Custom Writing

23.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

Custom writing is always annoyed by students. It is understandable indeed for them, in fact, to submit high quality custom essay is not easy task for everyone, not mention you have to finish the customer essay in a short time to gain the higher score as much as possible in your record. Hard to get it is. While you must recognize that the custom essays you have to complete is not just one, but endless of them. You are tried of them again and again, even you are so serious to write them at the beginning, you will find after several essays, what you need is just to sleep and relax yourself. Of course, the qualities of your custom essays are unsatisfactory. What else you can do for your high degree and good results at last?

 

You can try the custom writing services online to help you indeed. You will notice that there are many kinds of customer essay writing services provided to students specially in market. While how to choose them is the key question. First of all, the high qualities guarantee is most important, which means your custom essays are original, creative and high level. Second, the nice services are also important, you can communicate with your professional writer soon to make any amenders during the task, further more, the cheaper prices. In fact, the professional customessayorder.com will be qualified to meet all your satisfaction. You can have a try.

 

Triage Study Challenges Notions Of Emergency Medical Response To Disaster — Overtriage Alone May Not Be Culprit

22.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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In the face of terrorism and catastrophic natural disasters, modern regional trauma systems that improve survival for critically injured patients are far more vital than ever.

Yet a lot of fundamental assumptions underlying these systems — such as the notion that it’s imperative to send the sickest patients towards the hospital very first — have rarely been subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny. Now, for the 1st time, researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have created a computer simulation model of trauma system response to mass casualty incidents involving dozens or hundreds of injured victims. The study shows that the best response depends much more on the capability of regional hospitals to treat critically injured victims than on the ability to accurately identify those victims within the field.

“There’s been the notion gleaned from prior studies that ‘overtriage’ — letting some men and women into emergency care who might not actually need it — usually ends up costing lives, with deaths rising as overtriage rates boost. But our new model demonstrates that overtriage alone is unlikely to be the culprit,” says lead researcher Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, assistant professor of public well being and medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and assistant attending physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Instead, levels of overtriage can be beneficial, harmless or detrimental, depending on complex factors included within the researchers’ model, he says. Those factors include the capacity of medical facilities to deal together with the wounded and also the time it takes to process and care for patients.

“No triage system is 100-percent accurate, so the key issue to define from an outcomes perspective is, ‘How good is good-enough?’” Dr. Hupert says. “Our study suggests that pre-disaster planning can start to address this question systematically, using modeling that takes into account local resources and response times, as well as specific types of mass casualty events.”

The study is published in a special October supplement on mass casualty incidents with the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Well being Preparedness, which focuses on the Virginia Tech shooting.

In accordance with Dr. Hupert, experts inside the field of traumatology and disaster preparedness have tended to rely on historical or anecdotal evidence to describe the downside of overtriage. “A number of studies released more than the past decade have bolstered the notion that overtriage stretches limited medical resources during mass casualty events and ends up costing lives,” Dr. Hupert says. “This was thought to happen in a linear fashion: Much more overtriage, more unnecessary deaths.”

Overtriage can be valuable, nonetheless, because it helps ensure that critically injured individuals who do require speedy, lifesaving care aren’t missed. In fact, guidelines from the American College of Surgeons support a limited amount of overtriage in emergency care.

To determine how significantly overtriage matters to patient outcomes, Dr. Hupert, along with engineers Eric Hollingsworth and Dr. Wei Xiong, Instructor within the Department of Public Wellness, created a discrete event simulation model representing the size and type of mass casualty event, the accuracy of field triage, and also the treatment capability of the regional hospital trauma system. The model included a number of key variables that had never been brought together in one unified framework.

“We included the ability of responders to triage patients, either inside the field or at the site of care; the capacity of local centers to care for incoming wounded and then recycle resources to care for new patients; the time required to process and treat patients; and also the window of time in which it was assumed critically injured patients might die,” Hollingsworth explains.

The team found that, contrary to prior reports, the relationship between overtriage and vital patient mortality is not linear, and is highly dependent on whether there is really a surplus or shortage of trauma bays in regional emergency departments.

“In some cases — for example, when the risk of death over the short term is high but you have a really large capacity to care for the injured — we can now show how overtriage may actually be a good thing, because you get a lot more people into emergency care than you would otherwise,” Dr. Hupert says. “On the other hand, if you have a much more limited capacity, overtriage can be significantly less valuable, and perhaps harmful.”

The model also addresses another relative unknown in mass casualty response: the impact of large numbers of “walk-in” patients on outcomes of those most critically injured. As with overtriage, the model suggests that the “walking wounded” can have a variable impact on the relationship between resources and mortality. By giving planners the ability to quantify these effects, nonetheless, the model advances the present state of disaster response logistics.

The bottom line, according to the researchers, is that the “best” triage strategy during a mass casualty event is probably one that takes into account a variety of local and regional factors, which means that use of the model ought to spur regional collaboration and data sharing. “We hope that this type of modeling study will be utilized to help disaster response teams plan effective strategies to deal with mass casualty events occurring in their own specific regions,” Dr. Hupert says. “We can never predict when or where disaster will strike, but with models like these we can hope to be much more prepared.”

Now that they have a better understanding with the relationship between triage and outcomes, the researchers are continuing to build the model. “In our existing work, we’re incorporating details such as the spectrum of likely injuries from a particular event, the diagnostic tests needed to sort out critical from noncritical patients, and transportation times from the site of injury to the care center,” Dr. Xiong says.

“This work and other projects that Dr. Hupert and his team are conducting clearly demonstrate the value of combining methods from public wellness and operations investigation. Insights are supplied that can directly lead to ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of our health-care system,” says Dr. Alvin Mushlin, professor and chairman of the Department of Public Wellness and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Public Well being Physician-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
This work was funded by a contract with the U.S. Department of Wellness and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, located in New York City, is one of the leading academic medical centers in the globe, comprising the teaching hospital NewYork-Presbyterian and its academic partner, Weill Cornell Medical College. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell offers state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine, and is committed to excellence in patient care, study, education and community service. NewYork-Presbyterian, which is ranked sixth on the U.S.News & World Report’s list of top hospitals, also comprises NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. For far more information, visit http://www.nyp.org.

Emergency Response Aided By New Computer Architecture

19.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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Princeton researchers have invented a computer architecture that enables the secure transmission of crucial rescue information to 1st responders during events such as natural disasters, fires or terrorist attacks.

Electrical engineering professor Ruby Lee said the new architecture allows for what she describes as “transient trust” — the ability to transmit sensitive data to parties on an as-needed basis so that it cannot be intercepted by others and so that access stops as soon as the recipient no longer has a legitimate need for it.

A paper describing the new architecture by Lee and her graduate student Jeffrey Dwoskin was presented Wed., Oct. 31, at the ACM Computer and Communications Security conference in Alexandria, Va. [1].

Data provided on a transient-trust basis might include floor plans of a building, medical data about occupants, or satellite maps of a given area.

The paper describes SP (Secret Protection) computer architecture, which relies on two new elements that are embedded inside the hardware of an electronic device: a “device root key” and a “storage root hash.”

A trusted authority such as a municipal Fire Department would initialize a device — for example, a PDA used by a firefighter — with these features so that during an emergency a firefighter could be given access to relevant floor plans, security codes or other essential information. Once the emergency was over, the access to this sensitive details would finish.

This new analysis emerged from the Princeton Architecture Lab for Multimedia and Security (PALMS) led by Lee, the Forrest G. Hamrick Professor of Engineering. The lab’s major focus is “clean-slate” computer architecture design. As chief computer architect at Hewlett-Packard, Lee was a key figure in a revolution in computer architecture that swept by way of the industry within the 1980s. Given that coming to Princeton, Lee has been operating to revolutionize computer architecture again.

“Computers were not originally designed with security as a goal,” said Lee. “I’m attempting to rethink the design of computers so they can be trustworthy although at the same time retain all their original design goals, such as high performance, low cost and energy efficiency.”

Lee aims to build fundamental security features directly into the hardware of a device, whether it is a personal computer, cell phone or PDA. Her researchers are operating to build “trust anchors” into computer hardware to which different software can be tethered, to present important security coverage.

Lee stated that numerous researchers do not think it really is possible to build security features into computer hardware without having slowing the computer down or causing it to consume lots of power. Nonetheless, study done by her lab demonstrates that this is not the case.

“Our analysis shows that these hardware ‘roots of trust’ are actually quite deployable on consumer devices like desktop computers or PDAs, and also in sensor networks and larger servers,” said Lee. The work is part with the SecureCore multi-university investigation project, funded by the NSF Cybertrust program and DARPA, which aims to integrate essential security into the hardware, software and networking in the core of commodity computing and communications devices.

In addition to trust anchors for software, Lee is also researching hardware “safety nets” to defend against software vulnerabilities that remote attackers exploit to gain entry into a computer. The ultimate goal is to inoculate individual computers and electronic devices such as cell phones against threats like viruses, worms and bots to ensure that they cannot infect, or be utilized to attack, other machines.

Lee’s students study all aspects of building more secure microprocessors and hardware. In June, in the IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic, Lee and Yedidya Hilewitz, a graduate student at Princeton, published a paper which proposes a revolutionary design of a fundamental functional unit of microprocessors that greatly expands a computer’s ability to perform “advanced bit manipulation operations,” which are extremely useful for fast cryptography and cryptanalysis, as well as for many other applications [2].

Lee is also studying computer architecture that prevents leakage of information through covert channels and side channels. At the International Symposium on Computer Architecture in June, Zhenghong Wang, one of Lee’s graduate students, presented a paper describing a hardware approach to preventing so-called “software side-channel attacks” during which attackers exploit the cache memories that are shared between computer programs to leak secret cryptographic keys [3].

In September, at the Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems conference, Lee’s researchers, Reouven Elbaz and David Champagne, presented a hardware memory integrity solution to rebuff memory replay attacks, where attackers try to trick a computer into accepting material as still legitimate even though it has already been officially deleted. [4].

Lee was a member of the Committee on Improving Cybersecurity Analysis inside the United States, a group charged by the National Investigation Council with outlining a strategy for cybersecurity investigation within the 21st century. The committee lately issued a report, Toward a Safer and A lot more Secure Cyberspace, published by the National Academy of Sciences. Section 4.1 with the report, (click here to view) describes the earlier user-centric version of the Secret Protection architecture [5] — rather than the authority-centric version described above for emergency response scenarios. Each had been developed by Lee’s lab at Princeton.

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Lee’s research has been funded by DARPA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, Intel and other companies.

Paper citations:

[1] Jeffrey Dwoskin and Ruby Lee, “Hardware-rooted Trust for Secure Key Management and Transient Trust,” to appearing in the ACM Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’07), Oct 29-Nov two, 2007.

[2] Yedidya Hilewitz and Ruby B. Lee, “Performing Advanced Bit Manipulations Efficiently in General-Purpose Processors”, IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic (ARITH-18), June, 2007.

[3]Zhenghong Wang and Ruby B. Lee, “New Cache Designs for Thwarting Software Cache-based Side Channel Attacks”, International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA’07), June 2007.

[4] Reouven Elbaz, David Champagne, Ruby B. Lee, Lionel Torres, Gilles Sassatelli and Pierre Guillemin, “TEC-Tree: A Low Expense, Parallelizable Tree for Efficient Defense against Memory Replay Attacks”, Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2007), September 2007.

[5] Ruby B. Lee, Peter C. S. Kwan, John Patrick McGregor, Jeffrey Dwoskin, and Zhenghong Wang, “Architecture for Protecting Critical Secrets in Microprocessors,” Proceedings with the 32nd International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2005), pp. 2-13, June 2005.

Source: Teresa Riordan
Princeton University, Engineering School

WFP Aims To Raise $103M For Program In Malawi To Help People Affected By HIV/AIDS, Natural Disasters, Officials Say

17.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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The Globe Food Programme more than the next three years hopes to raise $103 million for a relief program in Malawi aimed at people affected by HIV/AIDS and natural disasters, WFP officials stated on Monday, Reuters Africa reports. In accordance with Mathews Nyirenda, WFP details officer, WFP earlier this month approved the relief program, which is scheduled to run from January 2008 to December 2010. “With this approval, WFP can now begin raising $103 million to source about 215,000 metric tons of maize to feed an estimated 1.two million men and women for three years,” Nyirenda stated (Reuters Africa, 10/30).

WFP last month also announced that it will almost double food handouts to people living with HIV/AIDS in Malawi after receiving maize donations from the government. Before the donation, WFP was offering monthly food assistance to more than 110,000 individuals living with HIV/AIDS and about 1,500 malnourished women and children inside the country. The agency in a statement stated that together with the donation, it is going to be able to offer food for up to 203,000 Malawians in November and December.

Malawi has had two consecutive good harvests, producing three.four million tons of maize last year — 1.three million tons much more than it required. The rising production has prompted the government to donate 10,425 tons of maize to WFP for Malawi and another 10,000 tons to Lesotho and Swaziland. The government also plans to sell about 400,000 tons of excess maize to Zimbabwe, which is experiencing an inflation rate of 7,600%, high unemployment and chronic food shortages (Kaiser Day-to-day HIV/AIDS Report, 9/18).

“This program will help significantly in reducing the hunger of vulnerable groups and, just as importantly, strengthen the communities’ ability to cope with all the added stresses associated with natural disasters and HIV/AIDS,” Dom Scalpelli, WFP country director in Malawi, said. According to Reuters Africa, the effort to raise funds faces a funding shortfall of $18 million from January 2008 to June 2008 (Reuters Africa, 10/30).

Reprinted with type permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Everyday Well being Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Day-to-day Wellness Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a totally free service of the Henry J. Kaiser Household Foundation? 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

Relief Fund Established For Hospice Patients And Families Affected By Southern California Fires

14.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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The California Hospice Foundation, a 501(c)(three) charitable foundation, established the California Hospice Families Relief Fund to ease the extra financial burden of the Southern California fires on men and women who are receiving hospice services in fire-affected areas. Among the thousands of men and women displaced by the fires had been hundreds of men and women facing a terminal illness, along with their family caregivers.

According to Laura Miller, past chair of the California Hospice Foundation and president and CEO of the Elizabeth Hospice, which serves some with the hardest hit areas in North San Diego County, “These families are within the midst of 1 with the most emotionally difficult periods possible – the impending loss of a mother, father, spouse or other family members member. Within the aftermath with the fire, they are urgently trying to restore a sense of normalcy, for their loved one’s comfort. They had been already facing special expenses but now face new financial pressure.”

Tax deductible donations made out to California Hospice Families Relief Fund may be sent in care of the California Hospice Foundation, 3841 North Freeway Boulevard, Suite 225, Sacramento, CA 95834, where a restricted fund has been established for this purpose. The California Hospice Foundation will cover all administrative costs to ensure that 100 percent of donated funds will be utilized for the direct benefit of hospice patients and their families. Those that wish to help may also contribute directly to a hospice of their choice in areas affected by the wildfires.

Families of hospice patients who wish to apply for funds may download an application from the California Hospice Foundation website.

As the fires grew nearer, caregiver families packed up essential short-term supplies such as medicines and portable oxygen, and relocated to relatives’ or friends’ homes, healthcare institutions or an evacuation center. To provide as significantly comfort as possible in the finish of life, most hope to return quickly to homes that were spared. In several cases, these homes will have to be professionally cleaned to remove smoke residue that is particularly challenging for these frail patients.

Other families incurred unexpected expenses associated with medical transportation service for their loved 1. Although skilled nursing facilities and hospitals have access to state and federal funds to evacuate patients, families may have had to hire medical transportation to relocate someone receiving hospice care.

Under the auspices of the California Hospice Foundation, a three-person committee comprised of hospice leaders from outside with the affected fire areas will review applications for legitimacy, and determine the appropriate level of financial relief.

The California Hospice Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation dedicated to improving access to quality hospice and palliative care services by means of education and public awareness. Hospice is a form of wellness care provided to individuals who are confronting a serious illness when cure is no longer a reasonable goal. It includes all with the services needed to manage someone’s symptoms and complications. By delivering pain and symptom management, and emotional and spiritual support for the whole loved ones, hospice helps folks to be comfortable and retain their dignity in the finish of life.

http://www.hospicefoundation.info/

Joint Emergency Assistance For 103 Abducted Kids In Abeche

12.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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Recent events in Abeche, eastern Chad, leading to the arrest of some members of an NGO called ‘Children Rescue/Arche de Zoe,’ have kept staff and partners with the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF busy given that 25 October as they do their utmost to respond towards the urgent needs with the 103 abducted children presently being looked right afterwith the children such as the immediate provision of adequate shelter and other items. Considering the young age of most of the children and their needs, the three agencies and their partners – including volunteers of the Chadian Red Cross – committed themselves to help the Chadian authorities by providing food, mattresses, blankets, soap, clothes, toys, hygiene articles and medicines amongst other supplies.

With the best interests of the children as their main focus, the three agencies started to gather info on the identity, age and places of origin of the children. They interviewed the children individually and listened to their stories carefully to gain preliminary information on their loved ones backgrounds. This initial data will help trace the children’s parents or relatives in order to reunify every single child with his/her family members and allow them to continue living a normal childhood.

Among the children you can find 21 girls and 82 boys. The youngest is about 1 year old as well as the oldest about ten. So far, the interviews carried out with the children – some of whom could not present any details due to their young age – led towards thesaid they had been living with their loved ones, consisting of at least one adult they considered to be their close relative. Interviews with the remaining 12 children are ongoing to gather more details to trace their relatives.

The humanitarian agencies are closely monitoring the well being and well being with the children, which for the time being is considered satisfactory. Since their arrival, a few children have been treated for minor injuries.

The joint ICRC, UNHCR, UNICEF team, their partners as well as the local administrative Chadian authorities, are combining all their efforts to establish a clear picture of the experiences the children had to endure, find out who they are and where they come from in order to find the suitable solution for every child. The assistance supplied to the local authorities is in accordance together with the agencies’ code of conduct which requires impartiality and non-discrimination.

Collecting information to begin tracing the children’s families is really a painstaking undertaking and particularly challenging considering the number of children, their young age along with the prevailing situation inside the region. The aim is to collect as significantly info as possible as quickly as possible, although in the same time stabilising the psychological and emotional state with the children.

The preliminary info collected so far from the children, who are hosted under the responsibility with the Chadian authorities, needs to be 1st verified within the villages. The details has been shared together with the Government. More than the coming weeks, ICRC, UNHCR and UNICEF using the support of their partners, will continue their efforts to find a quick and proper solution for every 1 of the 103 children to allow them to go back home, join their families and live a child’s live.

About UNICEF

UNICEF is on the ground in more than 150 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood by means of adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for creating countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, as well as the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of people, businesses, foundations and governments.

http://www.unicef.og

Reports Of Serious Mental Illnesses Increase Amongst Gulf Coast Residents Two Years Following Hurricane Katrina, Survey Finds

09.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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Fourteen percent of Gulf Coast residents reported serious mental illnesses two years following Hurricane Katrina, compared with 10.9% six months right after the 2005 storm hit the area, according to a Harvard University survey, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. Ronald Kessler, a wellness care policy professor at Harvard, on Wednesday presented the study at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Disaster Recovery Subcommittee hearing. For the survey, researchers conducted follow-up interviews with 800 of the 1,000 area residents who were very first interviewed six months following Katrina.

According to Kessler, the percentage of residents reporting suicidal tendencies increased from 2.8% six months soon after the hurricane to 6.4% as residents’ initial optimism for a quick recovery faded. The percentage of serious mental illnesses in the New Orleans area increased slightly from 16.5% six months soon after the hurricane to 16.9%, Kessler said. Even so, Kessler could not offer an explanation for why the rates did not significantly enhance in an area where people were most affected by the hurricane, the Times-Picayune reports.

Anthony Speier, director of disaster mental health operations in the Louisiana Office of Mental Well being, said Kessler’s report required further analysis, but he speculated that people with mental well being problems who were displaced by Katrina would be far more likely to experience difficulty returning to the area because they generally have fewer resources and coping skills to deal with recovery efforts.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who led the subcommittee hearing, stated the mental well being crisis within the Gulf Coast area has grow to be “one of the most crucial issues facing the recovery.” She noted that you’ll find 22 practicing psychiatrists in New Orleans, compared with 196 before Katrina. A survey of 1,638 children in grades 4 through 12 found that 54% reported serious mental well being issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, Landrieu said. In addition, waiting times for mental well being care also have elevated from days to months, according to Landrieu (Alpert, New Orleans Times-Picayune, 11/1).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You are able to view the whole Kaiser Every day Wellness Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for e-mail delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Every day Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a cost-free service with the Henry J. Kaiser Family members Foundation? 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family members Foundation. All rights reserved.

Mexican Foreign Secretariat Opens Bank Accounts In USA To Help Victims In Tabasco

07.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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The Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexican State Department, Mexican Foreign Office) says it has received numerous offers of help for the victims with the current floods in Tabasco from Mexicans and Americans living inside the USA. In order to facilitate the smooth transaction of funds for the flood victims, the government department has opened two bank accounts inside the USA. They are?

Bank: Wells Fargo Bank NA
Account Name: “Ayuda Tabasco”
Account Number: 599253401
For Transfers: 121000248
Electronic Code: 111900659

Bank: BBV Bancomer USA
Account Name: “Ayuda Tabasco 2007″
Account Number: 2280300127 (For donations done in California)
ABA: 1-2222-05-06 (For donations done outside California)

Mexican authorities say there will soon be another account opened for donations carried out in other countries (outside the USA).

Mexican authorities say that offers of help that are coming in from various countries around the globe will likely be evaluated carefully to ensure that they may be put towards the best use swiftly. Relaciones Exteriores announced that “Our representations abroad are informing Mexican citizens of a telephone number for those wishing to find out about friends and loved ones in Tabasco – the number is (+52 998) 358 0412721. The numbers 52 are for Mexico when you dial from outside Mexico, although 998 are for the state of Tabasco.

All Mexican Embassies/Consulates around the globe have been told to keep Mexican communities informed and to offer help and support for those wanting to find out about friends and loved ones.

“The Mexican government, thanks all people who have expressed their support and solidarity,” said the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores.

Worst Floods in Mexican History

Hundreds of thousands of folks are fleeing the devastating floods within the State of Tabasco where various rivers have burst their banks soon after the heaviest rains ever seen in Mexico. Dams have broken along with the whole scene looks like a repetition of the disasters brought on by Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas.

As I was driving to work this morning in Cancun, Mexico, where I live, I heard someone on the radio saying that in a couple of days Tabasco received the equivalent of the amount of rain England gets in a whole year – and believe me, it rains a lot in England.

Villahermosa, Tabasco’s capital, is under between 6ft to 30ft of water. Local radio reports say men and women are still sitting on their rooftops, refusing to get down. A man on the radio this morning, who managed to get to safety, stated several people are staying on their roofs because they are afraid of what may be swimming within the water below. Tabasco is within the tropics, and tropical insects and reptiles abound. The flood waters are described as filthy and murky.

Authorities say approximately 300,000 folks are still waiting to be rescued – trapped in their homes. Neighboring states have also been affected. So far, there has only been 1 death as a result of these floods in Tabasco, but these numbers are expected to rise rapidly.

The country’s whole air force has been told by Felipe Calderon, President of Mexico, to get supplies in, and take men and women to safety.

Collection centers have opened all more than Mexico – where 1 can donate either money or goods. My wife and I went towards the supermarket this morning, 1 called Soriana, and saw a huge stand that had been set up by the Rotary Club of Cancun. People had been encouraged to add a couple of merchandise to their shopping trolley. We asked what was most urgently required, and were told diapers (for babies and adults), canned food, blankets, drinking water, powdered milk, clothes, sterilizing products, it really is a long list. I strongly urge all the Rotary Club centers around the world to focus your attention on helping the victims of Tabasco – your centers in Mexico are doing a marvelous job, your help would make a huge difference. www.rotary-cancun.org

If you wish to make a donation, below is a UNICEF link aimed at helping the children affected by these floods?

Tabasco Floods – Help The Child Victims

Written by – Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without having permission of Medical News Right now

Global Fund Should Focus On ‘Wider Factors’ Involved In Fighting Diseases, Editorial Says

04.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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The “only sound public wellness and human rights approach” for the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to take is to start addressing the “wider factors” involved in fighting the three diseases, a Lancet Infectious Diseases editorial says. As the Global Fund approaches its upcoming round seven meeting — scheduled for Nov. 11 through 13 — to examine funding proposals, there is an “opportunity to do much more,” according to the editorial. The Global Fund must “be bold enough to expand” its scope to include broader well being factors involved in tackling the three diseases, the editorial says.

The “current lack of support” for the Global Fund is “disappointing” and “dangerously short-sighted” because the organization has “established itself as the major player in the fight against” the three diseases, the editorial says. Nevertheless, it is “easy to be distracted by the Global Fund’s financial worries, and you can find other key factors at play that may limit its effectiveness,” in accordance with the Lancet. There has been “[c]onsiderable criticism” directed toward the Global Fund’s disease-specific approach, which many say “distorts comprehensive health planning” and “does not contribute to overall health system strengthening,” the editorial says. Nevertheless, the current funding round guidelines state that applicants can request funds for wellness infrastructure building if these projects are essential to reducing the impact and spread of HIV/AIDS, TB or malaria, the editorial says. It adds that this is a “welcome step” because it shows that the Global Fund is prepared to take more of a “whole-systems approach” to reducing the burden of infectious diseases in “resource-poor countries.”

“Expanding its remit to include a higher focus on the wider issues would be the right thing to do,” the editorial says, concluding, “It is time for the Global Fund to rise towards the challenge” (Lancet Infectious Diseases, November 2007).

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. It is possible to view the whole Kaiser Day-to-day Wellness Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Day-to-day Wellness Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a totally free service of the Henry J. Kaiser Household Foundation? 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Loved ones Foundation. All rights reserved.

Sister Red Cross Societies Help Each Other

02.02.12 / Brain Health / Author: / Comments: (0)

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The American Red Cross is reaching across the border to present $50,000 towards the Mexican Red Cross to assist their emergency response to flooding that has affected more than 800,000 people. Unusually heavy rains caused rivers to overflow their banks inside the southern Mexican state of Tabasco which was already waterlogged soon after Hurricanes Dean and Felix.

“Thousands of families are still cut off from assistance due to rising water and also the most urgent needs are offering men and women with shelter, food, drinking water and 1st aid,” says Guillermo Garcia, Regional Director of Latin America along with the Caribbean for the American Red Cross. “We will continue to monitor the situation with our colleagues at the Mexican Red Cross to see what further assistance is needed and how we can further support their emergency response.”

The Mexican Red Cross mobilized two,500 emergency relief workers, scuba rescue divers and volunteers. In addition, the Mexican Red Cross sent two helicopters from nearby states to help boost relief distributions to affected communities. The Mexican Red Cross plans to right away distribute emergency food parcels to 9,000 families and will assist affected communities with emergency food assistance and relief supplies inside the coming days.

The American Red Cross and the Mexican Red Cross often help each and every other in times of need. During the recent wildfires in California, the Mexican Red Cross sent ten volunteers to assist the American Red Cross in reaching out towards the Spanish speaking community. Following Hurricane Dean, the American Red Cross contributed financial assistance and sent a relief worker to Mexico to support emergency operations. Furthermore, this partnership worked successfully during the American Red Cross response to Hurricane Katrina and is an advantage with the American Red Cross being part of an international Movement that can call on the assistance of our sister Red Cross societies around the globe.

“This collaboration between the American Red Cross along with the Mexican Red Cross demonstrates there are no borders when offering humanitarian assistance,” said Isaac Oxenhaut, National Disaster Relief Coordinator of the Mexican Red Cross. “When Hurricane Dean affected us in August, the American Red Cross was there to support our relief efforts. When the request came to help the individuals of Southern California, the Mexican Red Cross was happy to answer the call.”

By working together, the Red Cross is helping to ensure that the most vulnerable receive the assistance they require in finding shelter, meals and a connection to other community services.

You can help those affected by countless crises around the world each year by making a financial gift towards the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance, and other support to help those in need. Please call 1-800-RED CROSS or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions towards the International Response Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org. The American Red Cross honors donor intent. If you wish to designate your donation to a specific disaster please do so in the time of your donation.

http://www.redcross.org