Dr Margaret Chan up for election to head WHO for second term
Dr Margaret Chan (archives)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The World Health Organization’s 192 members are meeting for five days in Geneva starting Monday 21 May. The assembly will elect a director general and current head Dr Margaret Chan, with solid backing from the board, looks set for re-election.
Chan, in her opening remarks Monday, emphasized the progress made by countries whose governments have shown “the importance of national ownership and leadership.” She cited India’s polio eradication programme, Ghana’s commitment to guinea worm eradication, noting that “during the first quarter of 2012, cases of this disease dropped 67% compared with last year, and now number just over 100.” And Namibia, which “is leading a group of 8 neighbouring African countries in a joint effort to eliminate malaria.”
Funds are tighter, and it’s time to get back to the basics, “shift to thrift” and be innovative, says Chan
Chan characterized the last decade as a golden one for world health, on many levels, but arguing against the doomsayers who believe the opposite is now true.
“At the start of the decade, the Millennium Development Goals showed how much the perception of health had changed, from a drain on resources to a driver of socioeconomic progress. In that golden decade, governments, in both donor and recipient countries, made the health agenda a top priority. Money for health development more than tripled. Substantial results followed, with a particularly strong impact on deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and childhood illness.”
More than 60 countries now pushing for universal health coverage
The director general saved her strongest words, in an upbeat message about where health is headed, for a shift towards universal health coverage.
“Following publication of the 2010 World Health Report on health system financing, more than 60 countries have approached WHO seeking technical support for their plans to move towards universal coverage.
“What we are seeing goes against the historical pattern, where social services shrink when money gets tight. I think this drive to expand coverage is a powerful signal. Despite deepening financial austerity, the will to do the right thing, the fair thing, for people’s health prevails.”
International Hand Hygiene Day at HUGlywood Boulevard
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – To celebrate World Hand Hand Hygiene Day, the Geneva University Hospital (HUG) is finding inspiration from Hollywood to create its own “hand hygiene boulevard” Monday 7 May.
The HUG says its goal is to alert the public, patients and its own staff to the dangers of infections contracted at hospital and the importance of hand sterilization.
Participants will have the chance to leave their hand prints and be filmed, just like the Hollywood stars, while learning about infection and hand hygiene.
The lunchtime event takes place a week and a half before the opening of the Cannes Film Festival.
Rega's 3 air ambulance jets were used in March to repatriate injured children home to Belgium after a horrific bus crash in Sierre
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The issue of Swiss neutrality is raising its head in parliament with the confirmation by Rega that it has carried out repatriation flights of wounded US soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq, reports RTS public broadcasting.
Rega, which provides emergency medical repatriation flights for a number of clients, notably insurance companies, confirmed the information in response to a 2 May article in Handelszeitung that says the private company has run 17 flights.
Last month Rega celebrated its 60th anniversary, noting that 2011 was a record year in terms of the number of rescue missions, more than 14,000.
Rega has not confirmed any details except to say it has delivered wounded soldiers to the Ramstein air base in Germany and that it has not worked directly for the US armed forces. According to RTS the company says it makes 150 foreign repatriations a year out of 700 total, and fewer than 20 involve soldiers. Rega says it makes no distinction about the side soldiers are fighting on, in line with Swiss neutrality and International Red Cross principles.
The company takes on work outside its main Swiss emergency medical air evacuations in Switzerland mainly outside the tourist season, when its planes and helicopters are not in full use.
The issue comes at a sensitive time for Rega, whose supporters have a bill coming up in parliament to exonerate the non-profit group from paying TVA (value added tax). It was hit in 2010 with a CHF5 million bill for taxes, when the tax office decided its annual dues for members were a form of insurance.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – Two Swiss companies are recalling consumer products: Ikea, toy trains and Migros, sugar-free sweets.
Ikea trains, electric shock risk
Ikea is voluntarily recalling IKEA 365+ SÄNDA 70 and 114 cm electric trains sold between September 2011 and March 2012. Owners of the trains should check if their products carry the code number 21338 and a manufacturing date (AASS, Année-Semaine) of “1134″ to 1208″. If so, they should stop using them immediately.
The trains are being recalled because of an earthing fault in the rails that could result in an electric shock if the rails or lights are touched.
Migros says sugar in sugar-free sweets could be health risk for diabetics
Migros is voluntarily recalling its Bonherba aux herbes, sans sucres (sugar-free) sweets, article number 1010.816, bags with the lot number L1654, sold between 7 March and 24 April. The bags contain some sugar and could be a health risk for diabetics. Bags returned to any Migros store will be refunded the full price, CHF3.60.
People with diabetes are asked not to eat the sweets, but the quality of them is fine and anyone else can eat them, says Migros.
The two companies’ product recalls are among several in April published by the Federal Consumer Protection Office. Also recalled: Elmex toothbrushes for children ages 3-6 and some Samsonite travel adaptors.
Complete list of product recalls, details
Findings could help development of new drugs for epilepsy, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – “Water isn’t just a neutral environment; it can also interact with the molecules and change their structure” EPFL researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Physical Chemistry note in a statement about new findings that could lead to progress in drugs for a number of disorders and diseases. “Like a key inserted into a lock, the molecules in drugs bind with and act upon biomolecules. The more precisely we know these molecules’ three-dimensional structure, the better we will understand how their active components work. Biomolecules often exist in aqueous environments; this is the case in the human body.”
The group has shown how the natural antibiotic gramicidin’s 3D structure changes “depending on the number of water molecules surrounding it.”
Their findings were published in the journal Science 19 April.
EPFL in a press release explains the impact the research will have, in concrete terms: “This research, led by senior scientist Oleg Boyarkine, his colleague Natalia Nagornova and professor Thomas Rizzo, will have a considerable impact not only in fundamental research, but also in the pharmaceutical arena. ‘Understanding how drug molecules change shape when they are dissolved in water is a crucial point. This discovery will make it possible to design new, more effective drugs using computers,” the chemist explains. The challenge was to conduct the experiments as accurately and precisely as possible. ‘Even though precise knowledge of the structure of a large molecule is only really possible through theoretical calculations, thanks to spectroscopy and ultra-low temperatures, we can now validate the theory.’”
The Lake Geneva region and Ticino show the highest percentage of mental health problems, with figures based in part on questionnaires
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The extent of mental illness in Switzerland have remained relatively stable for the past 10 years, a new report by the Federal Health Office shows.
The cost in economic terms is CHF11 billion a year, with a large part of this due to indirect costs such as absenteeism and early retirement.
The number of people who seek treatment remains very low, rising from only 4 percent to 5 percent between 1997 and 2007.
The report, released 12 April, is the third such review by the office. While 74 percent of the population describe themselves as feeling full of energy and optimistic most of the time, 19 percent have said in surveys that they are affected moderately or more seriously by mental health problems, including 4 percent of the population that is handicapped by a debilitating mental health problem.
The figures are based on a combination of statistics and several different surveys by federal departments.
The Lake Geneva region and Ticino continue to have a higher incidence of mental health ailments than German-speaking Switzerland. Serious mental health problems affect women and young people more often than men and the elderly, but milder forms of depression are more prevalent among women and older people, the report’s statistics show.
Dark Swiss chocolate, not just good but good for getting the stress level down (photo: E Wallace)
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – We’ve all suspected it and now Nestlé researchers tell us it is true: a nibble of dark chocolate a day reduces our stress level. A research team that looked at the biochemical basis for what many of us like to consider comfort food found “strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 g of dark chocolate during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of free living and healthy human subjects, as per variation of both host and gut microbial metabolism.”
Their findings, presented at a conference in California 28 March, showed “that the chemical compounds contained in dark chocolate may improve the disposition of people who experience higher levels of stress.”
You might have to use more diplomacy now that the word is out when you offer chocolates to your stressed mother or others. Remind them that the group also found that “the level of stress-related hormones reduced in all participants, including those who were not assessed as stressed at the start.”
The test group consumed half the chocolate in the morning and the other half in the afternoon.
In more scientific terms, the group’s abstract reports this:
“A clinical trial was performed on a population of 30 human subjects, who were classified in low and high anxiety traits using validated psychological questionnaires. Biological fluids (urine and blood plasma) were collected during 3 test days at the beginning, midtime and at the end of a 2 week study. NMR and MS-based metabonomics were employed to study global changes in metabolism due to the chocolate consumption. Human subjects with higher anxiety trait showed a distinct metabolic profile indicative of a different energy homeostasis (lactate, citrate, succinate, trans-aconitate, urea, proline), hormonal metabolism (adrenaline, DOPA, 3-methoxy-tyrosine) and gut microbial activity (methylamines, p-cresol sulfate, hippurate). Dark chocolate reduced the urinary excretion of the stress hormone cortisol and catecholamines and partially normalized stress-related differences in energy metabolism (glycine, citrate, trans-aconitate, proline, β-alanine) and gut microbial activities (hippurate and p-cresol sulfate).”
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of assisted suicides in Switzerland of people who are permanent residents in the country, appeared to rise during the first decade in which statistics were kept, 1998-2009. Three hundred people committed assisted suicide, which is legal, in 2009, giving a ratio of 4.8 out of 1,000 deaths. International comparisons are not possible on any scale because of wide differences in how countries deal with this, from no legislation to very strict laws.
But Switzerland sits in the middle of two other European countries that permit it and have been keeping records: Belgium shows 7.9 and The Netherlands 2.3 per 1,000 deaths, but Bern cautions that the statistics rely on the cause listed by a doctor on a death certificate.
The Swiss Federal Council in June 2011 decided not to legislate in this area, following a Zurich vote rejecting a law for that canton. The council agreed to do more to prevent suicides and to improve palliative care.
A national debate was prompted in part by the growing international attention, particularly from Britain, on assisted suicide tourism. Estimates vary from 100 to 200 foreigners a year coming to Switzerland for assisted suicide, mainly at the Dignitas clinic in Zurich.
The deaths in Switzerland are linked to a number of initial causes: cancer, 44 percent, neurodegenerative disease 14 percent, cardiovascular disease 9 percent, movement disorders 6 percent.
Ninety-percent of the people who choose assisted suicide are over age 55. Three percent of cases involve depression and dementia is mentioned in 0.3 percent.
Zurich, with 5.6 per 1,000 and Geneva, with 4.4 per 1,000, had the highest numbers and ratios.
Hospital waste water should be treated separately
Lausanne, Lake Geneva
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A startling discovery made by researchers at Vidy, in Lausanne, has led to recommendations that waste water dumped into Lake Geneva be given complementary treatments and that waste water from hospitals be treated separately. The research team from Eawag, the Swiss aquatic research institute in Lausanne, has found that while water treatment programmes reduce the overall number of germs, they appear to create an environment which actually encourages the most resistant bacteria.
The Eawag team set out to learn if the lake water environment is also affected by the increasing animal, including human, resistance to bacteria that is being shown by a number of studies.
A preliminary report was recently published by Frontiers in Microbiology.
About 15 percent of Switzerland’s waste water is dumped into lakes after being treated. The situation in Vidy is far from an isolated case, Eawag says. Once waste water from the Lausanne area is treated, some 90,000m3 a day, it is released into Lake Geneva ab0ut 700 metres from the shore via a pipe that ejects it at a depth of 30m in the Vidy bay.
CHUV, Lausanne
Lausanne has no pharmaceutical industry, the researchers point out, nor does it has related industries, but the 214,000 inhabitants of the region use a number of small medical centres and hospitals and the large university hospitals centre, the Chuv, is linked to the city’s waste water treatment system.
The team studied the resistance to antibiotics in parallel with classic tests, looking at growth rates in the water environment and using sophisticated genetic research tools.
The study created a previously unequaled quantity of data about waste water and lake sediment. It showed that there is a particularly high number of bacteria-resistant germs in the waste water coming from the Chuv.
And while 75 percent of the germs are eliminated through current treatment, the multi-resistant ones that are left are encouraged in their new environment.
Recommendations: further treatment and separate hospital waste water
The Eawag group says there is no reason for alarm, since measurements show the resistant germs tend to remain in the sediment rather than in the water near it, but they are recommending two changes. Additional water treatment is needed in selected stations to neutralize a large number of the resistant germs, and hospital waste water should be treated separately.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Fabian Cancellara, Switzerlands’s four-time world champion cyclists, is getting a different kind of publicity with the new spring campaign from bpa/bfu, the Swiss Safety Council. “Lovelo” about loving your bike – with a helmet on – has a simple message: put your helmet on right by testing with two fingers above your nose and tightening the strap properly.
500gm packets of Migros shrimp: check the dates here!
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Migros is recalling shrimp packets after an internal safety check found traces of the bacteria listeria. Customers are urged to not eat the products, which can be returned to a Migros store for a refund.
The item concerned is 500 gr packets of “Tail on” pre-cooked shrimp with the following dates, sold in large Migros outlets:
A vendre jusqu’au 19.02.2012, à consommer jusqu’au 20.02.2012
A vendre jusqu’au 20.02.2012, à consommer jusqu’au 21.02.2012
A vendre jusqu’au 21.02.2012, à consommer jusqu’au 22.02.2012
A vendre jusqu’au 22.02.2012, à consommer jusqu’au 23.02.2012
A vendre jusqu’au 23.02.2012, à consommer jusqu’au 24.02.2012.
Antique valentine (source: Wikipedia)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sex and the threatened male heart are increasingly being studied, but more could be done to see the impact of sex on the hearts of women with heart conditions and the elderly, according to the American Heart Association. The group says in a statement 8 February that according to a new scientific statement with recommendations by heart specialists “it is probably safe to have sex if your cardiovascular disease has stabilized”.
The AHA notes that cardiovascular events “such as heart attacks or chest pain caused by heart disease—rarely occur during sexual activity, because sexual activity is usually for a short time. ‘Some patients will postpone sexual activity when it is actually relatively safe for them to engage in it,’” according to Dr Glenn Levine, director of the Cardiac Care Unit at the Michael E DeBakey Medical Center in Houston. “‘On the other hand, there are some patients for whom it may be reasonable to defer sexual activity until they’re assessed and stabilized.’”
News agency AP noted in an article related to the study led by Levine, which was published in January, that “surprisingly, despite the higher risk for a heart patient to have a second attack, there’s no evidence that they have more sex-related heart attacks than people without cardiac disease.”
The UK’s Telegraph, reporting on the US report, says “American researchers who carried out the investigation are calling for doctors to screen men for sexual activity when assessing their risk of heart disease. Every year, around 270,000 people in Britain suffer a heart attack, and coronary disease remains Britain’s biggest killer.”
The Circulation article is available in full online (Levine, Circulation, pdf)
Patrick Aebischer, president of EPFL and Jacques Melly, president of the Valais cantonal council, sign an agreement of understanding 10 January to set up a branch of the polytechnic in Valais
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Canton Vaud’s federal polytechnic institute, EPFL and canton Valais signed an agreement of intention Tuesday 10 January in Sion to establish a branch of the school in canton Valais, most likely in Sion but working closely with a number of existing services throughout the canton.
A formal agreement and plans will be developed later in the year, but EPFL President Patrick Aebischer is quoted by Le Nouvelliste as saying the new campus should be up and running by 2015.
The new branch of EPFL will have have 11 research and training chairs, the canton and EPFL announced at a press conference Tuesday.
Valais will have a teaching campus that focuses on energy, health and chemistry, according to Le Nouvelliste, with seven chairs in energy and the rest in bio-technology and bio-engineering, while Le Temps reports that four chairs will be in energy and the others in biotechnology and medical engineering.
EPFL has not yet issued a press release confirming details but Valais, for its part, says the focus will be on energy, health (with a focus on rehabilitation) and nutrition and the new school should help attract international companies. Nutrition studies would centre around work to produce components for vitamins and medicines.
A masters degree in energy is being planned.
EPFL is based in Lausanne but has a small campus in Neuchatel for nanotechnology.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss federal government has issued a salmonella warning for a Camembert cheese, cautioning consumers to check if it corresponds to the following:
Le Camembert Fermier « Ferme de Jouvence » (lot 11309VC; DLUO 14.01.2012): 275g with sell-by dates of 14.01.2012.
The cheese was immediately pulled off shelves once French authorities were aware of the problem; they immediately alerted Swiss health authorities of the salmonella risk, but some 200 of the cheeses had already been sold.
Salmonella provokes severe vomiting and high fevers, usually within 6 to 72 hours; if you suspect you have this, contact a doctor immediately.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Hug University Hospitals in Geneva and its lab workers have reached an agreement, two weeks after the hospital lashed out at the workers’ union for endangering lives during a work slowdown. The agreement calls for the laboratory workers to have two new work categories labeled as technicians, reflecting changes in their field, and to redefine the training and skills needed for their jobs.
The hospital has argued that it does not have the power over this area, for which only the canton is competent, but it has agreed to a joint work group that will focus on developing job descriptions for the cantonal system, with particular attention to continuing education, and to a joint commission that will be involved various areas, notably staff concerns over the new laboratories being built.
Landmarks get red lights as Aids Day
Global prevention, treatment and funding at a turning point
Women in Eritrea learn about Aids (photo ©2011 The Global Fund / Didier Ruef )
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Red lights are shining today on several world landmarks, including the Empire State Building and Stock Exchange in New York and the Sydney Opera House in Australia, to mark World Aids Day. The day has been noted officially since 1988, making it 23 years since we woke up to the reality that action on a massive scale was needed to stop the killer disease.
Funding was organized over the years, treatment and prevention research were stepped up, and patients began to find help. The World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva says that HIV infections fell by 15 percent in the past decade and Aids-related deaths fell by 22 percent.
The improvements came about largely because of better access to treatment and drugs, but just as hope has been growing, the global economic crises of the past three years are threatening to bite into that progress, the WHO and the Geneva-based Global Fund note.
And a number of groups remain at risk: teenage girls, drug users, men who have sex with men and babies born to women with HIV.
On the bright side, there is clear progress, says the WHO:
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The deadline is looming if you’re considering changing your obligatory Swiss health insurance policy. You have until 30 November to make the change. The federal government has added new features to its insurance cost comparison site, which has an easy-to-use tool for comparing companies, as does Comparis, which has pages in English.
28% increase in deaths from chronic bronchitis in women
Improving their chances: more years ahead for young Swiss as age of death rises
NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND – The average age of death is rising in Switzerland: 74.4 for men and 82.1 years for women.
The Swiss Statistical Office’s new figures on mortality for 2009, the most recent calculations, show 15,000 fewer deaths in the under-80 population than in 1970, with 62,476 deaths in 2009. Over age 80 the number of deaths has increased by 2.2, while the population has increased threefold.
Dementia diagnosed more easily and earlier, lung cancer leads cancer deaths
Cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia are the three main causes of death overall, but dementia as a cause of death is on the rise, as the aging population increases, the figures show.
The number of deaths from dementia as an initial illness has doubled in 10 years and the mortality rate has risen from 20 to 28 deaths per 10,000, a rise explained in part by earlier and better diagnoses, according to the statistical office.
Cardiovascular disease accounted for 36 percent of all deaths, cancer 26 percent and dementia about 7 percent.
Lung cancer accounts for nearly one-fifth of all cancer deaths and it remains by far the most prevalent form of cancer in Switzerland.
Respiratory diseases including chronic bronchitis are the fourth cause of death, with a startling figure: the number of deaths among women from chronic bronchitis rose 28 percent in the past 10 years, while it dropped 12 percent for men.
When a younger population is looked at, the figures show cancer as the leading cause of premature death, followed by accidents, then cardiovascular disease.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Hug university hospitals in Geneva late Tuesday 15 November said it is bringing charges for endangering life against lab workers and the union that is backing them in their hospital strike, following an incident today in the maternity unit. Urgently needed lab results were supplied to medical staff with delays of three to five hours, says the hospital, a clear violation of the guarantee to ensure basic services during a strike.
The hospital is also filing criminal charges against the lab workers’ union (VPOD-SSP) for inciting to endanger the lives of others for its threat to block the immuno-hematology transfusion unit Thursday.
Tensions between the hospital and the union rose Tuesday when the union announced that it will treat only blood units that the Hug buys. This, says the hospital, is only about 115 of the 500-700 needed a week not just by the hospital but also private clinics, doctors’ offices and elsewhere. The entire canton’s blood supplies will thus be “held hostage” says the hospital’s direction.
The other blood units are dealt with by the hospital’s lab, whose workers are striking; the union says the blood products will be treated and stored until after the strike.
But the Hug notes that in the meantime, this will put at risk several units, in particular emergency services, maternity, surgery and the pediatric unit.
Too much of a good thing means we need to cut back, says the Federal Office of Public Health
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss are known for their conservative approach to money, but one area where they are too liberal, it appears, is in adding sodium, or table salt, to their food. A study released Monday by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) shows that people consume nearly double the amount of salt they should, but it also points to ways to reduce this, starting with the food industry.
Too much salt causes health problems, with the risk of cardiovascular disease high on the list. The Chuv (university hospitals) in Lausanne was mandated to carry out the research, with questionnaires for 1,500 people followed up by tests for hypertension.
Men were found to consume more salt than women, 10.6 grams compared to 7.8g. The World Health Organization’s recommends an intake of 5g maximum.
More men had a problem with high blood pressure, 32.3 percent, than women, 19.1 percent, but the average of more than 25 percent shows a population too much at risk for cardiovascular disease, says the FOPH.
School lunches, work canteens will use less salt, more herbs and spices
Expect less, get more, could well be the motto of the future for the Swiss population, with the food industry and researchers now working with the health office to cut back on the use of salt without any loss of flavour or safety in order to help consumers boost their health.
The study is part of the FOPH’s “Salt Strategy 2008–2012“, which aims to reduce the nation’s salt consumption. Salt Strategy is one part of the Swiss Nutrition and Physical Activity Programme 2008–2012.
Eleven categories of products have been targeted for reduced salt, with the federal government laying out recommendations for industry cutting back. Read more…
Swiss forests (here, Bern) are an economic and environmental priority, but poor wood-burning stoves could counteract forestry efforts
BERN, SWITZERLAND – More than 15 percent of fine particles, those minuscule bits of dust that are harmful to health, come from wood-burning stoves, the Swiss federal government now says, twice the amount shown by earlier research.
Reducing the quantity is a public health priority, with the popularity of home fireplaces growing, but an changes to regulations need to be aligned with an economic and environmental priority, to better develop and exploit Swiss forests.
The amount of wood burned for fuel is on the rise in Switzerland, according to Swiss energy officials, and it is likely to continue to go up if fossil fuel prices rise.
Switzerland is closely watching the example of Germany, which recently tightened its laws for wood as an energy source. It lowered the acceptable limits for home fireplaces, including existing ones.
Pilot projects have been started in some Swiss cantons in an effort to find better tools for measuring home fire emissions.
Burn dry wood in a correctly installed and properly functioning fireplace, for your health
A group meeting in Bern this week concluded that there is a huge difference, in terms of health and air pollution, between good home fireplaces and those that don’t meet today’s standards. Quality is directly linked to proper installation, the group says, as well as correct use and burning the right materials.
The question is of growing importance because the number of automatic wood-burning stoves has tripled and the number of manual home wood-burning stoves (poeles) has doubled in the past 15 years according to the Swiss Energy Office.
Swiss authorities, researchers, firms and cantonal officials, many of them with Cercl’Air, met 8-9 November to discuss the effectiveness of air filters on home fireplaces and to review Swiss regulations governing small wood-burning units.
Switzerland’s law requiring certification for home fireplaces went into effect in 2007, but the implementation has been phased in, through 2012.
Cercl’Air is a group that brings together corporate and governmental Swiss air quality managers.
Today’s filters function mainly with electrostatic separation, but this works only if the fireplace is correctly installed and functioning properly. Studies are showing that a large number of wood-burning systems of medium- and large-size are not correctly installed, and these will be targeted to reduce fine particles in the short term.
More problematic are smaller units, under 70 kW, whose emissions are currently measured visually in most cantons to ensure, for example, that only dry wood and not household waste is being burned. But this approach is inadequate with older fireplaces that are not up to current standards.
Meanwhile, the Energy Office provides tips for anyone using wood for fuel, including avoiding creating too much soot through:
- proper ventilation in the fireplace
- using only dry wood
- lighting the fire properly
- avoiding using too much wood.
Federal Energy Office brochure on using wood-burning fires correctly (Fr, PDF)
The WHO board call for reform points to "WHO's unique mandate as the directing and coordinating authority for work in international health"; here, part of a 2009 WHO report on the health problems linked to the high number of road accidents in Africa
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The World Health Organization, based in Geneva, late Friday 4 November, approved a number of resolutions to reform the health body at the most basic levels.
The crucial question of how to improve funding was set aside for two months until the next general meeting of the executive board. The WHO, in a statement issued Friday night, states that the board will then review “a proposed mechanism to increase predictability and flexibility of financing for the organization”.
Two key changes agreed to in the special board meeting on WHO reform that just drew to a close in Geneva will be to establish a contingency fund for emergency work and to clarify roles and responsibilities “between the three levels of the WHO – country offices, regional offices and headquarters – to create a tightly networked, leaner and streamlined organization”.
The WHO has repeatedly faced under-funding for a number of reasons including the high percentage, in its budget, of “voluntary donations” and in the past, criticism from the US government which withheld funding. That relationship has been on a better footing for several years, and in September 2011 the US and the WHO agreed to strengthen the relationship.
The board also agreed to set up a mechanism for independent evaluation and to:
- develop criteria for priority-setting of its work in global public health
- engage “an increasing number of public health actors, including foundations, civil society organizations, partnerships and the private sector. The Board felt strongly that in any opportunity for engagement, WHO’s independence and integrity must be protected from undue influence by those with vested interests.”
Decomposing sardines from Brittany were destroyed by Swiss customs
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss customs officials in Geneva stepped up their checks of food items entering the country in May, and say they have uncovered serious problems in the transport of a number of food items.
Between June and September they seized a large number of shipments of supposedly fresh foods that were not kept at correct temperatures during transport, they say.
The non-exhaustive list:
1. 531 kg of meat and fish in sauces, headed for a shop, were stored at +18 °C rather than +5 °C to -8 °C. The goods were destroyed.
Read more…
Wearing your heart on your sleeve to take on a new meaning
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A tiny new device could soon provide real-time heart monitoring that might help prevent some of the 70-100,000 deaths annually from sudden onset heart attacks. The new tool has yet to be tested in real-life conditions, but cardiologists are enthusiastic about its potential, says EPFL, which developed the medical tool. It is one of several “wireless body sensor networks” (WBSN) tools being developed at the polytechnic university in Lausanne, as part of the huge Guardian Angels project, selected as one of six finalist mega-research projects by the European Union (winner to be announced in 2012).
The project is also looking at similar monitoring systems for other health problems, such as the immediate impact of diet on obese patients.
The device consumes very little electricity and is made up of high-precision body sensors applied to the skin, a ZigBee radio module and a chip that’s optimized for analyzing and processing biological signals.It monitors the heart and detects anomalies, immediately alerting the patient’s cell phone in the case of a problem. Medical personnel are immediately alerted by e-mail and message.
“This system collects very reliable and precise data, it’s equipped with a very effective noise filtering system, and it has batteries that can last for 3-4 weeks at a time,” notes EPFL professor David Atienza, head of EPFL’s Embedded Systems Lab. “Above all it provides an automatic analysis and immediate transmission of data in compressed format to the doctor, preventing him or her from having to work through hours of recorded data.”
Underfunding is a growing concern, though, says WHO
TB patient in Ethiopia being carried by her sons (photo, WHO)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Sustained efforts by a number of large countries are responsible for much of the dramatic improvement in the global picture for tuberculosis, the World Health Organization said late Tuesday 11 October.
China has halved the prevalence of the disease and seen the number of people dying from TB fall by 80 percent in the past decade. Brazil, Kenya and Tanzania have pumped resources into fighting the disease with very good results.
Worldwide, says the UN health organization in its WHO 2011 global tuberculosis control report, published 11 October, that:
- the number of people who fell ill with TB dropped to 8.8 million in 2010, after peaking at 9 million in 2005
- TB deaths fell to 1.4 million in 2010, after reaching 1.8 million in 2003
- the TB death rate dropped 40 percent between 1990 and 2010, and all regions, except Africa, are on track to achieve a 50 percent decline in mortality by 2015
- in 2009, 87 percent of patients treated were cured, with 46 million people successfully treated and seven million lives saved since 1995. However, a third of estimated TB cases worldwide are not notified and therefore it is unknown whether they have been diagnosed and properly treated.
Funding gap hitting multidrug resistant cases
The WHO says in a statement that rapid progress is being made in detecting multidrug resistant (MDR) TB, thanks to new tests that are being widely adopted. But detection is outpacing treatment for the MDR cases:
New research shows mothers, not just baby bottles, transmit BPA, source of mammary gland changes
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Researchers at the EPFL have shown through experiments with mice that indirect exposure by pregnant women and nursing mothers to Bisphenol A, also known as BPA, most likely predisposes infants to breast cancer by modifying their mammary glands.
BPA is an organic compound present in some plastics and it is the subject of growing concern in the medical world, especially concerning young children. The focus until now has been primarily on the role of plastic baby bottles that emit “a significant quantity of the molecule” when heated, according to the EPFL.
BPA has been the subject of numerous scientific studies, with conflicting research results. The World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization in September 2011 published the results of their ad hoc review of the situation. The report described the widespread exposure to BPA:
“Bisphenol A (BPA) is an industrial chemical that is widely used in the production of polycarbonate (PC) plastics (used in food contact materials, such as baby bottles and food containers) and epoxy resins (used as protective linings for canned foods and beverages and as a coating on metal lids for glass jars and bottles). These uses result in consumer exposure to BPA via the diet.”
It concluded that for now it’s impossible to assess the impact of exposure, but noted that “BPA exposure during the perinatal period
has been reported to alter both prostate and mammary gland development in ways that may render these organs more susceptible to the development of neoplasia or preneoplastic conditions with subsequent exposures to strong tumour initiating or promoting regimens. In the absence of additional studies addressing identified deficiencies, there is currently insufficient evidence on which to judge the carcinogenic potential of BPA.”
The EPFL results would appear to challenge this conclusion.
The Lausanne-based polytechnic institute says that BPA is so pervasive that it is not possible to do a controlled study.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Money invested in mental health comes to a global average of only $3 per capita, according to the World Health Organization, and in some developing countries it is as low as $.25, with most funds spent on long-term hospitalization. Only two percent of all health resources are invested in mental health services and prevention is badly underfunded, the Geneva-based group says in its Mental Health Atlas 2011, published Friday 7 October.
The report “finds that the bulk of those resources are often spent on services that serve relatively few people”, with 70 percent of scarce funding going to mental institutions.
A key problem is that “in lower income countries, however, shortages of resources and skills often result in patients only being treated with medicines. The lack of psychosocial care reduces the effectiveness of the treatment.”
Half of the world’s population lives in areas where there is only one psychiatrist per 200,000 people.
MILAN, ITALY – Sunday 9 October was a car-free day in Milan, designed to get the pollution level, one of Europe’s highest, down to legally acceptable levels. Seventy firefighters and extra police officers ensured that from 08:00 to 18:00 virtually no cars were driven in the city. The city’s safety commissioner said they were also checking cars with stickers for the handicapped, which could be driven, to catch cheaters, according to Corriere della sera newspaper.
The fine is euros 155 for driving on a car-free Sunday.
The ban followed 10 days of restrictions on certain categories of vehicles that were labelled polluters. The system kicks in when the pollution level rises above 50 micrograms of particulates per m3 of air over 12 days
Source: WHO, September 2011
Detractors, including some environmental groups, say the day off does little to bring down levels. Corriere della sera cites one critic who notes that the level has dropped to within legal limits after only on six of the 15 car-free Sundays in recent years, and that the city should invest more in anti-pollution measures for its public transport system.
Milan’s citizens were encouraged to take advantage of free entry Sunday to the city’s swimming pools and discounted entries for several museums, using the additional buses and subway trains that were put on for the day.
The northern Italian city has one of the highest car ownership ratios in the world and ranks as one of Europe’s most polluted cities for both the extent to which pollution rises above the European Union PM10 (particulates) limit of 50 micrograms per m3, and the duration. An Ecopass system to reduce car traffic went into effect in 2008, at which point 98,000 cars reportedly entered the city every day. The number of cars affected by Sunday’s ban three years later was 120,000, according to city officials.
The most recent comparative figures, from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva in late September, show Milan, Torino and Naples sharing the top spot, with 2008 annual PM10 figures of 44 or 45 on average. The WHO published its new clean air guidelines and database covering more than 1,000 cities in 91 countries, noting:
“PM10 particles, which are particles of 10 micrometers or less, which can penetrate into the lungs and may enter the bloodstream, can cause heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and acute lower respiratory infections. The WHO air quality guidelines for PM10 is 20 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) as an annual average, but the data released today shows that average PM10 in some cities has reached up to 300 µg/m3.”
Bern, Geneva and Zurich showed annual averages of 21 to 24, while Rome was 35 and Paris 38, according to WHO figures.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Hug university hospitals in Geneva were handed a surprise strike Thursday 6 October by the workers who transport patients and material, and the union for which they work and hospital officials immediately met. The hospital says in a statement issued during the morning that its first preoccupation is the patients, and that they must not be taken hostage by the situation.
The workers’ demands prompted the hospital’s management to suggest three solutions:
- given that the hospital itself does not have responsibility for salaries, which are set by cantonal authorities, it recommends that as a temporary measure both types of transport workers be placed on the same salary scale
- that the hospital can recommend an increase in the number of staff, but for the 2012 budget
- that a reorganization of the service should be put under review.
Infectious diseases prevention projects honoured as international references
The Hug had earlier announced, Thursday evening, brighter news: its penitentiary hospital staff were awarded Wednesday, in Italy, the World Health Organization’s Health in Prisons Project prize. The award was given to the HUG jointly with the Champs-Dollon prison in Geneva, for two projects. Both are considered projects of reference in Switzerland and abroad, notes the HUG: one for measles prevention and the other a syringue-distribution project designed to reduce infectious diseases.
More apples, fewer sweet drinks if US children are to avoid obesity, study shows
VEVEY, SWITZERLAND – Children in the US are developing poor eating habits that are likely to lead to obesity at a younger age, as early as 12 months, a study by Nestlé shows. Some 10 percent of children between ages 2 and 5 are now categorized as obese and another 11 percent are overweight, but parents questioned for the survey mostly thought their children’s weight was about right.
The Nestlé Feeding Infants and Toddlers Study began in 2002 and was expanded to include infants in 2008. It has included more than 3,200 children, making äit the largest, most comprehensive study of the diets and eating habits of infants, toddlers and pre-schoolers in the United States,” the Swiss-based company says.
Specifically, the study shows that children are getting one-third of their calories from between-meal snacks. A simple improvement, says the company, would be for parents to consider the snacks as mini-meals and offer nutritious foods, such as simple fruits, vegetables, low-fat yogurts and whole-grain foods.
Almost half of toddlers and pre-schoolers consumed beverages that were sweetened, on any given day.
The findings of the study were presented at the annual meeting of The Obesity Society in Orlando, Florida in the US.
Details of the study up to 2008, presented in April, Gerber
