Sunday, November 29, 2009

HEALTH-MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS '"BLOOD BLOCKAGE THEORY"TESTED

Multiple sclerosis 'blood blockage theory' tested


By Michelle Roberts

Health reporter, BBC News









The answer may lie with blood flow

US scientists are testing a radical new theory that multiple sclerosis (MS) is caused by blockages in the veins that drain the brain.



The University of Buffalo team were intrigued by the work of Italian researcher Dr Paolo Zamboni who claims 90% of MS is caused by narrowed veins.



He says the restricted drainage, visible on scans, injures the brain leading to MS.



He has already widened the blockages in a handful of patients.



The US team want to replicate his earlier work before treating patients.



Experts welcomed the research saying it was important to confirm the basic science before evaluating any therapy.



MS is a long-term inflammatory condition of the central nervous system which affects the transfer of messages from the nervous system to the rest of the body.



This is not something patients can expect as a treatment now. This is experimental work and is being tested



A spokeswoman for the MS Society

The Buffalo team, led by Dr Robert Zivadinov, plan to recruit 1,100 patients with MS and 600 other volunteers as controls who are either healthy or have neurological diseases other than MS.



Using Doppler ultrasound, they will scan the patients to see if they can find any blockages within the veins of the neck and brain.



If they can prove Dr Zamboni's theory of "chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency", they say it will change our understanding of MS.



Rewriting science



Margaret Paroski, who is chief medical officer at Kaleida Health, where the Buffalo researchers are based, said the work could overturn prevailing wisdom that the damage in MS is predominantly the result of abnormal immune responses.



"When I was in medical school, we thought peptic ulcer disease was due to stress. We now know that 80% of cases are due to a bacterial infection.



I found the evidence of narrowing - narrowing of the veins just in MS patients



Dr Zamboni

"Dr Zivadinov's work may lead to a whole different way of thinking about MS."



Dr Zamboni, of the University of Ferrara, believes the blockages are the cause rather than the consequence of MS and that they allow iron from the blood to leak into the brain tissue, where it causes damage.



He has performed procedures similar to angioplasty to unblock the veins and get the blood flowing normally again.



He claims this "liberation procedure" can alleviate many of the symptoms of MS and is due to publish his findings in the Journal of Vascular Surgery.



In an interview with CTV News in Canada he said: "I found the evidence of narrowing - narrowing of the veins just in MS patients.



"I'm fully convinced that this is very, very important for people."



Early days



Kevin Lipp, an MS patient from the US, has been symptom-free since being treated by Dr Zamboni.



He said: "It's only been 10 months. If nothing happens in the next two to three years, we'll know it's working."



The BBC has heard anecdotally of other surgeons in Europe testing out the same treatment.



The MS Society said more research was needed to see if this was an avenue that should be explored further.



"This is not something patients can expect as a treatment now. This is experimental work and is being tested. We need to know more about its safety and effectiveness."



Helen Yates, of the MS Resource Centre, said: "There is no doubt that this area warrants a great deal more study.



"This could represent a completely novel approach to MS research which, if proven to be relevant, could be a "sea change" in the understanding of the mechanisms involved in the condition."

HEALTH--CELL DISCOVERY CLUES TO BODY CLOCK AND BRATING JET LAG

Cell discovery clues to body clock and beating jet lag


By Dave Lee

Health Check, BBC World Service







The discovery could hold the key to solving body clock mysteries

New discoveries into how the body clock works could provide clues to help combat jet lag, research suggests.



A University of Manchester team studied special cells which they say play an important role in regulating a person's body clock.



The cells had been thought to be inactive during the day - but their research found the opposite is true.



It is hoped the findings may also pave the way to combating sleep disorders triggered by body clock malfunctions.



Professor Hugh Piggins, an expert in neuroscience at the university, said the research will allow a new approach to being able to tune our daily clock.



Two cells



The Manchester research turns on its head the idea that the brain keeps the body clock on track by firing more cells during daylight and very few during the night.





There's a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, obviously, to try to develop chemical treatments to reset your daily clock



Professor Hugh Piggins

"The traditional model said the clock and the brain communicated to the rest of the brain via the number of electrical impulses that the brain cells were producing," Prof Piggins told the BBC World Service's Health Check programme.



"These impulses would travel around the brain, telling it what time of day it is.



"What we've found is in fact that there are at least two types of cells in this part of the brain."



These brain cells behave unlike any other cell seen so far, and contain a key gene - per1 - which allows them to sustain unusually high levels of "excitability".



The cells becoming so "excited" that they seem quiet or even dead; but then later they calm down, recover and become normally active again.



It is this activity which tells the human body when to be awake.



Sleep dysfunction





HEALTH CHECK



Health Check is the weekly health programme broadcast from the BBC World Service

It is broadcast on Monday at 1032GMT and repeated at 1532GMT, 2032GMT and on Tuesday at 0132GMT

It is also available as a podcast

Prof Piggins added: "There's a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry, obviously, to try to develop chemical treatments to reset your daily clock to help counteract things like jetlag.



"Or, perhaps more importantly, different kind of sleep disorders for which dysfunctions in this clock are often involved."



This study marks the first time these "quiet" cells have been studied.



"This may mean that elsewhere in the brain there are cells like this that can also survive these very unusual conditions."

HEALTH-

HEALTH



Jump in number of global swine flu deaths



The virus was first recorded in Mexico

The global number of swine flu deaths has jumped by more than 1,000 in a week, latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) show.

At least 7,826 people are now known to have died following infection with the H1N1 virus since it first emerged in Mexico in April.

Europe saw an 85% increase in the week, with the total number of deaths rising from at least 350 to at least 650.

However, in most cases the virus continues to produce mild symptoms.



If every mutation is reported out there it would be like reporting changes in the weather



Keiji Fukuda

WHO special adviser on pandemic influenza

An overwhelming majority of patients usually recover, even without medical treatment, within a week.

The biggest rise in deaths was recorded in the Americas, where the death toll rose to 5,360 - a rise of 554 cases in one week.

Health authorities in Norway and France have each recorded two fatalities from a mutated strain of H1N1.

China, Japan, Norway, Ukraine and the US have also recorded cases of people being infected with a mutated strain.

Uncertainty

French health officials confirmed that two patients infected by a mutation that was also recently detected in Norway had died in two different cities in France.



SWINE FLU SYMPTOMS



1. High temperature, tiredness and lowered immunity

2. Headache, runny nose and sneezing

3. Sore throat

4. Shortness of breath

5. Loss of appetite, vomiting and diarrhoea

6. Aching muscles, limb and joint pain

Source: NHS

Fergus on Flu

Q&A: Advice about swine flu


"This mutation could increase the ability of the virus to affect the respiratory tracts and, in particular, the lung tissue," said a statement from the government's Health Surveillance Institute.

The French institute added that, in the case of one of the patients who died, the mutation was accompanied by another mutation known to confer resistance to the main drug being used to treat swine flu, which is sold under the brand name Tamiflu.

It was the first drug-resistant strain found in France among the 1,200 strains experts have analysed here, it said.

Speaking on Thursday, Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's special adviser on pandemic influenza, said that conclusions had still to be drawn about the reported mutations.

"The question is whether these mutations suggest that there is a fundamental change going on in viruses out there - whether there's a turn for the worse in terms of severity," he said.

"The answer right now is that we are not sure."

Dr Fukuda noted that mutations were common in influenza viruses.

"If every mutation is reported out there it would be like reporting changes in the weather," he said.

"What we're trying to do when we see reports of mutations is to identify if these mutations are leading to any kinds of changes in the clinical picture - do they cause more severe or less severe disease?

"Also we're trying to see if these viruses are increasing out there as that would suggest a change in epidemiology."

In his latest survey of swine flu developments, the WHO notes that many countries have stopped counting individual cases of swine flu, particularly of milder illness, and the case count is likely to be significantly lower than the actual number of cases that have occurred.

Monday, November 16, 2009

SCHOOLBOY WINS A FREE RECORDING DEAL AT TALENT SEARCH AND NURTURING SHOW _YALA

SCHOOLBOY WINS A FREE RECORDING DEAL AT TALENT SEARCH AND NURTURING SHOW _YALA








A School boy from the Saint Mary’s school in Yala had a luck beginning in his talent as a musician when he won a free recoding deal from the hosts of the talent search and nurturing show,

VILLAGES COULD BE CARRYING MORE ORPHANS THAN EXPECTYED

An expert in orphaned children care in Yala town, Mrs Jane Pila, has said that the villages, especially in the area where she serves could be carrying more orphaned children than expected .The expert said this when we visited her in her office at the Yala C.D.C church where she operates from .The church provides for the needy children in the community .It feeds and educates them and sometimes even clothes them.







Such problems of street children or orphaned children, widowed women and homeless aged people were in the past seen as a problem of the cities and urban areas only but recently discoveries stunned the experts when they learned that the situation is almost the same in the villages.







The expert sent a word to those people with the power in our country and institutions, including the Odera Akang’o campus of the Moi University in Yala, to build more facilities to help the increasing numbers of these kinds of people in our country.

HATRED BETWEEN THE TEACHERS AND THE PUPILS

There was this mother whose son came back home weeping .The mother could not hold herself at the sight of her crying son .The son said that the reason for his weeping was that his teacher had punished him in school for wrongs that he never committed. It wasn’t canning though but it looked like it must have been something more severe to the young boy than canning .So the mother had to do the best that she could for her son to show him her love for him. So, she set out to go and solve it out with the boys head teacher.







From the look of things ,or judging from what the boy said ,it looks like there were some kinds of hatred underground happenings between the young boy ,a boy of fifteen years or less ,and his head teacher .And ,the boy only defense ,his mother had to take action to find out whatever was happening to her son in school .







Believe it or not ,this illiterate mothers have there own ways o solving this things .She went and stormed the headmasters office and demanded to know why the headmasters hated her son .She spoke at the top oh her voice and demanded for justice for her son and demanded for respect from the headmaster as the parent of her son irrespective of whatever was going on in this world or whatever the procedures of solving this kinds of problems were in the school .What the mother wanted was that evil happenings that were being directed towards her son secretly be stooped or action be taken against the teacher who was involved or she be issued with a transfer letter for her to take her son to a different school where he could appreciated better than his former school.







What troubled we their neighbors minds was what really could cause such feelings between a fifteen year old boy and his head teacher .What really could be the cause?Women ,scramble for power at the place of work or what .A fifteen year old boy can not be a threat to a grown up man in any way in life unless ,perhaps if the boy caught him red handed hiding some secrets otherwise there is really nothing big to worry about in this case .The boy can not eve know how to snatch a lady from his head teacher neither can he snatch his position in the school as the head teacher, so ,what really is the cause .Do this things really exist by the way?







Believe it or not but that is what is going on in the slums and soon we will have to betaking the teachers or head teachers to court to answer why they hated our offspring, but what really should be the right response during such cases ,i.e. when kids complain that there was hatred in their teachers or head teachers? We thought that the teachers were like parents to the kids or if not so, up to some extend but this kind of thing is really mind boggling.

LIVING IN A HOUSE HAS BECOME VERY HARD-KERICHO,KENYA

It is very hard to get a house instantly when you need it in our cities nowadays. You have to spend some, say from two days to three weeks before you can get one. This makes it very hard for people who have been thrown out of their homes by their landlords for various reasons that go with the renting of a house or they might have been forced out of their homes by the various unbearable conditions to survive. Most of the times, when such conditions arise, the people are forced to find a very quick solution to avoid camping on the streets with their families and the most ready solution to getting another home fast enough, recently, has been , the commercial agencies and estate management companies in our cities.



Here, you can get a house readily, but going through these agencies and real estate management companies has its own advantages. Almost ninety nine percent of the tenants I have come across have been complaining of harsh and very inhuman treatment by the rent collectors or any other people who go and collect the money on behalf of the landlord. It expected that they are the experts in debt collection yes, but their techniques of dealing with the situations is very inhuman.



Abnormal harshness and excessive force that is exercised by the company’s staff during this times or any other debts collection is very degrading to the tenants who sometimes are very good gentlemen who deserve to be treated with a lot of dignity. They are the experts yes ,but throwing someone out of the house just because there has risen some complications in their salary payment mechanisms isn't very good.



These debts collection companies have abnormally strict rules for living in the estates that they manage. They have a set date at which the rent money has got to be paid. They do not accept to listen to your problems no matter what happens. Be it a funeral, a road accident or illness of any kind or any defects in the working of the systems at your place of work, they just can not give you a chance what they want from you always is their money and they don’t want to know how or where you will get it. So if you are delayed by causes that are beyond your powers say for a week or so, they come and throw you out of the house and leave you with your belongings heaped in the compound and they give you the maximum time that you can use the compound otherwise they will move you to the road side and leave you there. Wherever you will get a house fast enough is none of their business.



Some companies charge the tenants up to one percent of the months rent if you exceed the set date of payment by even one day. If money is not paid in the following two days from the date of payment they then go on charging one percent of a months rent each and every day that passes. The one percent charge is added to the fifty percent of one months rent that is charged for passing the set date for pay the tenants physical the other bills that are in the powers



So if your pay doesn’t arrive within two weeks from the last day of the previous month or the set date for paying rent you will have to pay perhaps three times the amount of money that you pay one month as the house rent. If you go too far, say for whole month, perhaps they will question your property.



These companies are abnormal strict that is impossible for their kind thing to happen in real life. The slightest mistake that you will make and you left in the compound with your belongings or if not so a third or two thirds of the lowest income earner in our country is gone to the debt collectors.



At least, they should develop a better way of handling the tenants than leaving them in the compound stranded. They should give them a chance to fill up for any inconvenience that may come up as a result of the human weakness. Staying in the house for two months or three months is not too bad. And when they are forced to throw them out, then their property should be kept in their offices and not to heap it in the compound.



Living in a house has become quite an experience. You have to make sure that you don’t make a mistake in your salary payment procedures or else, you will be in for the worst.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

THE RIDDLE THAT SURROUND THE CLOSURE OF THE STAGEMART SUPER MARKETS

I was wondering what really is the matter with stage matresses supermarkets in Kericho town.Earlier in the year ,there were rumors that they intended to close down their two branches and leave only one branch working.We were told that the same had happened in Nakuru town ,they had closed some of their branches in the town .The reason for this act was said to be very low sales ,Especially in Kericho town ,it was said that the sales were terrible .They were not good enough to sustain the branches .For these reasons they were forced to close down these branches.

Just as the stage mart supermarkets were finishing closing down their doors ,The Tuskys supermarkets walked in to the buildings and restocked the shelves and went on with business and they are selling just as best as you could expect them to do .There is enough activity here and people are streaming in and out of the place like a bee hive .There is none of the problems that were claimed to be existing here.

Now, one might ask himself or her self ,what really is going on with the sytagemart supermarkets ?What were the staff saying really?You can't call it lack of enough customers yet everyone can see it for themselves ,the customers coming in and out of the tuskys in their hundreds!!!

And another thing ,they are busy closing up their branches yet the Uchumi supermarkets are struggling to get a places  to run business in Kericho town.Now, how comes that the other supermarkets are fighting hard to get a place in the same towm while the stage mart supermarkets are closing down their own already established branches ?You can't call it anything in that direction .You can call it perhaps theft by the junior staff ,poor management and things of the sort ,but the riddle is still very ,very hard to disclose.

Could some one please tell us what is going on .Okay ,it could not be our property ,yes ,and it doesn't concern us in any way yes,but still what they are saying doesn't make sense at all .What really was the problem with the stagemart supermarkets?There could be something fishy about the whole thing sincerely speaking!!!

Monday, November 9, 2009

DOCTOR PREACHES AGAINST PACKED FOODS-KERICHO.

There is a doctor who can not be clearly identified as to what fields in health professions that he deals with, going round the country. He was in Kericho on the fifth date of the month of November this year and he said that the following date he would be heading for the Nandi hills.



The doctor said his name is Mr. Hajj Juma from the cost province, and that he was of Giriama Origin Though he spoke with a Kikuyu accent .He is going around the country trying to win a following from the people and trying to prove to them his expertise in the fields that he deals in the medical profession.



The Doctor preaches very much against factory manufactured food saying that they reduced the human bodies’ life time and that he was very much against it a he advised the people to stop eating them .He said that the chemicals that were used to preserve e the foods were poisonous and that they reduced the people’s lives times.



He didn’t specify which foods in particular were harmful to the body but, he touched almost every thing in the kitchen. The doctor really has a good talk but his experiments, the way he demonstrates them, really cause a scare and confusion in the peoples. This is because he says everything on the shelves of the shops is harmful to the body.



The Kenyan Consumer organizations really have to meet this Dr.Hajj Juma and try to work with him and see what or where we can take this problem of poisoned fooding.

Thursday, November 5, 2009


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HIGHER LEVELS OF EDUCATION NOW EASILY AVAILABLE UP COUNTRY 
 
 
Many years ago during our youth hood, finding technical College or any other types of institutes that trained people in the various professions was very hard up country.  Training in professions was provided by only government school or colleges and if you were left out by this government institutions then there was no hope for you of ever becoming some one like, say a nurse or teacher or even a lawyer. Those who weren’t lucky to get a place in institutions were left out of  every  thing academically for good.
The government institutions by then were very few which means that the bigger percentage of school goes ended up having nowhere to utilize the knowledge that they gained In their schooling .There were a few private institutes though, but the condition under which the technical institutes operated were somewhere next to zero the quality of the training that was provided by the technical institutes wasn’t  that of the required standards. They were the opposite.
There was one such technical institute in Kericho town and perhaps, it was the first of its kind in the town followed by the commercial college on the Sansora building that is situated beside the Kenya commercial Bank the technical training institutes had a very  bad reputation but because the people, especially those of the low income earners from the tea Estates of Kericho and the small traders in the town and so on they just   had to bear  with it all and went on going to those place for training in the various professions. Most of the institutes however, didn’t teach much beyond mechanical work, typing carpentry and vehicle driving.
Those who went to train in those places in those times used to whisper us that the conditions in those places were so bad that it needed one to do something extra in order for them to acquire the required skills punctually ,they said that the institutions ,provided the students with training materials only ones during the whole period that a student was going to be with them .That is to say that it is the fees that you pay that will be used to buy the training material that you will need for your courses. If the materials got finished before you knew any thing in your course, then you had to wait until when a new student enrolled in the institute. That is when there would be more training material or if it were a mechanical course you will have to wait until when the next customer will come to have his or her vehicle serviced that is when you will get the chance to learn something again .Otherwise if it took even four to six months, you will be just waiting, no matter the time it will take .Most of the mechanical training in those times were provided in the garages or in the Jua Kali under the trees.
All these have changed however; the town has become a very good educational center. University colleges, teacher training colleges, commercial colleges and so on have all been opened here to help the youths to utilize their talents to the maximum .It is no longer hard to find a place to further your education as it used to be in the past .Nowadays the Diplomas and degrees are just at the peoples’ door steps the colleges provide up to standards training as is required by international educational standards. All the courses that one can want, you just name it, are available, and they have it.
All the major academic institutions in the country have opened their branches here in this town and they are doing quit well.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

LET THE SOMALI RECRUIT SOLDIERS FROM KENYA

The news in the press about the availability of jobs in the Somalia government army was received with mixed feelings amongst Kenyans .It is obvious that the parents will not be happy if their kids went to serve a foreign law less country as military officers .No one can be sure that whatever is going in that country could be genuine ,especially when they continue doing the recruitments in secret in the bush .It could be another Alqaeda like movement .How the hell can someone know that and be sure that the Somalia government has decided to recruit soldiers from beyond her borders before they advertise it officially through the media and they receive permission from the Kenyan Government to legally go on with the activity in the country after which the Kenyan youth will have to go for the recruitment on their own wish and not under anybody’s orders .







Kenya has Unemployment problems and only those who have gone through it can understand what we are talking about here .Serving in the army is just part of this game though here it might look odd a little because here you will be serving a different country an not your homeland.







One thing wasn’t clear here, were this youths hired to fight like terrorists or were they going to be recruited officially in the Somali army as soldiers .WE hope they are not terrorist who were contracted to go and terrorize the Somali people .If the above is not the case, then you have to think twice and reconsider the conditions of the Kenyan youths who were said to have joined the training camps in the coast province to go and serve in Somalia.







This youths are jobless and perhaps, without a hope of ever getting a job in life .Then, the said country has just popped up with hundreds of thousands of jobs in their army and with a fair pay of forty four thousand shillings per month for the lowest ranks .Sincerely speaking, no one can turn this down in such conditions .Furthermore, you are not going to become a gangster but a legal government soldier .The Somalia government will surely drain Kenya of her youths.







The Somali people are making a mistake here and the mistake is that ,they are doing it secretly .The thing is that if they have decided to recruit soldiers from outside their own boundaries this time ,just the same way they have been employing drivers ,teachers nurses accountants and so on ,they will have to do it in a better way than this .They should have solved it out with the Kenyan government and received their permission to go on with these activities in a formal manner just the same way they do for the other kinds of jobs .They would then have advertised through the media that they wanted to recruit soldiers from our country and then they would have done the way the army does or which ever way they would have it.







Up to here ,one thing that must be clearly understood is that this actually job opportunities in that country and not another terrorist movement but because of the way it is being done ,it has looked like that .So ,the best thing to do is to put to table the legal procedures that are supposed to be followed here an then follow them one by one and lets us give the boys jobs in the army ,just the same way we do in the hospitals ,schools and so on .