Visitors entering country through KLIA to be screened for MERS-CoV

PUTRAJAYA, : All visitors entering the country through the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang will be screened for the Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV) said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.

He said the situation in the country was under control and no new cases were reported, he told reporters after launching the National Healthcare Leaders’ Summit on Patients for Patient Safety, here today.

Yesterday, Health Director-general Datuk Seri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had said in a statement that no new cases were reported throughout the country.

Malaysia recorded its first death related to MERS-CoV on April 13, after a 54-year-old man contracted the MERS-CoV while performing umrah in Makkah.

The victim from Batu Pahat, Johor died at the Sultanah Nora Ismail Hospital of severe pneumonia from MERS-CoV infection, the first casualty reported in the country and region.

The World Health Organisation has recorded 238 cases and 92 deaths related to MERS-CoV globally. – BERNAMA

Coming soon: a brain implant to restore memory

WASHINGTON, May 2: In the next few months, highly secretive US military researchers say they will unveil new advances toward developing a brain implant that could one day restore a wounded soldier’s memory.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is forging ahead with a four-year plan to build a sophisticated memory stimulator, as part of President Barack Obama’s $100 million initiative to better understand the human brain.
The science has never been done before, and raises ethical questions about whether the human mind should be manipulated in the name of staving off war injuries or managing the aging brain.
Some say those who could benefit include the five million Americans with Alzheimer’s disease and the nearly 300,000 US military men and women who have sustained traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“If you have been injured in the line of duty and you can’t remember your family, we want to be able to restore those kinds of functions,” DARPA programme manager Justin Sanchez said this week at a conference in the US capital convened by the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas.
“We think that we can develop neuroprosthetic devices that can directly interface with the hippocampus, and can restore the first type of memories we are looking at, the declarative memories,” he said.
Declarative memories are recollections of people, events, facts and figures, and no research has ever shown they can be put back once they are lost.
What researchers have been able to do so far is help reduce tremors in people with Parkinson’s disease, cut back on seizures among epileptics and even boost memory in some Alzheimer’s patients through a process called deep brain stimulation.
Those devices were inspired by cardiac pacemakers, and pulse electricity into the brain much like a steady drum beat, but they don’t work for everyone.
Experts say a much more nuanced approach is needed when it comes to restoring memory.
“Memory is patterns and connections,” explained Robert Hampson, an associate professor at Wake Forest University.
“For us to come up with a memory prosthetic, we would actually have to have something that delivers specific patterns,” said Hampson, adding that he could not comment specifically on DARPA’s plans.
Hampson’s research on rodents and monkeys has shown that neurons in the hippocampus — the part of the brain that processes memory — fire differently when they see red or blue, or a picture of a face versus a type of food.
Equipped with this knowledge, Hampson and colleagues have been able to extend the animals’ short-term, working memory using brain prosthetics to stimulate the hippocampus.
They could coax a drugged monkey into performing closer to normal at a memory task, and confuse it by manipulating the signal so that it would choose the opposite image of what it remembered.
According to Hampson, to restore a human’s specific memory, scientists would have to know the precise pattern for that memory.
Instead, scientists in the field think they could improve a person’s memory by simply helping the brain work more like it used to before the injury.
“The idea is to restore a function back to normal or near normal of the memory processing areas of the brain so that the person can access their formed memories, and so that they can form new memories as needed,” Hampson said.
It’s easy to see how manipulating memories in people could open up an ethical minefield, said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center.
“When you fool around with the brain, you are fooling around with personal identity,” said Caplan, who advises DARPA on matters of synthetic biology but not neuroscience.
“The cost of altering the mind is you risk losing sense of self, and that is a new kind of risk we never faced.”
When it comes to soldiers, the potential for erasing memories or inserting new ones could interfere with combat techniques, make warriors more violent and less conscientious, or even thwart investigations into war crimes, he said.
“If I could take a pill or put a helmet on and have some memories wiped out, maybe I don’t have to live with the consequences of what I do,” Caplan said.
DARPA’s website says that because its “programmes push the leading edge of science”, the agency “periodically convenes scholars with expertise in these issues to discuss relevant ethical, legal, and social issues.”
Just who might be first in line for the experiments is another of the many unknowns.
Sanchez said the path forward will be formally announced in the next few months.
“We have got some of the most talented scientists in our country that will be working on this project. So stay tuned. Lots of exciting things will be coming in the very near future.”

- AFP

Study shows autism risk is half genetic, half environmental

WASHINGTON, May 5: A large study in Sweden has shown that genes are just as important as environmental factors in assessing the causes of autism.
Researchers were surprised to discover that the inheritability of the neurodevelopmental disorder was about 50 per cent — much lower than previous studies that put it at 80-90 per cent — and that it was equal to environmental causes, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The findings were based on data from more than two million people in Sweden from 1982 to 2006, and is the largest to date on the topic of understanding whether genes or the environment contribute to autism, which affects about one in 100 children globally, and as many as one in 68 in the United States.
“We were surprised by our findings as we did not expect the importance of environmental factors in autism to be so strong,” said study author Avi Reichenberg from the Mount Sinai Seaver Center for Autism Research in New York.
The study did not pinpoint which environmental factors could be at play, but said generally they could include things like the family’s socioeconomic status, birth complications, maternal infections or medications taken before and during pregnancy.
Co-authors on the study came from Kings College London and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
More research is needed to further probe the causes of autism, which scientists do not fully understand.
Recent research has suggested the disorder has a prenatal origin, and may take root while the fetus is developing in the womb.

- AFP

Listen to advice on MERS before deciding on umrah trips – Minister

PETALING JAYA, May 8: Malaysians planning to perform their umrah have been advised to take note of the advice and alert pertaining to the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), said Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam.

He said Malaysia had neither imposed any restriction nor advised the people to possibly postpone their umrah.

“I read that the Saudi Arabian Government has advised the people to possibly postpone their umrah trips.

“The Saudi Arabian Government has given such advice, so it is up to our people (Malaysians) to listen to the advice and make a wise decision on their safety and health,” he added.

Dr Subramaniam was speaking to reporters when asked to comment on MERS-CoV  after witnessing the presentation of the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards (ACHS) accreditation award to the Sunway Medical Centre at the centre here today.

Recently, Gulf Daily News in its report said several Haj and Umrah pilgrimage establishments in Saudi Arabia had ceased accepting applications from pilgrims aged over 60, as well as children, following a health ministry advisory which was recently circulated.

Mers-CoV has claimed more than 100 lives in Saudi Arabia.

On April 13, this year, Malaysia recorded its first death related to MERS-CoV after a 54-year-old man contracted the MERS-CoV while performing umrah in Mecca.

The victim from Batu Pahat, Johor died at the Sultanah Nora Ismail Hospital of severe pneumonia from MERS-CoV infection, the first casualty reported in the country and region.

Meanwhile on the ACHS accreditation ceremony today, the acreditation made the Sunway Medical Centre the first hospital in South East Asia to be accredited by the ACHS. – BERNAMA

13 new MERS deaths in Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, May 11: Saudi Arabia has announced 13 more deaths from the MERS coronavirus, as the World Health Organisation prepared for an emergency meeting over worries about the spread of the disease.

The Middle East Respiratory System coronavirus has now killed 139 people and infected 480 in the kingdom since it first appeared in 2012, accounting for the bulk of cases registered across the globe.

In its most recent tally, issued at midday on Saturday, the Saudi health ministry said six people had died from the disease over the past 24 hours.

They were three women aged 22, 26 and 35 who died in Riyadh, a 68-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man in the western city of Medina, and a man in his 70s in the commercial capital Jeddah.

On Friday the ministry said three men aged 94, 51 and 42 had died from MERS in the Jeddah region.

It added that a 74-year-old man had died in the city of Taef, while a woman, 71, and two men aged 81 and 25 respectively, had died in the capital Riyadh.

MERS is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus that broke out in Asia in 2003, infecting 8,273 people and killing nearly 800.

Like SARS, it appears to cause a lung infection, with patients suffering coughing, breathing difficulties and a temperature, but MERS differs in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Experts are struggling to understand the disease for which there are currently no vaccines or antiviral treatments.

The announcement of the latest fatalities in Saudi Arabia came the day after the WHO said it would hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the spread of the virus.

The UN health agency’s emergency committee has already met four times to discuss the mysterious coronavirus since it surfaced in 2012.

“The increase in the number of cases in different countries raises a number of questions,” spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva on Friday, without giving further details of the aim of the new talks.

MERS cases have also been reported in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and even the United States, with most involving people who had travelled to Saudi Arabia or worked there, often as medical staff.

- AFP

Conjoined twins die in hospital

LAST BREATH: 2-year-olds Nur Shazwanie and Nur Shazrinie had heart problem

KEMAMAN:  ZULKIFLI Ngah had hoped   there would be a way to let his 2-year-old conjoined twin daughters to be separated. However, they died yesterday and he accepted it as fate. 

He said Nur Shazwanie and Nur Shazrinie died from a heart complication in Kemaman Hospital. They were admitted on Friday.

"I feel as though my life has been taken away. They had learnt to call me and my wife 'daddy' and 'mummy'."

Zulkifli, 43, said the twins were admitted because of fever and breathing difficulty. They failed to recover.

Zulkifli said he had contacted the specialist from the National Heart Institute, who had treated his daughters after learning they had heart complications.

"The doctor who had treated them when they were 4-month-old said they could only live about 2 years to 30 months."

The twins were buried at Kampung Bukit Kuang Muslim cemetery at 2pm yesterday.

Nur Shazwanie Zulkifli (left) and Nur Shazrinie died of a heart complication at Kemaman Hospital, Terengganu, yesterday. File pic

Read more: Conjoined twins die in hospital - General - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/conjoined-twins-die-in-hospital-1.398473#ixzz2kUJYAuJ2

'No jobs for medical grads next year'

IMPOSE MORATORIUM: The Malaysian Medical Association says there are too many medical graduates and too many private medical colleges, writes Audrey Vijaindren

THERE are too many medical students graduating every year and not enough hospitals to train and provide jobs for them, said the Malaysian Medical Association.

If the situation continues, there would be no place for these graduates to undergo training by next year, its president Datuk Dr N.K.S. Tharmaseelan said.

He said there were "too many medical graduates, and too many private medical colleges; almost 40 now for a population of about 28 million".

"This is probably one of the highest per capita in the world. For many years, the MMA has vehemently opposed the flooding of the market to overcome the shortage of doctors. However, as we were regularly assured that many rural areas still lacked doctors and that there was no likelihood for jobless doctors, many continued to pursue medical courses.

"Today, with about 5,000 medical graduates every year, we have the highest number in Malaysian history."

The government is planning to reach the World Health Organisation's (WHO) standard of one doctor to 400 patients, said Dr Tharmaseelan, and while it was fine to set standards, the nation needed to achieve that gradually.

"Trying to speed track this without adequate infrastructure, such as enough hospitals to train and provide jobs for doctors, will surely create unemployment."

In the last five years, only two government hospitals were built, bringing the number to 132. According to the 2014 Budget, there is only one planned in the next five years.

There are 40 private medical colleges in the country and 375 recognised colleges overseas. Those from unrecognised colleges need to complete two years of housemanship, two years of compulsory service and sit for a medical qualifying exam before being given full registration certificates.

"Most states have only one state hospital that serves as a referral centre. This is certainly inadequate. Medical graduates need to be trained. For that, you need hospitals. We will surely see jobless graduates next year as the figures from the Health Ministry show that they have already filled all available posts.

"According to the ministry's annual report in 2011, there were 28,309 medical officer posts, of which 21,765 were filled. Today, the remaining 6,544 posts have probably been filled.

"Just as we have about 15,000 unemployed nurses, a few thousand jobless lab technicians and similar number of physiotherapists who are facing the same predicament, the number of doctors will also reach that figure sooner than expected."

Dr Tharmaseelan added that part of the fault lay in inadequate coordination between the Health and the then Higher Education Ministries.

"One lacks infrastructure while the other allowed the opening of more and more medical colleges, and offered nursing, physiotherapy and other allied health professional courses without determining whether they can assimilate these individuals or provide jobs. Medical colleges have sprouted up and the entry qualifications into these colleges are frighteningly low; only four B4 credits in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia or Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia examinations are needed.

"This decision was probably made to fill the vast number of places in medical colleges.

"We must enforce a strict moratorium on medical colleges. Colleges which are not performing should be closed down.

"This is the only country where we build colleges and supply candidates to fill them up.

"How do you allow medical colleges to function without sufficient staff and exposure to patients? Medical training is not just classrooms, mannequins or robotics training. Most medical colleges overseas have their own hospitals but here, medical institutions share public hospitals to cut costs.

"The consequence of these mass, factory-like productions is insufficient exposure to patients.

"Some hospital units have up to 150 doctors. How is it humanly possible to train or monitor them?

"When I joined the medical service three decades ago, there was one house officer (HO) manning an entire ward of 40 to 50 patients. Now, we have more HOs than patients in a ward.

"How will they ever get the opportunity to learn the intricacies of medical practice? It's a well acknowledged fact that the standard of medical practice in the country is gradually waning," he said.

Dr Tharmaseelan stressed that it is time the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC) queried the standard of private medical colleges.

He said initially, the MMC's regulations stated that a medical graduate had to complete one year of housemanship and three years of compulsory service.

Later, it was increased to two years of housemanship followed by three years of compulsory service.

"However, due to the increasing number of doctors, the compulsory period of service has been reduced by a year.

"Now, I believe that the government is mulling to waive the compulsory service period completely," he said.

The MMA is appealing for several measures to be taken immediately to arrest the situation.

"There needs to be a moratorium on more medical colleges. Admission criteria should include an interview to assess aptitude, attitude and general knowledge, with a limit of 100 students per year.

"Also, medical colleges should have sufficient tutors, lecturers and infrastructure, including their own training hospitals and clinical research wings.

"The Health Ministry should ensure there are enough hospitals built to cater for training doctors, and the MMC should constantly review and monitor the standards of medical colleges both in Malaysia and overseas."

Read more: 'No jobs for medical grads next year' - General - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/nation/general/no-jobs-for-medical-grads-next-year-1.396549#ixzz2kUEVeeBm

Video: Dengue-blocking mosquitoes out

Clean air solutions

There's more to air pollution management than just griping at Indonesia

WAS there ever any doubt that the haze would return, and in short time? The days of clear blue, and the more welcome rain-cloud laden, skies are over, for the moment. Now, the weeping that will be done will come from the tearducts of man, shaking fists at the sky and the wind, and, by extension, the neighbour.    Not a little, too, will come from the sneezing, coughing, hacking and misery the polluted air will bring. In the less than one month the haze was gone, many have tried to make the most of the clean air, living each day as it came, knowing that the good days would not last, knowing that we were living on borrowed time.

However, the reality is that clean air, clear skies and good health can be snatched away at any time, not needing the fires of Indonesia, or an officially demarcated season. An international study published this month in the Environmental Research Letters journal found that outdoor air pollution contributes to 2.5 million deaths each year, caused by ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) that is a tiny fraction the width of human hair. "Epidemiological studies have shown that ozone and PM2.5 have significant influences on human health, including premature mortality." PM2.5-related mortality was widespread in populated regions, including Southeast Asia, and "past climate change caused ozone mortality to increase". A British Heart Foundation-funded study released just days before that found that air pollution, such as exposure to pollution from road traffic, weakened heart muscles and could cause death. According to the World Health Organisation, PM2.5 was associated with "a broad spectrum of acute and chronic illness, such as lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease".

These findings highlight how harmful air pollution is to humans, although the general effects should have been clear to common sense. But, what is significant is that the properties of that pollution, ozone on the ground and PM2.5, are largely categorised as anthropogenic-- caused by human activity, and very mundane ones at that. Exhaust fumes from cars, buses and lorries; household emissions from energy consumption, aerosols and chlorofluorocarbons; emissions from smokestacks and methane from landfills. These are the pollutants that we have to contend with outside of the haze season, and that which further compound the effects of the haze when it is around. So, other than pushing for Indonesia to ratify the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, Malaysia should be looking at its own air pollution protocols, so that greater steps can be taken to make sure we don't pollute our environment. Reducing energy use, converting to clean energy resources and reining in overconsumption would be a good start.

Read more: Clean air solutions - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/clean-air-solutions-1.324511#ixzz2ZpHViNgm

Shisha ban should cover all Malaysians

ALL ENCOMPASSING: The edict creates a double standard in safeguarding the health of people

THERE is no doubt that the fatwa to ban the use of shisha is timely and welcomed. Shisha is no longer a novelty in Malaysia. It has become popular, especially among youngsters of both genders.

They perceive shisha as harmless, more for fun and kicks. This is always the case for habit-forming activities, ranging from the use of substances to electronic gadgets.

Hence, to act fast with utmost resolute is the name of the game. It will become an uphill battle once the habits become entrenched in us.

The fatwa against shisha is laudable, though it could have been done earlier.

The next step is to internalise the fact that addiction knows no boundaries: geographical, ethnicity and social status.

After all, the biophysiological and psychological responses are invariably the same for all humans, though some may be more disposed than others, depending on the exposure or other predisposing factors.

In this regard, the shisha ban should have been more encompassing and not only limited to the scope of the fatwa.

It should have been extended, on the same scientific basis and evidence, that shisha is undesirable for all Malaysians.

Hence, a nationwide ban is warranted.

Otherwise, not only is the ban more difficult to impose, it also creates a double standard in safeguarding the health of Malaysians.

This would be most unfortunate as it can be divisive.

Based on this, the question that must be asked is, why just stop at shisha? What about other tobacco products, notably cigarettes?

Here is where the shisha ban falls terribly short. In fact, it sends a wrong signal, implying that cigarette smoking is an acceptable habit, as though it is a lesser evil relative to shisha.

Indeed, there are opinions to that effect, arguing that the constituent of shisha is crude and, worse, because it has no filters unlike cigarettes.

The water filter provided by shisha is insufficient or ineffective. So, cigarettes and other tobacco products being excluded from the fatwa will continue to waste millions of lives, most prematurely. Ironically, death caused by shisha is nowhere near this.

The reality is different with cigarettes.

Cigarette packs have this warning: "Tobacco kills."

It also maims many more because of the secondary smoke that it emits into the environment, not unlike shisha.

It is already recognised by many parties, including the World Health Organisation, that there are 7,000 chemicals in a cigarette.

Many are deadly and several are carcinogenic.

Despite all these, far from being banned, the control of the sales in this country remains weak as compared with Thailand and Singapore.

They appear to be far more committed to save the lives of their population. Ours have been flip-flopping in most cases, otherwise, the "kita akan kaji dahulu"(we will study first) knee-jerk response when others have implemented the same years ahead with much success (point of sales cigarette advertisements, for example). To be sure, in the last few years, the campaign against tobacco has stagnated.

As a result of that, too, there have now emerged e-cigarette devices, once again disguised as something so benign that they can be bought in souvenir shops around the country.

Like shisha, this is another novelty that appeals to the younger generation, who have always been the target of the tobacco industry. This time with a reverse claim of being a clean cigarette, if ever there is one.

On the contrary, the liquid that is to be used with the e-cigarette contains chemicals, including the addictive nicotine. It cannot possibly justify the word clean, as much as the word "mild" or "light", as in the case of conventional tobacco.

Here again, Malaysia is being bogged down with the cliché - "kita akan kaji", when our neighbours, with at least five others worldwide, have banned the use of e-cigarettes.

The logic that banning deadly poisons like tobacco products will cost business to lose is irresponsible. This implies we would be more concerned about losing profits rather than previous human lives.

The ultimate question still remains: do we have what it takes to do the right thing to protect the lives of our citizen from being wasted by the merchants of death? The answer is obvious. And we must act accordingly, immediately.

The fatwa against shisha is noteworthy, although it could have been done done much earlier.

Read more: Shisha ban should cover all Malaysians - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/shisha-ban-should-cover-all-malaysians-1.324509#ixzz2ZpDP4mnl

22 budak maut makan hidangan beracun - BH

Makanan percuma dipercayai dicemari fosfat racun serangga

Patna: Sekurang-kurangnya 22 kanak-kanak maut selepas menikmati hidangan tengah hari percuma di sebuah sekolah rendah di timur India, di mana ujian awal menunjukkan makanan terbabit dicemari bahan kimia beracun, kata pihak berkuasa.

Kira-kira 30 kanak-kanak yang lain dirawat di hospital selepas mengambil hidangan tengah hari yang dimasak di sekolah kampung terbabit, kata menteri pendidikan negeri Bihar, P K Shahi. 

Hidangan tengah hari 

“Sungguh menyedihkan tetapi memang benar bahawa 22 kanak-kanak mati selepas makan hidangan tengah hari mereka, yang didapati beracun,” kata Shahi kepada AFP.

Semua 22 kanak-kanak terbabit berusia di bawah 10 tahun dikebumikan berhampiran sekolah pagi semalam dengan beratus-ratus penduduk kampung membantah kematian terbabit.

“Beratus-ratus penduduk yang marah membuat bantahan di daerah Saran lewat malam semalam, menuntut tindakan tegas terhadap pegawai kerajaan yang bertanggungjawab dalam insiden yang mengejutkan ini,” kata pegawai daerah, S K Mall.

Satu siasatan awal menunjukkan bahawa hidangan kekacang dan nasi yang diberikan kepada kanak-kanak terbabit mungkin dicemari dengan fosfat daripada racun serangga, kata pegawai kerajaan tempatan, Amarjeet Sinha. 


Racun serangga

“Punca kematian mungkin keracunan organophosphorous akibat racun serangga dalam sayur,” katanya kepada AFP sambil menambah bahawa doktor merawat mangsa dengan atropine.

Laporan media memetik penduduk kampung berkata penggunaan minyak masak tercemar mungkin menjadi punca kematian.

“Penyiasat melakukan siasatan terhadap sampel hidangan tengahari berkenaan dan sampel muntah mangsa. Hanya laporan akhir mendedahkan punca sebenar,” katanya.

Ketua menteri, Nitish Kumar mengumumkan pampasan sebanyak 200,000 rupee (RM10,745) kepada keluarga mangsa. - AFP