Immunisation

Global hepatitis report 2024: action for access in low- and middle-income countries

The number of lives lost due to viral hepatitis infections is increasing and already accounts for 3,500 deaths daily, according to this report by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is the first consolidated WHO report on viral hepatitis epidemiology, service coverage and product access, with improved data for action. …

Stepping up preventive efforts

Every new case of polio in the country should henceforth be treated as a "public health emergency'. This suggestion was made by the India expert advisory group on polio, with a view to eradicating polio by the end of 2005. The decision was taking at the 10th meeting of the …

Ominous sign

africa's Ivory Coast might become the eighth polio-free country to be re-infected with the virus, warned the World Health Organization (who). The fresh case of paralytic poliomyelitis reported here is suspected to be linked to the same virus that spread to seven polio-free countries from northern Nigeria. Prior to this, …

Weak shield

vaccination against chickenpox has been popular in the us for nearly a decade. But outbreaks of the illness among children already immunised have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the vaccine. Now a new study intensifies the debate. Researchers from the us-based Yale Medical School report that the effectiveness of …

Reach the last person

WILL that crippling scourge called polio be wiped out from the face of the earth by the end of this year? The World Health Organization (WHO) hopes so. But all its ambitions

Not immune to myths

The government of Nigeria has rushed health workers to Daramba, a village on the border with Niger, following an outbreak of whooping cough

UP is core area

The upsurge in the incidence of polio in Uttar Pradesh (up) is threatening to derail the World Health Organisation's (who) goal of eradicating the disease from the planet by 2005, asserts who Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland. At least 15 per cent of up's children are believed to be "under-immunised' …

Polio panic

at a time when the Pulse polio immunisation drive is in full swing, rumours are rife about the presence of polio virus in some goats in Gumbli village in Tamil Nadu's Thiruvellur district. Experts fear this can affect the already floundering national polio eradication programme. According to news reports, around …

Genes and dreams

with the recent genome decoding of both the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and its vector Anopheles gambiae, scientists have got a vital framework for exploring new ways to block disease transmission at molecular and cellular levels. The feat is particularly significant as both the parasite and the vector are associated …

Preventive measure

The foot and mouth disease (FMD) is a recurring menace for the people of Chhukha dzongkhag (district) in Bhutan. Fed up with the frequent outbreaks, Chhukha has embarked upon a mass immunisation programme that would shield its entire livestock. The district has a livestock population of 1,53,348, and has encountered …

Chimp`s aid

an aids-like epidemic wiped out huge numbers of chimpanzees around two million years ago, leaving modern chimps resistant to the aids virus and its variants. This hypothesis would explain why chimps, which share more than 98 per cent of their dna with humans, don't develop aids. The hypothesis stems from …

Prickly issue

Starting September 2002, about two million children would be vaccinated free of cost against Hepatitis b in 15 cities and 32 districts in the country. The move follows the inclusion of the vaccination in the Universal Immunisation Programme (uip) by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (mhfw), which took …

Killer on the prowl

Hepatitis B is a communicable disease with a high strike rate the germ: "The Hepatitis B virus kills 20 out of every 100 infected people each day. This works out to 400 times the people who die of AIDS daily,' points out S K Sarin, president, Indian Association for Study …

Scourge stamped out

europe has been declared polio-free. For some 870 million people living in the region's 51 member states, this declaration is an important public health milestone in the new millennium. The European Regional Commission for the Certification of the Eradication of Poliomyelitis confirmed that the disease had been eradicated in the …

Not immune to changes

When the body is exposed to a foreign substance, such as a virus or bacteria, the immune system responds by making cells and agents that fight off the invaders. But sometimes physicians want to be able to turn off the immune response, such as during bone marrow or organ transplants …

AIDS vaccine delivers

killing cells laden with the hiv may form a key part of future aids vaccination strategies. A new aids vaccine, which does exactly that holds good promise, say researchers. Vaccinated monkeys survived a usually lethal infection with a monkey-human hybrid virus, shiv. Their primed immune system kept virus levels below …

To catch an epidemic

researchers might have to rethink their strategy for developing an effective vaccine against Human Immunodeficiency Virus (hiv) reveals a study published in Nature . Researcher Dan Barouch of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his team have shown that hiv can mutate and evade the protection provided by vaccines. The …

Beauty in chemical

A chemical involved in immune system signalling may be able to reverse some types of skin damage caused by sunlight. It could reduce sunburn by activating DNA-repair mechanisms, suggests a new study by researchers from Germany-based University of Munster. This finding raises the possibility that the chemical might be used …

Fatal dose

seventeen children have died and thousands of others have reported sick after being administered the pulse Vitamin A dose in different districts of Assam. The dose was given as part of an immunisation programme organised by the state government and aided by the United Nations Children's Fund (unicef). Even as …

Follow Up

AIDS activists are suing the South African government for its failure to distribute an anti-HIV drugs that could save the lives of about 35,000 newborn babies each year. The lawsuit will be filed by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which played a leading role earlier this year in forcing multinational …

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