Health Guidance

Tobacco is considered to be the single most important cause of preventable deaths in the world & it is projected to be the leading cause of deaths by 2020, 1 in 8 deaths. Preventing & treating all this diseases, and controlling tobacco usage is one of the major challenges of public health today. The usage of tobacco is increased to such an extent that it has now been referred to as ‘Tobacco Epidemic’.

As far as India is considered, it is 4th largest consumer in world & 3rd largest producer after China & Brazil. There are about 250 million tobacco users in India, accounting for 19% of world’s total 1.3 billion tobacco users. Tobacco use is definitely a Killer for India when statistical data reveals that there are 800,000 deaths per year due to tobacco use & 700,000 of them are due to smoking alone. Continue reading ‘Tobacco- The need For Cessation And Role Of dentist’s In tobacco Cessation’ »

When most people think about the prospect of a severe pandemic visiting their neck of the woods, it is the fear of becoming infected that scares them. In the case of a flu strain that kills as efficiently as the one that circled the world in 1918, the prospect is hardly a comforting one. In the case of blue collar workers it is believed that in some U.S. communities the mortality rate for those infected was as high as 10 percent. In more epidemiologically isolated communities, like the Inuit Eskimo tribes of Alaska, the mortality rate reached 90 percent and virtually wiped those communities off the map.

Less widely appreciated is that a pandemic need not even reach your door in order to be able to kill you or a family member. During a severe pandemic you could literally starve to death while never having come in close contact with the virus. This is just one of the conclusions I reached after reading which will have you rethinking just how much you really understand about your own place in the world. Because it turns out that we are a lot more delicately positioned than we like to believe. Continue reading ‘You Can Avoid Infection And A Pandemic Can Still Kill You’ »

Nobody enjoys going to get a flu shot, but we do expect that if we want one, getting in line for it should simply be a matter of showing up for the event. But what if that was not the case? What if you discovered that you were actually turned away from an inoculation center because you did not fit a predefined “profile” for who is eligible to receive a shot?

Ironically, in a year in which a pandemic strain is circling the globe, this is a very real possibility. Right now we know for certain that swine flu vaccines will be in short supply until sometime in 2010. That means not everyone can be vaccinated against the new pandemic virus. Continue reading ‘Will You Be Denied The Swine Flu Shot?’ »

The swine flu vaccination program began a couple of weeks ago and is now in full swing. Some of the terminology used in discussing this infection can be quite confusing so here are some terms you may come across.

An infection is said to be Endemic in a population when there is a constant amount of infection present. For example in the UK there will be a number of chicken pox cases reported each year. The chicken pox is passed around from person to person but as long as the number infected remains more or less the same each year, then we can say that chicken pox is endemic in the population.

On the other hand if we take malaria as an example, we will find a number of cases detected each year in travelers returning from abroad. The number may even be the same from year to year. There is one significant difference however, and that is, that the infection cannot be passed on from person to person. In the case of malaria we need the presence of an external factor for the disease to run through the population. This factor is the malaria carrying mosquito and since this insect does not exist in the UK, the disease cannot become endemic. Continue reading ‘Endemic, Epidemic, Pandemic – What Do They Mean?’ »

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