While, Baroness Mary Warnock, a medical ethics expert has been advocating euthanasia for people suffering from dementia for several years now, Alzheimer’s charities term her remarks as ‘insensitive and ignorant’.  

Talking to BBC, Lady Warnock said that more research is required to establish whether people with Alzheimer’s and dementia are mentally competent to decide whether they preferred to die, than be a burden on their families and the National Health Service.

A new rapid test for the human papillomavirus (HPV), for use in regions with scarce resources has been reported to be 90 % accurate as compared to current methods in use.

HPV is the primary cause of cervical cancer and the new vaccine has been developed by Qiagen NV in partnership with PATH, with funding from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
 

A patient, suffering from Aids, was refused treatment by Mumbai’s prestigious JJ Hospital because he was not Maharashtrian. The patient, a native of Bihar, approached the JJ Hospital in Mumbai for “second line of ante-retroviral (ARV) drugs”.

A Bihar hospital had told him that the “first line of ARV drugs” was not working for him so he needs “second line of ARV drugs”. He bought the drugs worth Rs6,000 from open market as the treatment is not available in any Bihar government hospital. Soon he ran out of money for treatment. Bihar Network of People with HIV+ (BNP+) advised him to approach JJ Hospital in Mumbai for free treatment. JJ Hospital refused him treatment saying that the medicines were available “only to Maharashtrians”.

Beijing - China's top leaders have urged officials across the country to respond to the growing scandal over tainted milk after one government department said it had received more than 100,000 complaints about dairy products, state media said on Sunday.

The government has ordered a complete overhaul of the dairy industry after tainted milk powder killed at least four infants and sickened some 6,200 others.

Vice Premier Li Keqiang on Saturday visited a hospital treating babies stricken by melamine-laced milk powder in the northern province of Hebei, where many of the cases of melamine-related illness were recorded.

Manila - The World Health Organization (WHO) expressed satisfaction on Sunday with the response of the Chinese government in containing the spread of the tainted infant milk that has already killed at least four babies in China.

Shigeru Omi, outgoing regional director of the WHO Western Pacific Office which covers Asia and the Pacific, said that the WHO and the Chinese government are working closely to address the problem.

According to the latest information from the WHO, some 6,244 children in China have suffered health problems after being fed with infant milk contaminated with melamine

Melamine is used as a binding agent and coating for particle, fibre and laminated boards in furniture. It is also used to make fertilizer.

Geneva, Sept 21 : In its latest Annual Malaria Report, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said that the disease killed nearly one million people worldwide in 
2006.

According to the report, most of the dead were children below five, and African countries were mostly affected. A total of 109 countries were prone to malaria in 2008, with 45 being in Africa, the Washington Times quoted the WHO report as saying.