Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
Researchers from Brazil have just reported that skin flakes in the hair of children with dandruff provide a comfortable refuge for house-dust mites, which trigger allergic responses that can cause asthma. Charles Naspitz and his colleagues from the paediatrics department of Federal University of Sao Paulo have collected through a …
Although providing milk to the new-born is the exclusive role of mothers, Charle Snowdon and his team from the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Centre, US, have reported that the hormone prolactin increased in male monkeys 4ust two weeks before the birth of their young. Prolactin's main function is to prepare …
IN WHAT is described as a medical first, a four-month-old foetus, genetically doomed to have a disastrously weak immune system, as he was diagnosed to have severe combined immunod- eficiency (SCID), was successfully given a bone marrow transplant while in the womb. The foetus was administered marrow cells from his …
women who eat poorly before and during pregnancy have babies who grow up with a tendency to heart disease and stroke, according to David Barker and his colleagues at the Medical Research Council's Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, uk. Barker observes that the nutritional status of the mother during …
STUDIES carried out on newborns in the heavily polluted regions of Eastern Europe have given more cause for concern about the ill-effects of air pollution. At a recent conference in Budapest, organised by the American Association for Cancer Research, Frederica Perera of Columbia University, New York, announced that Polish babies …
LEUKAEMIA affects thousands of children all over the world, accounting for over a third of all cancers diagnosed for children. The bone marrow tissue, which produces blood cells, churn out faulty products in these kids. The only option is replacement of the marrow. But replacement of bone marrow requires a …
hiv -positive mothers double the risks of passing hiv to their babies through breast milk, suggests a controversial South African study. Breastfeeding is believed to be the best prevention against diarrhoeal or respiratory diseases which claim the lives of thousands of infants in developing countries. The danger of hiv infection …
a new study conducted on 212 children in Michigan, us , has revealed that exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls ( pcb ), a common pollutant, while in their mothers' womb has led to a modest lowering of their intelligence quotient ( iq ) level. Most of these 11-year-old children in the …
To study the association between ambient air pollutants (AAP) and respiratory symptoms complex (RSC) in preschool children, a cohort of 664 children between the ages of 1 month to 4.5 yr were randomly selected from 28 slums (anganwadi centres) of Lucknow, north India. They were followed up fortnightly for six …
malaria research has thrown up yet another factor which determines why the disease varies in its manifestations in different people, from children to adults. Nitric oxide, a toxic gas and an air polluter, is also found in the human body. It can attack fungi, parasites and bacteria, either by killing …
in one of the worst outbreaks of food poisoning in Japan, four children lost their lives and over 4,000 more have been taken ill. The poisoning cases were primarily reported from the Sakai, in Osaka Prefecture, the second-largest city in Japan. The Escherichia coli 0157 bacterium strain has been found …
IF THE children of India are any indication of the future health of the country, there may be a dark tomorrow in store for it. The Progress of Nations Report, 1996, released recently by the Government of India and the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund, reports that as many as …
"Give kids more sugar and see them bounce off the wall", is what parents may think of sugar consumption causing hyperactivity in children. But, there is no evidence to prove this widely held belief (Journal of the American Medical Association, VoI274,No20). Sugar does not affect the behaviour or cognitive performance …
The United Nations Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO, will now have to do without its principal paymaster - the United States. At the UNIDO general conference held in the first week of December at Vienna, the US announced its withdrawal after expressing its dissatisfaction over the agency's continued ineffectiveness, bureaucracy and …
Sanctions are killing kids in Iraq, according to a report published in a British medical journal, Lancet, early this month. More than half a million Iraqi children have died as a consequence of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. The report, prepared by two public health experts, questions the moral, …
Brazilian farmers frequently using pesticides in their farm operations, unknowingly make their children susceptible to kidney cancer. Recently, researchers established that 18 per cent of Wilms' turnours - which affect kidneys - among Brazilian children, are due to exposure of their parents to pesticides (American Journal ofEpidemiolop@ Vol 141). Colin …
MEASLES vaccine killed 3 infants at Debagram in Nadia district of West Bengal. This was confirmed by members of the inquiry committee which investigated the incident. However, the exact cause is yet to be identified. Officials at the wHo and doctors elsewhere rule out the lethality of the polio vaccine, …
China now wants to ensure birth of only healthy babies. It has adopted a law on Maternal and Infant Health Care, designed to "improve the quality of births". The law aims to upgrade maternity and child health facilities. It envisages pre-marital check-ups. If the results are unsatisfactory, the couple would …
They do not always make it to the front pages or to the television screen, yet every minute disease and malnutrition kills nearly 24 of them. According to the report, The State of the World's Children 1994, released by the United Nations International Children's Educational Fund, over 13 million children …
