selffulfilment in tending to the dead as an embalmer.
Lin Yun-chi, 32, a newly-recruited embalmer at Lung Yen. believes she has what it takes to do her job well.
“It’s not that I’m so much bolder than others,” she said. “But I want to make the deceased look good on their final journeys.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 26-01-2010
Conflict-hit areas Unicef to assist EU-funded humanitarian work
ISLAMABAD, Jan 25: As internally displaced people from tribal areas start returning to their homes, the humanitarian community is expanding its focus on the conflict-hit areas of NWFP and Fata.
Unicef Pakistan said it would assist humanitarian work amounting to $5.6 million contributed by European Union’s humanitarian aid department, Echo.
A press release issued by Unicef on Monday said since 2008 an estimated three million people in NWFP and Fata had been displaced. About 60 per cent of the displaced persons were children and those who stayed behind faced months of uncertainty without basic serv ices or adequate food.
Even before the conflict began, only quarter of rural households in Fata and half in NWFP had access to safe sanitation.
“Improving sanitation and safe water to ensure that such cases don’t increase and affect more children in NWFP and Fata is a vital part of recovery and an investment in the future of these areas,” said Martin Mogwanja, Unicef Pakistan representative.“Restoring infrastructure and building the capacity of the government and communities to sustain access to water and sanitation services is essential to ensure that retuning population can realise their rights to water and sani tation and are less vulnerable to the spread of preventable diseases such as diarrhoea,” he added.
Unicef is working with the government and other partners in the water and sanitation cluster to help prevent the spread of infectious diseases, such as pneumonia and diarrhoea which are worsened by lack of safe water and inadequate sanitation.
The financial assistance of $5.6 million would be used to support improved access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene for an estimated 1.49 million people including 82,500 school-going children that are returning to the crisis-affected areas, it said.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 26-01-2010
Decision against Paracetamol registration suspended
RAWALPINDI, Jan 25: The Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench on Monday suspended a decision of the Drug Regulation Board cancelling registration of paracetamol 500mg tablets and directed the ministry of health to respond to a petition in this regard within four weeks.
Justice Asad Munir in his interim order also directed the Quality Control Board not to proceed against the manufacturer of the medicine, the Shifa Laboratories, till final outcome of the petition.
Mohammad Younas Malik, chief executive of the company, through his counsel Hamid Khan maintained before the court that the ministry of health had proceeded against him despite restraining orders issued by the defunct Islamabad High Court.
The petitioner said that in 2008 the company was given a tender for provision of paracetamol tablets to National Programme for Family Planning and Primary Healthcare for one year. According to the contract, if the tablets before being handed over to the ministry were found substandard the company would be allowed either to improve the quality or appeal before the federal drug laboratory.
The petitioner said his tablets were distributed in the country after clearance and half of the payment had already been made but on May 30 last year the DRB issued a show-cause notice to the company after drug inspectors in Hyderabad and Peshawar complained about the stand ard of the tablets.
The company then moved the IHC and obtained a restraining order till final outcome of the case on June 24 last year but the health ministry on November 5 issued another show-cause notice to the company asking its CEO to appear in the 221st meeting of DRB.
On November 25, 2009, the board cancelled the registration of paracetamol 500mg tablets and recommended to the chairman Quality Control Board to suspend the manufacturing of the medicine.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 26-01-2010
JAN 25, 2010
Spurious drugs
PASSING a resolution in parliament to urge action against the sellers of spurious medicines is not enough if we are serious about tackling a problem linked to almost half the drugs manufactured in the country. There is an array of regulatory institutions to guard against spurious medication — the provincial quality control boards, the federal Drug Control Organisation, the Central Licensing and Registration Board and the Drug Appellate Board. But the problem remains, despite occasional inspection of pharmacies and clinics and subsequent prosecution in drug courts of those storing spurious drugs. The past decade also saw a significant increase in the number of drug inspectors and the creation of a Senate subcommittee on spurious drugs. However, with over 300 licensed drug manufacturers, more than 50,000 retailers and the collusion between unlicensed manufacturers and unscrupulous retailers and inspectors, uncovering the clandestine manufacturing and distribution chain has proved a difficult task.
Successful tackling of the problem requires strengthening inspection mechanisms to keep harmful drugs from entering the market and, more importantly, to prevent them from being manufactured in the first place. For this the loopholes in the Drug Act 1976 must be plugged. In this respect, it is important that two bills lying in parliament — one of which pertains to traditional medicine — be promulgated soon. Improving the resources of regulatory institutions and strengthening accountability mechanisms are also crucial. While it is not certain whether the proposed Drug Regulatory Authority would be able to deliver any better than the existing Drug Control Organisation, it would help to involve associations of pharmaceutical companies in tackling the issue. They could do this through exploring ways of securing the distribution chain and providing incentives for investment in track and traceability technologies and packaging protection programmes that limit access to spurious drugs. Finally, public awareness can curtail the demand for such medicines.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 25-01-2010
JAN 21, 2010
Powerful new quake rumbles across ruins of Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE: A powerful new earthquake rumbled across the ruins of Haiti on Wednesday, sending thousands of already-traumatized survivors running through the streets, screaming in terror.
The 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:03 am (1103 GMT) Wednesday, eight days after the Haitian capital was leveled by a massive temblor in which at least 75,000 people were killed, and a million left homeless.
“All Haitians are going to die because they are cursed,” said one mother now camping amid the squalor of the Port-au-Prince rubble where countless bodies still lie buried.
There were no immediate reports of anyone being killed or wounded by the strong aftershock, but some already severely damaged buildings did come tumbling down. The lone surviving wall of the main cathedral, complete with a stained-glass window of Jesus, collapsed.
Despite the series of big aftershocks, rescuers have kept up their grim search through the rubble, elated by successes in finding survivors who have defied the odds. International rescue teams have so far rescued 121 people.
Hoteline Losana, 25, was found in the wreckage of a supermarket late Tuesday only hours after Anna Zizi, who is about 70, sang as she was carried out of the ruins of Port-au-Prince cathedral. A three-week-old baby girl was dug out of rubble in the city of Jacmel.
Losana was said to be “conscious and in good form” by Thiery Cerdan of the French group Rescuers Without Borders, which carried out the nine-hour operation with Haitian firemen and American experts.
“We pulled someone out seven days after an earthquake, that is quite extraordinary,” said Bruno Besson, another member of the French team.
French rescuers also found tiny 23-day-old Elisabeth on Tuesday in a hollow beneath the ruins of the house in southern Jacmel after spending five hours trying to get through to her.
“We handed her to her mother who put her to the breast. It was a real joy!” said Philippe Besson, head of the organization Emergency Firefighters’ International. The massive US relief operation, with some 12,000 US forces due to be deployed in or around the country, ramped up several gears Tuesday when US troops fanned out across the ruined capital.
But international efforts are also focusing on rebuilding the country, with a major donor conference set for Monday in Montreal. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Wednesday called for a multilateral aid plan for Haiti on the scale of the US “Marshall Plan” that rebuilt Europe after World War II.
In a huge global effort, more than 1.2 billion dollars has been pledged in aid funding for Haiti, according to UN data.
But Strauss-Kahn said he believed Haiti “needs something that is big” as the impoverished Caribbean nation — one of the poorest countries in the world — looks to the future.
“Not only a piecemeal approach, but something which is much bigger to deal with the reconstruction of the country — some kind of a Marshall Plan that we need now to implement for Haiti,” he said in a statement.
Haiti’s ambassador to Spain, Yolette Azor-Charles, said the reconstruction could take 25 years and warned the death toll could exceed 200,000 as help has yet to reach many villages.
“At the beginning I said (reconstruction) would take 10 years, but when I realized the magnitude of the quake I thought it’s better to say 15, then 20, and now 25,” she told AFP.
UN aid workers, meanwhile, were also searching Port-au-Prince for any more damage or potential new victims after the new aftershock in the south.
A 1,000-bed capacity US naval hospital ship arrived off Haiti Wednesday with about 600 medical personnel, and was ready to start taking on board the worst of the injured.
“The ship is now set up to do immediate life-saving surgery,” Colonel Richard Ellison told reporters.
The USNS Comfort, a 70,000-tonne Mercy class hospital ship, will treat 30 to 50 patients at a time, chosen by Haitian officials from the thousands thronging hospitals and make-shift clinics.
But Major General Daniel Allyn, deputy commander of the US military operation in Haiti, said Tuesday that US forces would soon switch the focus of the operation to recovering bodies rather than looking for survivors.
Tens of thousands of survivors remain camped out under makeshift tents among the rubble, and for many looting was the only way to survive.
“Look, when you are hungry and poor, nobody helps, you have to steal,” one defiant young man named Vincent said, as people plunged into the ruins of a flattened supermarket.
Copyrights TheNews Newspaper 21-01-2010
The 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck at 6:03 am (1103 GMT) Wednesday, eight days after the Haitian capital was leveled by a massive temblor in which at least 75,000 people were killed, and a million left homeless.
“All Haitians are going to die because they are cursed,” said one mother now camping amid the squalor of the Port-au-Prince rubble where countless bodies still lie buried.
There were no immediate reports of anyone being killed or wounded by the strong aftershock, but some already severely damaged buildings did come tumbling down. The lone surviving wall of the main cathedral, complete with a stained-glass window of Jesus, collapsed.
Despite the series of big aftershocks, rescuers have kept up their grim search through the rubble, elated by successes in finding survivors who have defied the odds. International rescue teams have so far rescued 121 people.
Hoteline Losana, 25, was found in the wreckage of a supermarket late Tuesday only hours after Anna Zizi, who is about 70, sang as she was carried out of the ruins of Port-au-Prince cathedral. A three-week-old baby girl was dug out of rubble in the city of Jacmel.
Losana was said to be “conscious and in good form” by Thiery Cerdan of the French group Rescuers Without Borders, which carried out the nine-hour operation with Haitian firemen and American experts.
“We pulled someone out seven days after an earthquake, that is quite extraordinary,” said Bruno Besson, another member of the French team.
French rescuers also found tiny 23-day-old Elisabeth on Tuesday in a hollow beneath the ruins of the house in southern Jacmel after spending five hours trying to get through to her.
“We handed her to her mother who put her to the breast. It was a real joy!” said Philippe Besson, head of the organization Emergency Firefighters’ International. The massive US relief operation, with some 12,000 US forces due to be deployed in or around the country, ramped up several gears Tuesday when US troops fanned out across the ruined capital.
But international efforts are also focusing on rebuilding the country, with a major donor conference set for Monday in Montreal. IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on Wednesday called for a multilateral aid plan for Haiti on the scale of the US “Marshall Plan” that rebuilt Europe after World War II.
In a huge global effort, more than 1.2 billion dollars has been pledged in aid funding for Haiti, according to UN data.
But Strauss-Kahn said he believed Haiti “needs something that is big” as the impoverished Caribbean nation — one of the poorest countries in the world — looks to the future.
“Not only a piecemeal approach, but something which is much bigger to deal with the reconstruction of the country — some kind of a Marshall Plan that we need now to implement for Haiti,” he said in a statement.
Haiti’s ambassador to Spain, Yolette Azor-Charles, said the reconstruction could take 25 years and warned the death toll could exceed 200,000 as help has yet to reach many villages.
“At the beginning I said (reconstruction) would take 10 years, but when I realized the magnitude of the quake I thought it’s better to say 15, then 20, and now 25,” she told AFP.
UN aid workers, meanwhile, were also searching Port-au-Prince for any more damage or potential new victims after the new aftershock in the south.
A 1,000-bed capacity US naval hospital ship arrived off Haiti Wednesday with about 600 medical personnel, and was ready to start taking on board the worst of the injured.
“The ship is now set up to do immediate life-saving surgery,” Colonel Richard Ellison told reporters.
The USNS Comfort, a 70,000-tonne Mercy class hospital ship, will treat 30 to 50 patients at a time, chosen by Haitian officials from the thousands thronging hospitals and make-shift clinics.
But Major General Daniel Allyn, deputy commander of the US military operation in Haiti, said Tuesday that US forces would soon switch the focus of the operation to recovering bodies rather than looking for survivors.
Tens of thousands of survivors remain camped out under makeshift tents among the rubble, and for many looting was the only way to survive.
“Look, when you are hungry and poor, nobody helps, you have to steal,” one defiant young man named Vincent said, as people plunged into the ruins of a flattened supermarket.
Copyrights TheNews Newspaper 21-01-2010
JAN 20, 2010
Start running and watch your brain grow, say
THE health benefits of a regular run have long been known, but scientists have never understood the curious ability of exercise to boost brain power.
Now researchers think they have the answer. Neuroscientists at Cambridge University have shown that running stimulates the brain to grow fresh grey matter and it has a big impact on mental ability.
A few days of running led to the growth of hundreds of thousands of new brain cells that improved the ability to recall memories without confusing them, a skill that is crucial for learning and other cognitive tasks, researchers said.
The new brain cells appeared in a region that is linked to the formation and recollection of memories. The work reveals why jogging and other aerobic exercise can improve memory and learning, and potentially slow down the deterioration of mental ability that happens with old age.
“We know exercise can be good for healthy brain function, but this work provides us with a mechanism for the effect,” said Timothy Bussey, a behavioural neuroscientist at Cambridge and a senior author on the study. The research builds on a growing body of work that suggests exercise plays a vital role in keeping the brain healthy by encouraging the growth of fresh brain cells.
Previous studies have shown that “neurogenesis” is limited in people with depression, but that their symptoms can improve if they exercise regularly. Some antidepressant drugs work by encouraging the growth of new brain cells.
Scientists are unsure why exercise triggers the growth of grey matter, but it may be linked to increased blood flow or higher lev els of hormones that are released while exercising. Exercise might also reduce stress, which inhibits new brain cells through a hormone called cortisol.
The Cambridge researchers joined forces with colleagues at the US National Institute on Ageing in Maryland to investigate the effect of running.
They studied two groups of mice, one of which had unlimited access to a running wheel throughout. The other mice formed a control group. In a brief training session, the mice were put in front of a computer screen that displayed two identical squares side by side. If they nudged the one on the left with their nose they received a sugar pellet reward. If they nudged the one on the right, they got nothing.
After training the mice went on to do the memory test. The more they nudged the correct square, the better they scored. At the start of the test, the squares were 30cm apart, but got closer and closer together until they were almost touching. This part of the experiment was designed to test how good the mice were at separating two very similar memories. The human equivalent could be remembering what a person had for dinner yesterday and the day before, or where they parked on different trips to the supermarket.
The running mice clocked up an average of 15 miles (24km) a day. Their scores in the memory test were nearly twice as high as those of the control group. The greatest improvement was seen in the later stages of the experiment, when the two squares were so close they nearly touched, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“At this stage of the experiment, the two memories the mice are forming of the squares are very similar. It is when they have to distinguish between the two that these new brain cells really make a difference,” Bussey said.
The sedentary mice got steadily worse at the test because their memories became too similar to separate.
The scientists also tried to wrongfoot the mice by switching the square that produced a food reward. The running mice were quicker to catch on when scientists changed them around.
Brain tissue taken from the rodents showed that the running mice had grown fresh grey matter during the experiment. Tissue samples from the dentate gyrus part of the brain revealed on average 6,000 new brain cells in every cubic millimetre. The dentate gyrus is part of the hippocampus, one of the few regions of the adult brain that can grow fresh brain cells.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 20-01-2010
A flourishing trade called quackery
MUZAFFARGARH, Jan 19: This district was once widely acclaimed for its dates, mangoes and politicians but quackery mushrooming in recent years has given it a squarely new introduction and, according to an NGO, not less than 8,000 quacks are ‘practising’ here under the nose of the health department.
The businesses of these unregistered practitioners are flourishing because of vigorous marketing and publicity to lure common run of people without any let or hindrance. Though the health department claims that it is taking every possible step to check this menace, seemingly ‘half-hearted’ actions are unable to dent the confidence of these ‘traders’.
Over a dozen ‘clinics’ are being run in the city’s Main Bazaar alone where owners sell their ‘herbal medicines’ to treat all kinds of diseases in men, women and children. However, a health official says most of the ‘clinics’ are being run in towns and villages and not in urban areas. Many a quack run mobile shops, mostly on bicycles, in thoroughfares and streets of major localities.
Ashfaque runs his ‘clinic’ on a bicycle equipped with a powerful loudspeaker and traverses the city to sell indigenously-manufactured ‘medicine’ for digestive system disorders like gastro and constipation. A pack of pills is priced at just Rs20. He claims that he is master in treating “every” disease and has vast clientele in villages, especially in riverine area.
Walls of houses and other public places perhaps in the whole region are covered with graffiti of ‘Ma’ajoon Kareela’, encouraging ‘depressed’ men to visit a hakeem’s shop in Main Bazaar for miraculous results. An assistant of the hakeem claims that their ‘ma’ajoon’ (a kind of precipitate in oriental medication) enhances men’s sexual power and is the most sought-after ‘medicine’ in this part of the country. The proprietor also posts banner advertisement of his ‘medicine’ on local cable networks. Keeping in view the target audience, Indian films and stage dramas are considered most lucrative sites to run such advertisements.
Many youths can be seen distributing handbills and pamphlets of different hakeems and quacks in the city’s busiest intersections and at local bus stand.
Muzammil, one of these youths, says that he distributes around 1,000 pamphlets everyday at the bus stand. Recipients of his ‘informative material’ are mostly villagers, especially women.
A quack, who runs his business in Baseera Bazaar, says he is practising over there for the past 20 years and no health official has ever “dared” to examine his credentials. He says that he has not got any medical degree but his vast clientele is an exclusive proof of the effectiveness of his practice. He says that even MBBS doctors cannot diagnose diseases which he can diagnose and treat, perhaps only in a day.
Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) district officials say that quackery causes a large number of diseases but the government is not interested in bringing any piece of legislation, which could empower it to launch a clampdown on these ‘angels of death’. They urge the government to provide missing facilities at hospitals to improve their condition besides taking a prompt action against quacks.
PMA district president Dr Maqbool Alam says patients usually first go to quacks and after wasting time and money rush to government hospitals hoping that doctors will perform a miracle. He laments that there is no direction order even in the proposed healthcare bill against quackery.
PMA district general-secretary Dr Mehr Iqbal says the association has rejected the proposed bill and has emphasised on curbing quackery with iron fist.
He says that many a patient come to hospitals when their condition has deteriorated to a great extent after undergoing quacks’ haphazard treatment. Most of them happen to be on the verge of death while some are at such an incurable stage that their rest of life becomes a misery for them.
He says that all government hospitals lack equipment and staff and if any patient dies in any hospital, a criminal case must be instituted against higher authorities, like the health secretary and health minister. He also urges the government to slap an immediate ban on quackery.
Another practitioner, Dr Yussuf Leghari, says that lady health workers and social mobilisers have also opened their ‘clinics’ where they are performing surgical operations to terminate pregnancies. The mushrooming yet hazardous practice is a major source of deaths in expecting women, particularly from poor segments of society, in this part of the province.
He says that 80 seats of doctors, paramedics and other employees are lying vacant at the Muzaffargarh DHQ Hospital and this pathetic state of affairs compels them to invariably refer critical patients to Nishtar Hospital in Multan.
Punjab health department coordinator Tariq Rashid says that a task force and several teams have been formed which will launch action against quacks possibly from next month.
Health EDO Dr Khalid Majeed says that the department holds a monthly meeting chaired by the district coordination officer where deputy district health officers and drug inspectors submit their reports.
In December 2009 only, he says, 48 cases were registered against quacks and their challans were sent to the drug court in Multan for trial.
He claims that his department readily takes action whenever it receives any complaint against quacks.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 20-01-2010
Chemists pay for their bad medicines
ISLAMABAD, Jan 19: A Drug Court has imposed fines on seven medical stores and two clinics of the city for trading in spurious drugs and employing unqualified pharmacists and doctors.
Drug Inspector Mohammad Shafique Khan of Islamabad released this information on Tuesday as the National Assembly passed a resolution asking the government to take strict action against the widespread malpractices in the healthcare system.
The lawmakers made the call after Interior Minister Rehman Malik startled the house by revealing that up to 50 per cent of the drugs being produced by the pharmaceutical industry in the country were counterfeit.
According to the drug inspector, the medical stores fined by the court were doing business in Islamabad while the clinics employing quacks were located in Rawalpindi. They were fined Rs234,000 in all.
Legal action was initiated after he detected malpractices and fake drugs on his inspection rounds and booked the culprits under Drug Act 1976, the official said. He sealed some medical stores and suspended the licences of others for 10 days.
Their cases were referred first to Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Quality Control Board which decided to prosecute the cases in the Drug Court.
The court imposed fines on the medical stores for dealing in counterfeit drugs and the Saeed Ahktar Mobile Clinic Chakian Sihala for running a clinic without a licence.
The Al-Faiz Medical Store in Sitara Market was fined Rs30,000 for selling intoxicants-based medicines without having a licence for such drugs.The store did not have a qualified pharmacist nor it maintained a record of its sales and purchases.
Tahir Medical Store at Tarnol was fined Rs25,000 for similar violations. The Zafar Medical Store and Marwat Medical Store at Noorpur Shahan were each fined Rs45,000 for keeping unregistered medicines.
The Habibur Rehman Medical Centre at Chakkian, Sihala, was made to pay Rs31,000 for keeping unregistered medicines and running the store without a licence.
The Kamal Medicose at G-9 Markaz was fined Rs20,000 for keeping unregistered and unbranded medicines. The Kohsar Medical Store in G-7/2 was fined Rs15,000 for keeping medicines without warranty and not maintaining record of sale and purchase of medicines.
Similarly, Shifa Medical Store at Sihala was fined Rs20,000 for carrying on business without a licence.
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 20-01-2010
The healthcare bill 2009
Discussions around the Punjab Health Care Bill 2009 have intensified following some instances of alleged medical negligence in Lahore. The purpose of this comment is to clarify many policy and institutional implications of this bill in an attempt to avert a confrontation.
To begin with it is acknowledged that as the steward of the health sector, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure the provision of quality health services. Health being a provincial subject, it is also perfectly legitimate for the provincial government to legislate in this area. There is also a need for legislation in the quality regulation domain and imperative to create an institute focusing on quality, as this area has remained outside of the domain of planning. The need to bring the private sector within a normative framework is also acknowledged, as it is currently outside of the state's purview.
It is also true that quality of care offered by the private sector is heterogeneous, that rampant malpractices are commonplace, that citizens and the bona fide elements within the private health market suffer at the hands of the non-bona fide private health actors, which are burgeoning at an alarming rate and that there is lack of awareness regarding the law of tort and the remedies available under it. In view of all these gaps, the move to regulate the private sector with a view to ensuring quality of services as an endpoint is perfectly understandable. But is the envisaged strategy to be pursued through the bill the right approach? I will draw insights from past experiences to support my opinion in this connection.
First, for any regulatory framework to be effective, the consensus of stakeholders is a prerequisite. Lessons from the failure of NWFPs' policy on Institution Based Private Practice is instructive in this regard. This time around also the private healthcare community is not fully on board as is evident from the Pakistan Medical Association's categorical call to confrontation at the outset and subsequent, post-hoc consultations. Even if a regulatory strategy is well conceived--and the present one has many gaps--it will be inherently constrained if there is no stakeholder ownership.
Second, the style of regulation and quality control measures to be adopted through this bill are intrinsically--and inadvertently--structured for failure. Current regulatory systems are plagued with institutionalized rent-seeking where low paid inspectors collude with private entities. It would be extremely difficult for any new regulatory institution to ensure a level of remuneration for regulators that could play a role in prohibiting such behaviors given the current fiscal constraints.
Third, even if resources are not an issue and a health care regulatory arrangement is created, the level of acceptability it will have in the present system should be brought to bear. From a broad health governance perspective, the creation of a Health Commission could represent the beginning of separation between three functions within the health administration. The commission could be mandated with a regulatory role, the Secretariat could retain a policy making function and implementation could be entrusted to the departments of health and the EDOs' offices. In theory this is a desirable model, but it needs long-term consistency of policy direction and robust technical capacity to institutionalize such a change. There are inherent limitations in this respect and resistance to change from stakeholders who have a vested interest in maintaining status quo. The saga of the Drug Regularity Authority is a case in point where action has not been forthcoming since 2005.
Fourth, Pakistan's history is replete with examples of 'independent commissions', which have not delivered on the intended premise. We tend to think of institution creation as an end in itself. We don't structure the measures needed for institution building and often trade off design robustness in favor of structuring loopholes for controls. In fact some sections of the bill indicate an intent to factor-in discretionary powers, which can allow uneven application of the law at a later stage.
And finally, even if the government of Punjab created the ideal regulatory authority and even if had the money to do that, it must be remembered that institutions cannot be disconnected from their environment and that in isolation they are not a substitute for the many inefficiencies that pervade the health system in general.
It is therefore recommended that the government should reconsider its approach to quality regulation. Given the size and scale of the private sector and the nature of needed changes, a market harnessing form of regulation, which can incentivize the delivery of quality services appears the most feasible. The importance of this approach is that it can be mainstreamed at the same time as some other critically needed measures to harness the outreach of private providers. The latter are needed in Pakistan as 70 per cent of the healthcare delivery is by the private sector, whose potential to deliver public goods in health remains un-harnessed.
The decision to use private providers to deliver public goods in health entails the creation of a set of policy and regulatory norms. It is in tandem with these fundamental changes that incentives for quality can be built and with careful monitoring and oversight, can be successful in Pakistan's complex environment. Coercive measures in isolation cannot be a substitute for the needed reform in the health sector.
Copyrights TheNews Newspaper 20-01-2010
To begin with it is acknowledged that as the steward of the health sector, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure the provision of quality health services. Health being a provincial subject, it is also perfectly legitimate for the provincial government to legislate in this area. There is also a need for legislation in the quality regulation domain and imperative to create an institute focusing on quality, as this area has remained outside of the domain of planning. The need to bring the private sector within a normative framework is also acknowledged, as it is currently outside of the state's purview.
It is also true that quality of care offered by the private sector is heterogeneous, that rampant malpractices are commonplace, that citizens and the bona fide elements within the private health market suffer at the hands of the non-bona fide private health actors, which are burgeoning at an alarming rate and that there is lack of awareness regarding the law of tort and the remedies available under it. In view of all these gaps, the move to regulate the private sector with a view to ensuring quality of services as an endpoint is perfectly understandable. But is the envisaged strategy to be pursued through the bill the right approach? I will draw insights from past experiences to support my opinion in this connection.
First, for any regulatory framework to be effective, the consensus of stakeholders is a prerequisite. Lessons from the failure of NWFPs' policy on Institution Based Private Practice is instructive in this regard. This time around also the private healthcare community is not fully on board as is evident from the Pakistan Medical Association's categorical call to confrontation at the outset and subsequent, post-hoc consultations. Even if a regulatory strategy is well conceived--and the present one has many gaps--it will be inherently constrained if there is no stakeholder ownership.
Second, the style of regulation and quality control measures to be adopted through this bill are intrinsically--and inadvertently--structured for failure. Current regulatory systems are plagued with institutionalized rent-seeking where low paid inspectors collude with private entities. It would be extremely difficult for any new regulatory institution to ensure a level of remuneration for regulators that could play a role in prohibiting such behaviors given the current fiscal constraints.
Third, even if resources are not an issue and a health care regulatory arrangement is created, the level of acceptability it will have in the present system should be brought to bear. From a broad health governance perspective, the creation of a Health Commission could represent the beginning of separation between three functions within the health administration. The commission could be mandated with a regulatory role, the Secretariat could retain a policy making function and implementation could be entrusted to the departments of health and the EDOs' offices. In theory this is a desirable model, but it needs long-term consistency of policy direction and robust technical capacity to institutionalize such a change. There are inherent limitations in this respect and resistance to change from stakeholders who have a vested interest in maintaining status quo. The saga of the Drug Regularity Authority is a case in point where action has not been forthcoming since 2005.
Fourth, Pakistan's history is replete with examples of 'independent commissions', which have not delivered on the intended premise. We tend to think of institution creation as an end in itself. We don't structure the measures needed for institution building and often trade off design robustness in favor of structuring loopholes for controls. In fact some sections of the bill indicate an intent to factor-in discretionary powers, which can allow uneven application of the law at a later stage.
And finally, even if the government of Punjab created the ideal regulatory authority and even if had the money to do that, it must be remembered that institutions cannot be disconnected from their environment and that in isolation they are not a substitute for the many inefficiencies that pervade the health system in general.
It is therefore recommended that the government should reconsider its approach to quality regulation. Given the size and scale of the private sector and the nature of needed changes, a market harnessing form of regulation, which can incentivize the delivery of quality services appears the most feasible. The importance of this approach is that it can be mainstreamed at the same time as some other critically needed measures to harness the outreach of private providers. The latter are needed in Pakistan as 70 per cent of the healthcare delivery is by the private sector, whose potential to deliver public goods in health remains un-harnessed.
The decision to use private providers to deliver public goods in health entails the creation of a set of policy and regulatory norms. It is in tandem with these fundamental changes that incentives for quality can be built and with careful monitoring and oversight, can be successful in Pakistan's complex environment. Coercive measures in isolation cannot be a substitute for the needed reform in the health sector.
Copyrights TheNews Newspaper 20-01-2010
JAN 14, 2010
Scientists link plastics chemical to health risks
LONDON: Exposure to a chemical found in plastic containers is linked to heart disease, scientists said on Wednesday, confirming earlier findings and adding to pressure to ban its use in bottles and food packaging.
British and US researchers studied the effects of the chemical bisphenol A using data from a US government national nutrition survey in 2006 and found that high levels of it in urine samples were associated with heart disease.
Bisphenol A, known as BPA, is widely used in plastics and has been a growing concern for scientists in countries such as Britain, Canada and the United States, where food and drug regulators are examining its safety.
David Melzer, professor of epidemiology and public health at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, who led the study, said the research confirmed earlier findings of a link between BPA and heart problems.
The analysis also confirmed that BPA plays a role in diabetes and some forms of liver disease, said Melzer’s team, who studied data on 1,493 people aged 18 to 74.
“Our latest analysis largely confirms the first analysis, and excludes the possibility that the original report was a statistical blip,” they said in a statement.
BPA, used to stiffen plastic bottles and line cans, belongs to a class of compounds sometimes called endocrine disruptors.
The US Endocrine Society called last June for better studies into BPA and presented research showing the chemical can affect the hearts of women and permanently damage the DNA of mice.
“The risks associated with exposure to BPA may be small, but they are relevant to very large numbers of people. This information is important since it provides a great opportunity for intervention to reduce the risks,” said Exeter’s Tamara Galloway, who worked on the study published by the Public Library of Science online science journal PLoS One.
Urging bans US environmental health advocacy groups are urging a federal ban on BPA.
“There’s enough research to take definitive action on this chemical to reduce exposures in people and the environment,” Dr Anila Jacob of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit organisation, said in a telephone interview.
The US Food and Drug Administration is considering whether any action needs to be taken.
US government toxicologists at the National Institutes of Health concluded in 2008 that BPA presents concern for harmful effects on development of the prostate and brain and for behavioural changes in foetuses, infants and children.
Canada’s government plans to outlaw plastic baby bottles made with BPA. The charity Breast Cancer UK last month urged the British government to do the same because they said there was “compelling” evidence linking the chemical to breast cancer risk.
Experts estimate BPA is detectable in the bodies of more than 90 per cent of US and European populations. It is one of the world’s highest production volume chemicals, with more than 2.2 million tonnes produced annually.—Reuters
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 14-01-2010
Of missing persons
IN view of the growing realisation that the matter of involuntary disappearances constitutes a threat to the state’s vital interests a look back at what has been happening over the past five years should be in order.
Except for stray cases of persons who abandoned their kith and kin for one reason or another, including some who were recruited by ‘holy warriors’, state functionaries’ involvement with involuntary disappearances was unknown in Pakistan till about a decade ago. Two factors changed the situation — the hunt for Al Qaeda’s supporters and a roundup of militants suspected of involvement in attempts on Gen Musharraf’s life. Cases started coming to public notice in which people arrested by police officials disappeared after being handed over to special investigation teams.
By the end of 2004 the spurt in the number of persons picked up across the country and detained without the observation of legal formalities could not be ignored by human rights bodies. An increase in the number of habeas corpus petitions in high courts was also reported.
One after the other these habeas corpus petitions failed because the authorities named by petitioners denied detaining the persons reported missing and court bailiffs did not find the detainees at the places they were supposed to be held. In a couple of cases, however, the petitions did not fail altogether.
The petition for the recovery of a person from Mardan bore fruit as on the eve of the date of hearing he returned home and confirmed that he had been illegally detained by the law-enforcement personnel. More sensational was the story of a man found in a Rawalpindi lockup. He had been held without charge for two years. The Lahore High Court bailiff’s bid to take the detainee to Lahore was frustrated by the police.
These revelations created doubts about official statements that the people reported as missing had voluntarily disappeared in order to join jihad or in pursuit of some other designs. Subsequently the courts gradually started taking more than routine interest in the cases of missing persons. They took the view that even if a missing person could not be traced with the help of the information provided in the habeas corpus petition the government had a duty to find out what had happened to him. In a sense the scope of habeas corpus law was enlarged. Notices were issued to the federal ministries of interior and defence and the positions taken by them amounted to self-indictment.
In 2006 the Sindh High Court was told that these ministries had no control over the operations of the intelligence agencies; they could not help the court beyond communicating its wishes to these agencies and bringing back their responses. This confirmed the people’s worst fears about excesses by some agencies.
Thus, at the beginning of 2007 the matter came up before the Supreme Court. At each hearing the administration claimed to have traced a few of the missing persons. Hearings continued even after Musharraf’s assault on the judiciary but after the coup of Nov 3, 2007 the case was completely shelved. Hearings have now been resumed but the rate of recovery/tracing of the missing persons is lower than the trickle in 2007.
Unfortunately, the present government has been slow in responding to the plight of the missing persons’ families. Only some of the hardy souls among the latter, including old and infirm parents of some of the missing persons, have been demonstrating for month after month in Islamabad.
A much larger number of the aggrieved families are withering away in their hovels far away from the eyes of the state authorities and the media. Their demands are quite modest. They can demand justice, release of their dear ones and reparations, but they will be greatly relieved if they could only be assured that the missing persons are alive and in lawful custody. The matter is grave enough to cause loss of sleep to anyone in authority who claims to have a conscience.
So much for the legal aspect of the matter. Its political aspect is decidedly more alarming.
When the number of missing persons started rising it was noticed that a majority of them belonged to Balochistan. Moreover they belonged to areas where no movement of terrorists had been noticed and among the first reported cases several leaders of the Balochistan Students’ Organisation (BSO) were prominent.The number of such disappearances rose sharply during 2005-2007 and the victims included many political dissidents. Suspicions that the missing persons had been targeted for their views and political actions were confirmed when some of them were picked up in Karachi and Quetta as they left the offices of a human rights organisation or a lawyer and the identity of those pouncing on them could not be concealed.
Above all, these involuntary disappearances were taking place at a time when a strong wave in favour of autonomy and against encroachments on land and other natural resources was sweeping across the province. The conclusion was obvious.
The involuntary disappearances in Balochistan are materially distinguishable from such cases reported from other parts of the country. Not only is the cover of an anti-terrorist drive not available in their case, they fall in the category of crimes against the Baloch people. Much bitterness has also been caused by reports/allegations that the victims include a sizeable number of women and that some of them have been forced to prostitute themselves.
Instead of offering the embittered Baloch redress and satisfaction the authorities have chosen to quibble over the number of missing persons or alleged exaggeration about women among them. In this barren debate what matters most is not always fact but the people’s perception and the stark reality that the Balochistan people’s renewal of allegiance to the state will begin with a resolution of the issue of involuntary disappearances. That this is not merely a legal matter and is essentially a political issue is perhaps manifest.
There is some weight in the argument that whatever the federal government may do the Baloch dissidents won’t be satisfied. Surely half-baked measures, such as the reference to missing persons in the Balochistan package, will do more harm than good. The answer perhaps lies in conceding Balochistan its aspiration for autonomy and allowing it a decisive say in all initiatives related to the tracking and recovery of the missing persons. The Baloch are likely to believe in only what they themselves are allowed to unravel. ¦
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 14-01-2010
Green tea ‘may block lung cancer’
TAEPEI: Drinking green tea may offer some protection against lung cancer, say experts who studied the disease at a medical university in Taiwan.
The latest work in more than 500 people adds to growing evidence suggesting the beverage has anti-cancer powers.
In the study, smokers and non-smokers who drank at least a cup a day cut their lung cancer risk significantly, a US cancer research conference heard.
The protection was greatest for people carrying certain genes.
But cancer experts said the findings did not change the fact that smoking is bad for health.
Green tea is made from the dried leaves of the Asian plant Camellia sinesis and is drunk widely across Asia.
The rates of many cancers are much lower in Asia than other parts of the world, which has led some to link the two.
Laboratory studies have shown that extracts from green tea, called polyphenols, can stop cancer cells from growing.
But results from human studies have been mixed. Some have shown a protective effect while others have failed to find any evidence of protection.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
The latest work in more than 500 people adds to growing evidence suggesting the beverage has anti-cancer powers.
In the study, smokers and non-smokers who drank at least a cup a day cut their lung cancer risk significantly, a US cancer research conference heard.
The protection was greatest for people carrying certain genes.
But cancer experts said the findings did not change the fact that smoking is bad for health.
Green tea is made from the dried leaves of the Asian plant Camellia sinesis and is drunk widely across Asia.
The rates of many cancers are much lower in Asia than other parts of the world, which has led some to link the two.
Laboratory studies have shown that extracts from green tea, called polyphenols, can stop cancer cells from growing.
But results from human studies have been mixed. Some have shown a protective effect while others have failed to find any evidence of protection.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
Preity Zinta highlights plight of Indian widows
NEW DELHI: Bollywood star Preity Zinta said on Wednesday that misinterpretations of Hinduism — often fuelled by greed — were partly responsible for the dire plight of India’s oppressed and neglected widows.
Speaking as she took up the role of ambassador for the Loomba Trust, a charity that campaigns for widows’ rights, Zinta railed against the Indian custom that widows are forced to stop wearing coloured clothes or jewellery.
“I am a Hindu and I’d like to say I think religion is always interpreted by various different people and the greatest reason for misinterpreting religion is always greed,” Zinta told a press conference in New Delhi.
Hindu widows in India are not supposed to remarry and often fall into lives of desperate poverty after being thrown out of the family home because they are seen as a drain on scarce resources.
Zinta, glamorous star of Bollywood blockbusters such as “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, recently completed a management course at Harvard Business School and is known as one of India’s most articulate actresses.
Cases of “sati” — the outlawed Hindu custom when a widow is cremated on the funeral pyre of her husband as an indication of her devotion — are now extremely rare, but widows are often left helpless.
Zinta, 34, said that many Indian widows struggled to avoid being pulled into prostitution or become victims of human trafficking.
The Loomba Trust educates 3,000 children of poor widows across India and has been supported by former British prime minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie since it was founded in 1998. Cherie Blair told reporters in Delhi that “like every religion there are questions that are about the basic tenets of the religion and then there are the customs and practices that grow up around it. “The Hindu religion is not the only religion that has a problem with that,” she said.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
Speaking as she took up the role of ambassador for the Loomba Trust, a charity that campaigns for widows’ rights, Zinta railed against the Indian custom that widows are forced to stop wearing coloured clothes or jewellery.
“I am a Hindu and I’d like to say I think religion is always interpreted by various different people and the greatest reason for misinterpreting religion is always greed,” Zinta told a press conference in New Delhi.
Hindu widows in India are not supposed to remarry and often fall into lives of desperate poverty after being thrown out of the family home because they are seen as a drain on scarce resources.
Zinta, glamorous star of Bollywood blockbusters such as “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, recently completed a management course at Harvard Business School and is known as one of India’s most articulate actresses.
Cases of “sati” — the outlawed Hindu custom when a widow is cremated on the funeral pyre of her husband as an indication of her devotion — are now extremely rare, but widows are often left helpless.
Zinta, 34, said that many Indian widows struggled to avoid being pulled into prostitution or become victims of human trafficking.
The Loomba Trust educates 3,000 children of poor widows across India and has been supported by former British prime minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie since it was founded in 1998. Cherie Blair told reporters in Delhi that “like every religion there are questions that are about the basic tenets of the religion and then there are the customs and practices that grow up around it. “The Hindu religion is not the only religion that has a problem with that,” she said.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
US lawmakers told: revoke security policy or stay in US
ISLAMABAD: America is set to lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world under the new Democratic President Obama because of the draconian and ill-advised measures, such as the new US airport security measures that include highly-invasive body scans and strip searches of all passengers coming in from 13 Islamic states and Cuba, was the consensus view of three prominent parliamentarians belonging to the three largest political parties of the country.
Senator Mushahid Hussain (PML-Q), Senator Islamuddin Sheikh (PPP) and MNA Ahsan Iqbal (PML-N), adopting a unanimous stance against the placement of Pakistan amongst the 14-nation high security list of the United States, stated that no Pakistani parliamentary delegation should visit the United States and neither should any US parliamentarians be entertained in Pakistan till Pakistan was taken out of the list. The three legislators also wanted the National Assembly and the Senate to adopt unanimous resolutions against this action and wanted the Organisation of the Islamic Countries (OIC) to take up this matter, both with the US and the UN, as it was a matter concerning the violation of human rights and human dignity.
They were expressing their views in the weekly Geo programme ‘Kehnay May Kya Harj Hai’, hosted by Mohammad Malick. The three leaders were also united in their view of this policy being nothing more than racial and religious profiling.
Ahsan Iqbal said that PML-N would move the resolution within a day or two in the National Assembly while pointing out that the latest security measures were in violation of Article 4 of the US constitution itself while Senator Mushahid wanted President Zardari or Prime Minister Gilani to form a delegation of Muslim heads of states, including the Saudi King, president of Indonesia, president of Nigeria, and prime minister of Turkey, and take up the matter with US President Obama and impress upon him that such demeaning actions would only alienate the Muslim world and create greater animosity towards the United States.
Senator Islamuddin Sheikh wanted the Americans coming to Pakistan also strip searched in a tit-for-tat move. Ahsan Iqbal made a pertinent observation when he argued that the policy of subjecting all travelers from Pakistan to invasive scans and body pat downs on arrival in the United States harboured serious adverse ramifications for trade and commerce. He opined that such humiliating procedures would discourage American and other businessmen from travelling to Pakistan or maintaining proactive relations.
Senator Mushahid and Ahsan Iqbal said that it was in the United States’ own interest to immediately review this policy and rescind it because it would only fan immense hatred in the Muslim world.
Gerald M Feierstein, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Islamabad, while defending the new deplorable invasive US airport security regime insisted that the measures were neither anti-Muslim nor a racial profiling of any sorts. When it was pointed out that barring Cuba, all other 13 countries were Muslim majority countries, he asserted that the decision to include these countries was based on well-calculated risk assessments and not for any other cause.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
Senator Mushahid Hussain (PML-Q), Senator Islamuddin Sheikh (PPP) and MNA Ahsan Iqbal (PML-N), adopting a unanimous stance against the placement of Pakistan amongst the 14-nation high security list of the United States, stated that no Pakistani parliamentary delegation should visit the United States and neither should any US parliamentarians be entertained in Pakistan till Pakistan was taken out of the list. The three legislators also wanted the National Assembly and the Senate to adopt unanimous resolutions against this action and wanted the Organisation of the Islamic Countries (OIC) to take up this matter, both with the US and the UN, as it was a matter concerning the violation of human rights and human dignity.
They were expressing their views in the weekly Geo programme ‘Kehnay May Kya Harj Hai’, hosted by Mohammad Malick. The three leaders were also united in their view of this policy being nothing more than racial and religious profiling.
Ahsan Iqbal said that PML-N would move the resolution within a day or two in the National Assembly while pointing out that the latest security measures were in violation of Article 4 of the US constitution itself while Senator Mushahid wanted President Zardari or Prime Minister Gilani to form a delegation of Muslim heads of states, including the Saudi King, president of Indonesia, president of Nigeria, and prime minister of Turkey, and take up the matter with US President Obama and impress upon him that such demeaning actions would only alienate the Muslim world and create greater animosity towards the United States.
Senator Islamuddin Sheikh wanted the Americans coming to Pakistan also strip searched in a tit-for-tat move. Ahsan Iqbal made a pertinent observation when he argued that the policy of subjecting all travelers from Pakistan to invasive scans and body pat downs on arrival in the United States harboured serious adverse ramifications for trade and commerce. He opined that such humiliating procedures would discourage American and other businessmen from travelling to Pakistan or maintaining proactive relations.
Senator Mushahid and Ahsan Iqbal said that it was in the United States’ own interest to immediately review this policy and rescind it because it would only fan immense hatred in the Muslim world.
Gerald M Feierstein, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy in Islamabad, while defending the new deplorable invasive US airport security regime insisted that the measures were neither anti-Muslim nor a racial profiling of any sorts. When it was pointed out that barring Cuba, all other 13 countries were Muslim majority countries, he asserted that the decision to include these countries was based on well-calculated risk assessments and not for any other cause.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
Thousands feared dead as quake strikes Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE: Thousands were feared dead in a major earthquake that destroyed the presidential palace, schools, hospitals and hillside shanties in Haiti, its leaders said on Wednesday, and the United States and other nations geared up for a big relief operation.A five-storey UN headquarters building was demolished by Tuesday’s 7.0 magnitude quake, which the US Geological Survey said was the most powerful in Haiti in more than a century. Several bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the UN building and more than 100 staff members were missing, a spokesman said.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told Reuters that he believed there could be “in the range of thousands of dead.” Soon after, Bellerive told CNN he believed well over 100,000 people could have died. President Rene Preval called the damage “unimaginable” and described stepping over dead bodies and hearing the cries of those trapped in the collapsed Parliament building, where the senate president was among those pinned by debris.
Destruction in the capital was “massive and broad,” and tens — if not hundreds — of thousands of homes were destroyed, a spokesman for the UN mission said. Sobbing and dazed people wandered the streets of Port-au-Prince, and voices cried out from the rubble. “Please take me out, I am dying. I have two children with me,” a woman told a Reuters journalist from under a collapsed kindergarten in the Canape-Vert area of the capital.
The presidential palace lay in ruins, its domes fallen on top of flattened walls. Preval and his wife were not inside when the quake hit. The quake’s epicenter was only 10 miles (16 km) from Port-au-Prince. About four million people live in the city and surrounding area. Many people slept outside on the ground, away from weakened walls, as aftershocks as powerful as 5.9 rattled the city throughout the night and into Wednesday. The devastation crippled the government and the UN security mission that had kept order. There were no signs of organised rescue efforts, and people clawed at concrete chunks with their bare hands to try to free trapped loved ones. Haitian Red Cross spokesman Pericles Jean-Baptiste said his organisation was overwhelmed. “There are too many people who need help ... We lack equipment, we lack body bags,” he told Reuters. Normal communications were cut off, roads were blocked by rubble and trees, electric power was interrupted and water was in short supply.
In New York, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said those unaccounted for at the UN mission headquarters included the chief of the mission, Hedi Annabi, but he could not confirm reports Annabi had died.
Brazil’s army said at least 11 Brazilian members of the 9,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti were killed. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is ill-equipped to respond to such a disaster, lacking heavy equipment to move debris and sufficient emergency personnel.
“I am appealing to the world, especially the United States, to do what they did for us back in 2008 when four hurricanes hit Haiti,” Raymond Alcide Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador to Washington, said in a CNN interview.
“At that time, the US dispatched ... a hospital ship off the coast of Haiti. I hope that will be done again ... and help us in this dire situation that we find ourselves in.” US President Barack Obama called the quake an “especially cruel and incomprehensible” tragedy and pledged swift, coordinated support to help save lives. The Pentagon was sending a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and three amphibious ships, including one that can carry up to 2,000 Marines. Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said its three hospitals in Haiti were unusable and it was treating the injured at temporary shelters. “The reality of what we are seeing is severe traumas, head wounds, crushed limbs, severe problems that cannot be dealt with the level of medical care we currently have available with no infrastructure really to support it,” said Paul McPhun, operations manager for the group’s Canadian section.
The University of Miami School of Medicine sent a plane full of doctors and nurses to set up a field hospital and planned to fly a group of critically injured people to Miami for treatment on Wednesday.
The United Nations said $10 million would be released immediately from its central emergency response fund and it would organise a flash appeal to raise more money for Haiti over the next few days. The United States, China and European states were sending reconnaissance and rescue teams, some with search dogs and heavy equipment, while other governments and aid groups offered tents, water purification units, food and telecoms teams.
The quake hit at 5 pm (2200 GMT), and witnesses reported people screaming “Jesus, Jesus” running into the streets as offices, hotels, houses and shops collapsed. Experts said the quake’s epicenter was very shallow at a depth of only 6.2 miles (10 km), which was likely to have magnified the destruction. Witnesses saw homes and shanties built on hillsides tumble as the earth shook, while cars bounced off the ground.
“You have thousands of people sitting in the streets with nowhere to go,” said Rachmani Domersant, an operations manager with the Food for the Poor charity. Haiti’s cathedral was destroyed and media reports said the archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Monsignor Joseph Serge Miot, had been found dead in the wreckage of the archdiocese office.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
10 children die as train hits school van
KHANEWAL: At least 10 schoolchildren and their driver died while 15 were injured when a train rammed into a school van at a level crossing in Mian Channu on Wednesday morning.The tragic accident also sparked a blame-game between the district administration and railway authorities. The latter accused the van driver of gross negligence while the former said the railway man at the crossing was missing and that it was also without a gate. It said the driver could not see the train coming because of fog. Had there been a gate or the railway man present there, the accident might not have taken place, it said. The railway minister, however, denied there was any fog and blamed the van driver for the accident.
A school van carrying 35 children was on its way when the Jafferabad Express coming from Quetta rammed into it at the Musa Virk level crossing at 8:15am. The van driver apparently misjudged and tried to cross in haste and the four-wheeler came in front of the train.
There was a state of emergency in the Mian Channu and Khanewal DHQ hospitals. At least 24 children were brought to the THQ hospital of Mian Channu and five of them were received dead while four of them died from excessive bleeding. Fifteen injured students were rushed to Multan’s Nishtar Hospital where one of them died on arrival. The van driver succumbed to his injuries in a Mian Channu hospital.
Agencies add: Those died were identified as Syeda Lubna Batool, Shahbaz Ahmad, Mishal Javed, Faisal Zahoor, Tanveer Ahmad, Safdar Hussain, Amir Zahoor, Muhammad Ejaz, Dilawar Hussain and driver Muhammad Shaheen.
The injured were Haziq Ehsan, Wajiha Ifitkhar, Jawad Jamil, Zainul Abideen, Syed Mushaf Hussain, Syed Maheen Batool, Sajjad Ali, Aliza Nawaz, Abdul Daim Javed, Isaac Kinnath, Daud Asher, Nadeem, Shahzad Ahmad, Tanveer Hussain, M Azhar and Shahzad Ahmad son of Niaz Ahmad Anjum.
The railway man who was supposed to be present at the railway crossing was arrested for dereliction of his duties. The Punjab government has announced a compensation of Rs 200,000 each for the families of those died and Rs 50,000 each for the injured.
President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani have expressed sorrow over the death of the children and ordered investigation into the accident. The president has also ordered strict action against the railway officials responsible and directed the railway minister to ensure safety measures at all the level crossings and take measures to avoid such accidents in future.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has also expressed grief over the accident. DCO Qazi Ashfaq Ahmed said the railway employee was not on duty at the crossing and there was also no gate. He said the van driver could not see the train because of fog. He blamed the local railway authorities for negligence. He also revised timetables of all the schools during foggy days and now they would open at 9:45am and close at 2:30pm instead of 8:30am to 2:00pm.
Meanwhile, Railway Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, while expressing grief over the incident, said that an inquiry had been ordered into the incident and those responsible would be taken to task.
During a press conference in Islamabad, the federal minister said that the accident had taken place in morning and there was not much fog at that time and visibility was not poor. He said the van driver had totally ignored the signal while crossing. A train at a speed could not be stopped by just applying the breaks, he said, adding even if the emergency breaks are applied, the train still covers some distance before coming to a halt, he said. The driver in this particular case had applied the breaks but could not stop the train.
Answering a question about gates at crossings, the minister said that they cost too much and were not feasible. Even then such accidents cannot be ruled out completely, he said.
Bilour said that the only way to stop such incidents from happening was to build flyovers and underpasses. He also announced Rs 500,000 each for the families of the victims and Rs 200,000 and Rs. 100,000 for those minor and critically injured, respectively.
However, talking to Geo News, he said it was for the city government to install the crossing. A general manager of the railways too gave the same version. On the other hand, the DCO said it was railways’ responsibility to install gates and man the railway crossings.
Given the diametrically opposed versions of the minister and the district administration, one can say the schoolchildren fell not merely to some fatal error of judgement on part of the van driver, but also to the oblivion of the state officials who were found shifting blame to each other. Their naivety was so obvious when they took divergent positions, totally forgetting that the railways is a century-old institution and the rules are not so vague as to leave the masses guessing who is responsible for their safety.
A large number of locals also took out a rally and blocked the railway track in protest against the accident. They said they had complained to the DPO, the DCO and the EDO time and again that the crossing was without a gate but they did not heed to the complaints.
Copyrights Thenews Newspaper 14-01-2010
JAN 12, 2010
Irrational fears
THE health dangers from nuclear radiation have been oversold, stopping governments from fully exploiting nuclear power as a weapon against climate change, argues a professor of physics at Oxford University.
Wade Allison does not question the dangers of high levels of radiation but says that, contrary to scientific wisdom, low levels of radiation can be easily tolerated by the human body.
Most scientists who have responded disagreed with Allison’s conclusions, but his comments have highlighted the lack of understanding of how the body deals with low doses of radiation, a crucial issue given it is increasingly used in modern medical procedures such as scanning and cancer treatment.
Nuclear crises, from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, have created widespread fear and distrust of nuclear power, and global pressure to keep radiation at the lowest possible level, according to Allison, a particle physicist who makes his arguments in a self-published book, Radiation and Reason. He says long-term data on the health of survivors of the atomic bombs have demonstrated how good the human body is at protecting itself from radiological and chemical attack.
“The ability to repair damage and replace cells, we discovered in the last 50 years, show how radiation doesn’t cause damage except under extreme circumstances,” he says. “The radiation that a patient gets in one day from a course of radiotherapy treatment, it would take a million hours of exposure for someone standing in the radioactive waste hall of Sellafield. And, if you have radiotherapy, it goes on for several weeks.” Ionising radiation, the type from nuclear reactions, can break strands of DNA in cells and these can make a cell cancerous unless the body’s machinery can fix the damage. Scientists have used data from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, plus that from experiments on animals and cell cultures, to create a measure of how much damage is caused by high lev els of radiation. This has then been extrapolated back, in a straight line, to estimate the potential damage from low levels of radiation to create what is called the linear nonthreshold (LNT) model.
“The problem with a lot of these discussions is that you eventually get to the point where you don’t have any more data,” said Prof Gillies McKenna of Oxford University, Cancer Research UK’s expert on radiation oncology. Since the end of the Second World War, scientists have worked on the basis that there is no dose of radiation so low that it is not dangerous. Allison, however, believes there is a threshold below which any radiation exposure is fully repaired by the body — but this is a view mainstream scientists disagree with.
Where McKenna and other scientists do agree with Allison is that fear of radiation is a problem. McKenna’s expertise is in the use of radiation to kill cancer cells. “People become so fearful of radiation that they avoid diagnostic tests that might save their lives or avoid radiotherapy when they have cancer that is much more likely to kill them than exposure to radiation. He [Allison] is right that it has become a little bit hysterical.” Some areas, such as Devon and Cornwall in southwest England, have naturally high levels of radiation in the rock, and yet they do not have a high incidence of cancer. “It would suggest to me that we can tolerate relatively higher doses of radiation, unless you add things on top like smoking,” said McKenna.
Nothing has generated quite as much cancer concern in the UK as Sellafield power station in Cumbria, northern England. Concern about radiation leaks at the plant, known as Windscale when it was commissioned in 1956, grew over the years until in 1983, Yorkshire Television produced a documentary called The Nuclear Laundry, suggesting low-level radiation emissions posed a risk. In the 1990s clusters of childhood leukaemia cases were identified near the site. ¦ — The Guardian, London
Copyrights Dawn Newspaper 12-01-2010
Landslide victims running out of supplies
HUNZA, Jan 11: In contrast to the official claims, the people of Gojal are facing great difficulties in meeting their basic needs of daily use as the stocks in shops have plummeted and no arrangements have been made to ensure supply of food items and fuel to upper Hunza.
Gojal tehsil has been cut off from lower Hunza due to the blockade of Karakorum Highway after the last Monday’s massive landslide at Atabad. People are risking their lives to transport basic items of daily use on their back to cross the landslide area from lower Hunza to Gojal.
The people of Gojal have appealed to the government to open Khunjerab border for supply of food, medicine and other items of basic needs from China as meagre helicopters are unable to meet the requirement of the valley.
Talking to Dawn, they said that stocks in shops had plummeted due to the blockade of KKH for the last eight days.
“People are risking their lives and lifting heavy bags of flour, fuel drums and other items on their back and cross over three kilometres landslide debris, boulders and mud,” a man carrying basic food items said.
People were facing the risk of landslide from the KKH side but they don’t have any other option but to risk their lives, he added. Aziz Jan, chairman, Union Council Gojal, when contacted said that the increasing water level in the lake formed due to blockade of Hunza river would further damage the KKH at different points and also cover the track which would further create panic in Gojal.
He urged to the government to speed up the work on release of water from the lake to avoid human crisis.
The level of water in the lake is rising by 0.5 metre per hour and started submerging Ayeenabad, the first settlement in Gojal. Experts have reported that the water will cover the lower portion of the village within two or three days.
Meanwhile, Gilgit-Baltistan Governor Qamar Zaman Kaira also visited Gulmit and the camps of affected people in Altit. During his visit to Gulmit, he directed the chief secretary to deploy surgeon in the Tehsil Headquarters Hospital and immediately approve the PC-4 of the hospital. He said the local people would be appointed as doctors and paramedics in the hospital.
Our Correspondent from Gilgit adds: Governor Qamar Zaman Kaira on Monday said that the government would utilise all the resources to provide relief to landslide victims.
Addressing a press briefing here after his visit to Hunza, the governor said that prime minister’s fund had been set up so that people could contribute to the relief operation.
He said a team of senior officers of revenue department had been assigned to make accurate assessment about the damages.
He said a channel was being planned to release water from the lake posing serious threat to low-lying localities like Ayeenabad from where the population was being evacuated.
Answering a question, he said a survey of dangerous areas in Gilgit-Baltistan would be carried out to avoid Atabadlike tragedy in future. He added that NDMA experts would train a group of 45 personnel of Gilgit Scouts to meet any emergency.
Mr Kaira said the NHA, FCNA and Chinese teams would jointly start work to remove the debris that had blocked the KKH.
JAN 7, 2010
Toxic milk case in China kept secret for a year
A fresh scandal over toxic milk products has shocked Chinese consumers, with state media reporting claims on Wednesday that officials waited almost a year before warning the public.
The government pledged to clean up the dairy industry in autumn 2008, when 300,000 babies were taken ill and six died after drinking melamine-tainted Sanlu-brand infant formula.
The issue reared its head again last week when food safety authorities in Shanghai announced they had shut down the Shanghai Panda company after discovering it was producing condensed milk and milk powder laced with the same chemical.
The China Daily newspaper suggested today that officials began investigating the company as early as February last year. Chinese press said Shanghai Panda was among more than 20 dairy firms found to have melamine in their products during the Sanlu scandal, but was allowed to resume production after promising to improve product safety.
But China Daily reported claims that problems surfaced again in December 2008 and officials began investigating two months later, citing documents from prosecutors in Fengxian district, Shanghai. The firm’s board chairman, general manager and deputy general manager have been arrested.
“The case was not allowed to be released to the public,” Shen Weiping, of the prosecutors’ office, told the newspaper. “The three executives will be prosecuted in a week for producing and selling fake or substandard products.”
Yan Fengmin, of the general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, told the newspaper that the case was withheld because it was under criminal investigation by police.
He said both the administration and the Shanghai government were informed immediately after the case was found, and all harmful products were seized. It is not clear when officials began recalling them.
Wang Dingmian, former director of the Dairy Association of China, told the Global Times newspaper that he believed the problem was linked to the earlier scandal. “Some local governments didn’t destroy [tainted products] completely. Some producers recycled and sold them again illegally,” he alleged.
Yan denied that such materials were involved in the new case, saying local governments had overseen the destruction of all recalled products.
Melamine, used in the production of plastics and fertilisers, gives the illusion of higher protein levels in nutrient tests. A dairy farmer and milk salesman were executed for their roles in the Sanlu scandal in November.
The government pledged to clean up the dairy industry in autumn 2008, when 300,000 babies were taken ill and six died after drinking melamine-tainted Sanlu-brand infant formula.
The issue reared its head again last week when food safety authorities in Shanghai announced they had shut down the Shanghai Panda company after discovering it was producing condensed milk and milk powder laced with the same chemical.
The China Daily newspaper suggested today that officials began investigating the company as early as February last year. Chinese press said Shanghai Panda was among more than 20 dairy firms found to have melamine in their products during the Sanlu scandal, but was allowed to resume production after promising to improve product safety.
But China Daily reported claims that problems surfaced again in December 2008 and officials began investigating two months later, citing documents from prosecutors in Fengxian district, Shanghai. The firm’s board chairman, general manager and deputy general manager have been arrested.
“The case was not allowed to be released to the public,” Shen Weiping, of the prosecutors’ office, told the newspaper. “The three executives will be prosecuted in a week for producing and selling fake or substandard products.”
Yan Fengmin, of the general administration of quality supervision, inspection and quarantine, told the newspaper that the case was withheld because it was under criminal investigation by police.
He said both the administration and the Shanghai government were informed immediately after the case was found, and all harmful products were seized. It is not clear when officials began recalling them.
Wang Dingmian, former director of the Dairy Association of China, told the Global Times newspaper that he believed the problem was linked to the earlier scandal. “Some local governments didn’t destroy [tainted products] completely. Some producers recycled and sold them again illegally,” he alleged.
Yan denied that such materials were involved in the new case, saying local governments had overseen the destruction of all recalled products.
Melamine, used in the production of plastics and fertilisers, gives the illusion of higher protein levels in nutrient tests. A dairy farmer and milk salesman were executed for their roles in the Sanlu scandal in November.
Posted By: Fairlink
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