"We Did Not Attain Independence To Have A Country Of Ten Millionaires and Ten Million Beggars."
~J.M. Kariuki (RIP)
Friday 13 November 2009
GP's Told to Stop Prescribing Antibiotics for Coughs & Colds.
Family doctors are to be told to stop prescribing antibiotics for coughs and colds because overuse is contributing to the spread of hospital bugs and putting vital treatments under threat.
The European Centre of Disease prevention and Control is to write to all GPs warning them of the dangers of routinely handing out the drugs.
Experts at the influential centre, based in Stockholm which is focused on controlling infectious diseases in Europe, say the prescription of the pills, which are not necessary in most cases, is fuelling the rise in the number of infections that are resistant to antibiotics.
Related Articles
• Antibiotics given to Animals 'helping spread superbugs'
• Hospital antibiotics 'fuelling superbugs'
• Patients should not ask GPs for antibiotics for colds and flu
• No antibiotics for cough, colds and ear infections
• Using antibiotics for colds increases superbug resistance, says HPA
They have warned for the first time that modern medicine is reaching a point when it will no longer be able to function because antibiotics are powerless to fight life-threatening hospital infections.
It will mean that organ transplants, hip replacements and cancer treatment may have to be halted because antibiotics used to protect patients from hospital infections will no longer work.
GPs have claimed they often feel under pressure from patients who are angered if they are refused treatment for colds and sore throats even though antibiotics do not combat viruses.
The European experts admit that part of the problem is caused by pushy parents who demand medicine for their children.
Dominic Monnet, senior expert at the Scientific Advice unit at the ECDC in Stockholm, said: “If this wave of antibiotic resistance gets over us, we will not be able to do organ transplants, Hip replacements, Cancer Chemotherapy, Intensive care and Neonatal care for premature babies.
“It is the whole span of modern medicine as we know it, that we will not be able to do if we lose antibiotics.”
More antibiotics are prescribed in Britain than in nine other European countries including Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and it has one of the highest rates of resistance in Europe.
Last year 38 million prescriptions for antibiotics were written by GPs at a cost to the NHS of £175 million.
UK Government scientists agreed that there was 'a public health treat’ from infections that are resistant to multiple antibiotics and there was an urgent need to develop new treatments.
Dr Laurance Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “The BMA has been campaigning for years to discourage inappropriate use of antibiotics.
“This means two things - patients should not ask for them when they are not needed, and GPs should not give them.
“The idea that antibiotics cure coughs and colds and are all purpose things that are good for you has to be discarded.
“Some GPs are fearful of getting into an argument with their patients but they should not give antibiotics when they are not needed.”
Rates of certain bacterial infections, including MRSA, have been reduced with the use of specific antibiotics and improved hygiene. However, there is a growing threat from a new family of bacterial infection including Acinetobacter, which affects around 1,000 patients each year. It is normally harmless but can cause blood poisoning and life-threatening pneumonia in the vulnerable.
Dr Monnet said while there were 13 new antibiotics under development for the family of bacterial infections including MRSA, there were only six under development for the second family, known as Gram-negative and including Acinetobacter, and E-Coli.
A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said: “Antibiotics are a precious resource in fighting infections and one that we must do everything possible to preserve.
“New antibiotics need to be developed to ensure the range of treatment options for some infections does not run out.
“There remains a public health threat posed today by multi-resistant Gram-negative bacteria and therefore there is an urgent need for the pharmaceutical industry to work towards developing new treatment options to tackle infections caused by these bacteria, in the same way as they did for bacteria like MRSA.”
Sarah Earnshaw of the Health communications unit at the ECDC, based in Stockholm, said doctors were often pressured to prescribe antibiotics.
She said: “Patients are often demanding antibiotics especially parents demanding them for their children.
A survey in 2002 showed that 60 per cent of people did not know that antibiotics do not work against viruses such as flu.”
She said the ECDC would be writing to all GPs on November 18 warning them about overuse of the drugs and giving them materials to help them explain to demanding patients that antibiotics must be used sparingly.
Alan Johnson, the former Health Secretary launched a £270 million advertising campaign earlier this year telling patients that antibiotics will not help with a cough or cold.
In July, the National Insititute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued guidance to doctors telling them not to prescribe antibiotics to patients who are suffering from minor illnesses such as an ear infection, sore throat, tonsillitis, a cold, sinus infection, cough or bronchitis.
~By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor, and Kate Devlin - Published: 9:59PM GMT 08 Nov 2009
The European Centre of Disease prevention and Control is to write to all GPs warning them of the dangers of routinely handing out the drugs.
Experts at the influential centre, based in Stockholm which is focused on controlling infectious diseases in Europe, say the prescription of the pills, which are not necessary in most cases, is fuelling the rise in the number of infections that are resistant to antibiotics.
Related Articles
• Antibiotics given to Animals 'helping spread superbugs'
• Hospital antibiotics 'fuelling superbugs'
• Patients should not ask GPs for antibiotics for colds and flu
• No antibiotics for cough, colds and ear infections
• Using antibiotics for colds increases superbug resistance, says HPA
They have warned for the first time that modern medicine is reaching a point when it will no longer be able to function because antibiotics are powerless to fight life-threatening hospital infections.
It will mean that organ transplants, hip replacements and cancer treatment may have to be halted because antibiotics used to protect patients from hospital infections will no longer work.
GPs have claimed they often feel under pressure from patients who are angered if they are refused treatment for colds and sore throats even though antibiotics do not combat viruses.
The European experts admit that part of the problem is caused by pushy parents who demand medicine for their children.
Dominic Monnet, senior expert at the Scientific Advice unit at the ECDC in Stockholm, said: “If this wave of antibiotic resistance gets over us, we will not be able to do organ transplants, Hip replacements, Cancer Chemotherapy, Intensive care and Neonatal care for premature babies.
“It is the whole span of modern medicine as we know it, that we will not be able to do if we lose antibiotics.”
More antibiotics are prescribed in Britain than in nine other European countries including Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and it has one of the highest rates of resistance in Europe.
Last year 38 million prescriptions for antibiotics were written by GPs at a cost to the NHS of £175 million.
UK Government scientists agreed that there was 'a public health treat’ from infections that are resistant to multiple antibiotics and there was an urgent need to develop new treatments.
Dr Laurance Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said: “The BMA has been campaigning for years to discourage inappropriate use of antibiotics.
“This means two things - patients should not ask for them when they are not needed, and GPs should not give them.
“The idea that antibiotics cure coughs and colds and are all purpose things that are good for you has to be discarded.
“Some GPs are fearful of getting into an argument with their patients but they should not give antibiotics when they are not needed.”
Rates of certain bacterial infections, including MRSA, have been reduced with the use of specific antibiotics and improved hygiene. However, there is a growing threat from a new family of bacterial infection including Acinetobacter, which affects around 1,000 patients each year. It is normally harmless but can cause blood poisoning and life-threatening pneumonia in the vulnerable.
Dr Monnet said while there were 13 new antibiotics under development for the family of bacterial infections including MRSA, there were only six under development for the second family, known as Gram-negative and including Acinetobacter, and E-Coli.
A spokesman for the Health Protection Agency said: “Antibiotics are a precious resource in fighting infections and one that we must do everything possible to preserve.
“New antibiotics need to be developed to ensure the range of treatment options for some infections does not run out.
“There remains a public health threat posed today by multi-resistant Gram-negative bacteria and therefore there is an urgent need for the pharmaceutical industry to work towards developing new treatment options to tackle infections caused by these bacteria, in the same way as they did for bacteria like MRSA.”
Sarah Earnshaw of the Health communications unit at the ECDC, based in Stockholm, said doctors were often pressured to prescribe antibiotics.
She said: “Patients are often demanding antibiotics especially parents demanding them for their children.
A survey in 2002 showed that 60 per cent of people did not know that antibiotics do not work against viruses such as flu.”
She said the ECDC would be writing to all GPs on November 18 warning them about overuse of the drugs and giving them materials to help them explain to demanding patients that antibiotics must be used sparingly.
Alan Johnson, the former Health Secretary launched a £270 million advertising campaign earlier this year telling patients that antibiotics will not help with a cough or cold.
In July, the National Insititute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued guidance to doctors telling them not to prescribe antibiotics to patients who are suffering from minor illnesses such as an ear infection, sore throat, tonsillitis, a cold, sinus infection, cough or bronchitis.
~By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor, and Kate Devlin - Published: 9:59PM GMT 08 Nov 2009
Tuesday 10 November 2009
An Inconvenient Truth ~ John
This is an article...written by a Kenyan....whose insightful writings are always a pleasure and occasionally painful to receive...but to the point.
A genuine reality check...all so necessary...and sometimes....to coin a phrase...
'An Inconvenient Truth'. - John
Why the duka wallah is smarter than you
This from the Standard on 07 Sept 09 - By Ted Malanda
In the unlikely event that the British decided to rebuild the Kenya-Uganda railway, rest assured that the man-eaters of Tsavo, if they still exist, would not be carting away Indian coolies into the boondocks for snacks and dinner.
There would be no Indian coolies in the first place. Instead, the whole railway line would be bustling with youthful - and not so youthful - indigenous Kenyans under the Kazi kwa Vijana
initiative.
Yet just over 100 years ago, the locals wouldn’t be caught dead doing such ‘menial’ work, to the extent that the railway line’s entire labour force had to be shipped in from India .
But if it was massive muscle drain for India, then, rounding up the descendants of those coolies today and throwing them out Idi Amin style would result in brain drain so severe that the national economy would be clobbered to its knees.
How did they manage this transformation from sweaty labourers to captains of industry when locals are still doing what they were doing then hunting squirrels, pretending to raise maize on barren land and engaging in tribal warfare every five years?
Strength to strength, Equally, the Brits who were lording it over everyone have virtually scattered.
Grogan is gone; Egerton’s castle is in ruins while Lord Delamere now hawks mandazi and milk on the roadside in Naivasha.
But the Kenyan Indian just seems to grow from strength to strength.
I could hazard two reasons for this: One, the Indian doesn’t give a hoot about land. All he needs is a roof over his head and a place to sell his wares.
Wazungu, on the other hand, will lease thousands of hectares of desert land and then pretend to make money out of it from tourists.
How the hell do you do that when crooks are turning all the trees upstream into charcoal?
Africans, on the other hand, will steal and kill each other for land. But after that, they do absolutely nothing with it apart from walking around admiring farm boundaries and selecting burial spots.
The second reason is that the average Indian is more tenacious than a donkey.
Note: A millionaire duka wallah will own the same pair of shoes for years unlike a local man who changes wives with his first bank loan.
It’s not easy minting money from a duka, either, as the many locals who sink their retirement benefits into roadside shops can testify.
But I admire Indians most for their marriage customs. They are just brilliant, these Indian men.
How did they connive to have women pay them dowry and still manage to sit on them?
Aging mothers, In fact, as soon as they have eaten the dowry that the bride brought, they install her in the family home so that she can take care of their aging mothers as well.
Would you believe it! And to seal the deal, they cover those women from head to toe making it
virtually impossible for wife snatchers to salivate. Have you ever seen an Indian woman’s underwear?
Now contrast that with African women who seem hell bent on baring it all to the nearest passer by.
My ancestors thought they were smart yet all they cared about were useless gizzard rights.
Why couldn’t they think up a scam like this? Here we pay dowry through the nose yet if one’s mother visits for two weeks, the wife issues an ultimatum: "Either that old hag goes or I’m out."
Life is, indeed, a circus!
~Ted Malanda
A genuine reality check...all so necessary...and sometimes....to coin a phrase...
'An Inconvenient Truth'. - John
Why the duka wallah is smarter than you
This from the Standard on 07 Sept 09 - By Ted Malanda
In the unlikely event that the British decided to rebuild the Kenya-Uganda railway, rest assured that the man-eaters of Tsavo, if they still exist, would not be carting away Indian coolies into the boondocks for snacks and dinner.
There would be no Indian coolies in the first place. Instead, the whole railway line would be bustling with youthful - and not so youthful - indigenous Kenyans under the Kazi kwa Vijana
initiative.
Yet just over 100 years ago, the locals wouldn’t be caught dead doing such ‘menial’ work, to the extent that the railway line’s entire labour force had to be shipped in from India .
But if it was massive muscle drain for India, then, rounding up the descendants of those coolies today and throwing them out Idi Amin style would result in brain drain so severe that the national economy would be clobbered to its knees.
How did they manage this transformation from sweaty labourers to captains of industry when locals are still doing what they were doing then hunting squirrels, pretending to raise maize on barren land and engaging in tribal warfare every five years?
Strength to strength, Equally, the Brits who were lording it over everyone have virtually scattered.
Grogan is gone; Egerton’s castle is in ruins while Lord Delamere now hawks mandazi and milk on the roadside in Naivasha.
But the Kenyan Indian just seems to grow from strength to strength.
I could hazard two reasons for this: One, the Indian doesn’t give a hoot about land. All he needs is a roof over his head and a place to sell his wares.
Wazungu, on the other hand, will lease thousands of hectares of desert land and then pretend to make money out of it from tourists.
How the hell do you do that when crooks are turning all the trees upstream into charcoal?
Africans, on the other hand, will steal and kill each other for land. But after that, they do absolutely nothing with it apart from walking around admiring farm boundaries and selecting burial spots.
The second reason is that the average Indian is more tenacious than a donkey.
Note: A millionaire duka wallah will own the same pair of shoes for years unlike a local man who changes wives with his first bank loan.
It’s not easy minting money from a duka, either, as the many locals who sink their retirement benefits into roadside shops can testify.
But I admire Indians most for their marriage customs. They are just brilliant, these Indian men.
How did they connive to have women pay them dowry and still manage to sit on them?
Aging mothers, In fact, as soon as they have eaten the dowry that the bride brought, they install her in the family home so that she can take care of their aging mothers as well.
Would you believe it! And to seal the deal, they cover those women from head to toe making it
virtually impossible for wife snatchers to salivate. Have you ever seen an Indian woman’s underwear?
Now contrast that with African women who seem hell bent on baring it all to the nearest passer by.
My ancestors thought they were smart yet all they cared about were useless gizzard rights.
Why couldn’t they think up a scam like this? Here we pay dowry through the nose yet if one’s mother visits for two weeks, the wife issues an ultimatum: "Either that old hag goes or I’m out."
Life is, indeed, a circus!
~Ted Malanda
Tuesday 3 November 2009
You Will Profit
"You will profit by the failure, and will avoid it another time.
Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.”
~ Charles Dickens
Every failure teaches a man something, if he will learn.”
~ Charles Dickens
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