چین سے اسپین جانے والی وینٹی لیٹرز کی کھیپ ترکی نے قبضے میں لے لی

قبضے میں لی گئی کھیپ بہت قیمتی ہے،ترکی فوری طور پر اسے ہمارے حوالے کرے،ہسپانوی وزارت خارج

 اسپین نے بتایا ہے کہ ترکی کے حکام نے وینٹی لیٹرز (مصنوعی تنفس کی مشینوں) سے بھرا ایک طیارہ قبضے میں لے لیا ہے۔ یہ طیارہ چین سے ہسپانیہ جا رہا تھا۔میڈیارپورٹس کے مطابق اسپین کی وزیر خارجہ جونزالیس لایا نے انکشاف کیا کہ ترکی کی حکومت نے انقرہ میں طبی ساز و سامان کی ایک کھیپ کو اپنے قبضے میں لے رکھا ہے۔

چین سے خریدا گیا یہ ساز و سامان ہسپانیہ لایا جا رہا تھا۔ وزیر خارجہ کے مطابق ترکی کی حکومت نے اپنے ملک میں طبی ساز و سامان اور مشینوں کی برآمدات پر پابندی عائد کر رکھی ہے۔ اسے تشویش ہے کہ بصورت دیگر ملک میں صحت کے نظام کو برقرار نہیں رکھا جا سکے گا۔اسپین کے ذرائع ابلاغ کے مطابق قبضے میں لی گئی کھیپ بہت قیمتی ہے۔ اس لیے کہ کھیپ میں کرونا وائرس کے مریضوں کے علاج کے لیے 162 وینٹی لیٹر مشینیں ہیں جو انتہائی نگہداشت کے طبی یونٹوں کے لیے مخصوص ہوتی ہیں۔

Kate Middleton tackles children’s mental health as HuffPo editor

LONDON: Prince William’s wife Kate guest-edited the British edition of news website The Huffington Post on Wednesday to help raise awareness of the “devastating” issue of children’s mental health.

The mother-of-two launched a new global initiative, “Young Minds Matter”, as she took over the site, writing: “For too long we have been embarrassed to admit when our children need emotional or psychiatric help.”

Kate said that she and William, the second in line to the British throne, “would not hesitate to seek help” for their children, adding that they hoped “to encourage George and Charlotte to speak about their feelings”.

The Duchess of Cambridge became involved with children’s charities shortly after her 2011 wedding, work that has touched on issues such as addiction and family breakdown.

“I often heard some heart-breaking stories about lives that had been torn apart, with devastating impacts for all involved, particularly children,” the 34-year-old wrote.

“What I did not expect was to see that time and time again, the issues that led people to addiction and destructive decision making seemed to almost always stem from unresolved childhood challenges,” she added.

The Huffington Post published data showing that one in three parents worry that they will look like a bad mother or father if their child has a mental health problem.

She called it “a privilege” to guest-edit the site, vowing to tackle the “taboo” of mental health problems and “to celebrate the amazing work being done to improve and understand the mental health of young children”.

Pakistani engineer invents early cancer detection device

KARACHI: Pakistani engineer Samir Iqbal developed a cancer cell device that would help doctors to quickly diagnose the disease in patients.

Samir Iqbal, who is also an electrical engineer at University of Texas at Arlington College of Engineering as well as an associate professor, briefed his results in a report titled “Effects of Nano-texture on Electrical Profiling of Single Tumor Cell and Detection of Cancer from Blood in Microfluidic Channels”.

The device works by pursuing the behavior of the cells in real time with the use of nanotextured walls which imitated the layers of the body tissues.

Iqbal cooperated with Young-tae Kim, a UTA associate professor in the Bioengineering Department; Muhymin Islam, a STEM doctoral candidate; and engineering students Mohammad Motasim Bellah, Adeel Sajid and Mohammad Raziul Hasan for the project.

“The answer was in creating a nano-textured wall that fools blood samples into thinking its actual tissue. We used inherent properties of the cell walls to create a diagnostic tool. The cancer cells behave differently as they come into contact with the nano-textured walls. They dance” Iqbal said.

He also said that the identification of the dancing cells will help doctors locate cancer cells and start treatment earlier with the technology.

Iqbal said said that the discovery of cancer in the initial stages is essential for the patients and the device has the potential to do it.

Khosrow Behbehani, Dean of the UTA College of Engineering, termed Iqbal’s research as groundbreaking and added that he and his colleagues were bringing engineering innovation to meet the challenge of cancer’s early detection.

Iqbal completed his Bachelors from NED University of Engineering and Technology in Karachi in 1996 after which he did his PhD from Purdue University in Indiana. He is a professor in the Department of Urology at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The scientist is a senior member of IEEE-USA as well.

National Science Foundation funding of $480,000 in 2014 has led to the results of the results.

Polio worker injured in Lahore attack

LAHORE: A polio worker was injured in Lahore when armed assailants opened fire at an anti-polio team in Lahore’s Chauburji area on Wednesday, ARY News reported.

According to details, unknown gunmen fired at the polio team due to which a worker named Umar Khan sustained bullet injury to his leg.

He was shifted to Mayo Hospital for treatment of his injuries.

The cops also said that the anti-polio was initiated in the area without informing the police.

The police also said that the license number of the motorcycle was traced and the shooters would be apprehended soon.

Case of the incident has been registered against the unknown persons at Saanda Police Station.

Anti-polio campaign in different cities of Pakistan enters its third day

PAKISTAN: The anti-polio campaign has entered into its third day in several cities of the country including Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

According to details, today is the final day of the anti-polio campaign in 15 districts of Balochistan. The campaign is also active in 83 districts across Pakistan. In Karachi, the anti-polio campaign is going on even in its third day. During the drive, which will last till February 18, polio drops will be administered to as many as 2.164 million children.

The previous day, several families in Karachi’s Sultanabad area had refused to have their children vaccinated. As per anti-polio authorities, as many as six thousand police personnel have been deployed for the security of the polio teams.

Stringent security measures have been taken for the anti-polio campaign in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. In the twin cities, the campaign would last till five days.

Meanwhile in Balochistan, today is the last day of the anti-polio campaign in as many as 15 districts. According to the health department of Balochistan, various districts of the province as well as the provincial capital have benefited from the anti-polio drive. As many as 1.6 million children have been administered polio drops under the strict security provided by Levies, Police and FC personnel.

Strict security measures were also taken in Peshawar as well as other areas of KP, as polio teams administered polio drops to children on the third day of the campaign.

Zika research to be published rapidly, and free: statement

PARIS: Top research institutions, funders and publishers said Wednesday they would make all scientific findings on the Zika virus assailing Latin America available speedily, and free.

A statement signed by the journals Nature, Science and The Lancet, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, France’s Institut Pasteur, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development said data was a crucial tool in fighting the public health emergency.

“Journal signatories will make all content concerning the Zika virus free to access,” the document said.

For their part, research funders will require scientists to share interim as well as final data as rapidly and widely as possible.

The route to publication can be a long, slow one, and research findings are usually not shared until after they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“The arguments for sharing data, and the consequences of not doing so, have been thrown into stark relief by the Ebola and Zika outbreaks,” the document stated.

“In the context of a public health emergency of international concern, there is an imperative on all parties to make any information available that might have value in combatting the crisis.”

The statement urged other organisations to follow suit.

Other signatories included Doctors Without Borders (MSF in its French acronym), The New England Journal of Medicine, PLOS Science Journals, the South African Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.

The move was welcomed by experts as a sea change in public health research.

– Life-saving –

Trudie Lang, director of the Global Health Network, said the response to Zika — even more so than in the case of Ebola — was being hamstrung by the many unknowns.

“We are still to prove that Zika causes microcephaly, and we need to know at what point damage happens in pregnancy, should this be the case,” she said in comments issued by the Science Media Centre in London.

“In addition we need to develop better diagnostic tools and agree how to interpret anomaly scans to assess how these affected babies are developing.”

Data needs to be shared as quickly as possible, she said, “to address all these questions concurrently.”

Lang also stressed the need to ensure the data is reliable and accurate.

This “requires research sites to be well trained and have the resources they need to collect and manage data in ways that avoid error,” she said.

Infectious diseases professor Mark Woolhouse from the University of Edinburgh described the commitment as one of the most welcome developments in decades.

“If acted upon, this declaration will save lives,” he said.

An outbreak of the usually benign Zika virus in Latin America and the Caribbean has coincided with a surge in babies with microcephaly, a condition that causes them to have unusually small heads and brains, leading to death or disability.

No scientific proof has been found that Zika causes microcephaly, though the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) has said a link is “strongly suspected” and has declared Zika a “public health emergency of international concern.”

There is no cure or vaccine for the virus which, in most people, causes mild symptoms.

Three ways to combat Zika virus, from mosquito-eating fish to fogging

BOGOTA: The mosquito-borne Zika virus, ‘strongly suspected’ of links to birth defects in babies in Brazil, has spread to more than 30 countries in the Americas.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1.

At least 12 groups are working to develop a Zika vaccine but the WHO says licensed products could take “a few years” to reach the market.

Health authorities are trying to eliminate the places where mosquitoes lay their eggs in water, such as buckets, flower pots and tyres.

Some countries have turned to other methods to prevent the spread of Zika.

* MOSQUITO-EATING FISH

In El Salvador, the Sambo fish is being hailed as one weapon against the Aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the Zika, dengue and chikungunya viruses.

Sambo fish eat the mosquitoes’ larvae in water.

Health workers and volunteers nationwide are distributing Sambo fish which are placed in water tanks and open containers used to store water in schools, restaurants and homes.

“These have been successful … the central effort should be to mobilize the whole society against the Zika-carrying mosquito,” Eduardo Espinoza, El Salvador’s vice minister of health, recently wrote in a letter to the New York Times.

* FOGGING

Pesticide spraying is being stepped up across Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Colombia that have the highest number of reported Zika cases.

Trucks are spraying city streets, shopping malls and cemeteries with pesticide fog to kill adult mosquitoes.

Health experts warn fogging may not kill mosquito larvae in hard-to-reach places such as under beds and in closets unless residents open their windows to let in the pesticide mist.

In Brazil, the government has mounted a door-to-door campaign and authorised public health officials to enter properties by force to search for breeding spots and use indoor foggers, pesticides that stick to walls.

* GENETICALLY MODIFIED MOSQUITOES

In Piracicaba city in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, genetically modified Aedes aegypti mosquitoes have been released in mosquito-infested areas, a new weapon against Zika.

When genetically modified male mosquitoes mate with females of the same species, their offspring die at the larva stage.

This strain was developed by Oxitec, the UK subsidiary of U.S. synthetic biology company Intrexon.

Oxitec has said it released 25 million of its OX513A mosquitoes in a neighbourhood of Piracicaba between April and November and reduced the number of wild larvae of the Aedes mosquito there by 82 percent.

It has said it will start a new factory in Piracicaba to rear more genetically modified mosquitoes that will “have capacity to protect over 300,000 people.”

Health authorities in Panama are also considering releasing millions of GM mosquitoes to stem the spread of the Zika virus.

“Fogging followed by the controlled release of genetically modified mosquitoes may be worth considering for halting the spread of Zika,” the WHO said this week.