Category Health & Science

Healing touch for Congo’s women

0 Comments read Gender, Health & Science
Lyn Lusi, who passed away in 2012, was the co-founder and program director of HEAL Africa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, working to transform individuals and communities impacted by the atrocities and gender violence of war. Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 27.01.2010 (Women’s Feature Service): Kamina Feza is one of the many women brutally raped and abandoned with serious injuries each day in the conflict ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where gender-based violence is systematically being used as a weapon of war by the military and militia.

Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day, noted United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, during her recent visit to Goma, a provincial capital in eastern DRC, where Lyn Lusi, a social activist, along with her husband, a Congolese orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Jo Lusi, have established HEAL Africa, a health service to treat and care for these women.

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Polio Fact Sheet

0 Comments read Disability, Health & Science, Poliomyelitis

The World Health Organisation recommended immunization schedule calls for four doses of Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) to be given at birth and at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of age in polio-endemic countries like India. There should be an interval of at least four weeks between doses.

Routine immunization provides a basic level of immunity against polio. High routine immunization coverage also reduces the amount of circulating wild poliovirus, thus facilitating eradication.

As part of the supplementary immunization, two doses of OPV are administered to all children aged less than five years in the entire country on a national immunisation day. The two rounds are approximately a month apart. All children are immunized regardless of their prior immunization status.

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‘India can offer cost-effective clinical trials to Australia’

0 Comments read Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Melbourne, 29.10.2008 (IANS): Australia will need to look beyond the United States and Europe to translate its expertise in basic research into inventing drugs and a cost-effective India can help fill the gap especially in the current economic scenario, says the CEO of an Indian biotech firm.

“Australia has phenomenal strength in basic research in early drug discovery and identifying disease targets. My perception is to somehow translate this early drug discovery into identifying drug candidates for pre-clinical trials and clinical trials, wherein lies India’s strength,” Rashmi H. Barbhaiya, founder and CEO of Bangalore-based Advinus Therapeutics Pvt Ltd, told IANS.

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