New Delhi, March 12 - Twenty-one states in the country have started School Health Programme to improve the health of children and prevent recurrence of diseases.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Panabaka Lakshmi informed Lok Sabha Wednesday that the common diseases that occur among schoolchildren are measles, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox, worm infestations and sepsis.

\'The steps taken by the government to prevent diseases among schoolchildren is to provide support for School Health Programmes in each and every district of the country based on the specific proposals prepared as part of the District Health Action Plans,\' she said.

Currently 21 states have initiated the programme and they have taken key steps, which will help improve the health of schoolchildren and prevent recurrence of such diseases, she added.

The states that have started the programme are Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Kerala, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Assam, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and Tripura.

Under the programme, children are taught about good nutrition practices and health education, regular health check-ups, provision for corrective action and provision of secondary and tertiary care help, if required.

Also, medicines for de-worming and vitamin A supplements are arranged.

New Delhi, March 12- The Delhi High Court Wednesday asked a social activist to withdraw his petition asking for exemption of customs duty on dialysis kits and spread awareness on kidney transplant through his NGO.

A division bench of Justices T.S. Thakur and Aruna Suresh said in its order: \'We are thinking that not only kidney diseases are taking more lives but also diseases like cancer and diabetes are killing more people. So spread the awareness through your NGO to raise the issue.\'

Last week activist Rahul Verma had filed a petition focussing on issues related to kidney transplants and asking for a directive from the court to the government to make suitable changes in the Organ Transplant Act.

\'We cannot ask government to review the law because it\'s a policy matter. Also, government too itself cannot review the law and it\'s the duty of the parliament to review the Organ Transplant Act,\' the bench ruled.

The petition stated the court should direct the central and state governments to treat renal failure as a public health priority and fund low-cost dialysis.

The petitioner also demanded the government initiate a programme for donation of organs on the lines of eye donation camps and review the 1994 Human Organ Transplantation Act.

The police had Jan 24 unearthed an illegal kidney transplant racket being operated from Haryana\'s Gurgaon town, on the outskirts of the national capital.

The people running the racket served clients from India and abroad after obtaining kidneys illegally, often under force, from poor people.

Heavier alcohol consumption increases the risk of ESCC. There are synergetic interactions among alcohol drinking and ALDH2, ADH1B, CYP2E1 genotypes. The risk of ESCC in moderate-to-heavy drinkers, ALDH2 (1/2) combined with the ADH1B (1/1) genotype; ALDH2 (1/2) combined with the CYP2E1 (c1/c1) genotype; leads to synergetic interactions, higher than drinkers with ALDH2 (1/1) + ADH1B (1/2 + 2/2); ALDH2 (1/1) + CYP2E1 (c1/c2 + c2/c2).

This study, performed by a team led by Dr. Yan-Mei Guo, is described in a research article published in the March 7, 2008 issue of the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

ESCC is the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. Epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that drinking alcoholic beverages is causally related to the development of ESCC. The genetic polymorphisms of Cytochromes P4502E1 (CYP2E1), aldehyde dehydrogenase-2 (ALDH2) and alcohol dehydrogenase-1B (ADH1B; previously called ADH2) affect the metabolism of alcohol. There were some other studies examining the roles of alcohol, CYP2E1, ALDH2 and ADH2 in ESCC. Their findings, however, were contradictory.

In the view of the authors, no clear explanation has, to date, existed to elucidate the susceptibility conferred by CYP2E1, ALDH2 and ADH1B genetic polymorphisms on ESCC. Neither have a definition and evaluation been found to explain the individual and combined roles of these genes and alcohol consumption.

The innovative aspect of this study was the way it looked at the interaction between the CYP2E1, ALDH2 genotype and heavy alcohol drinking, with case-control designs. Previous studies have not examined this issue in detail and to our knowledge this is the first study to show a significant interaction between the CYP2E1, ALDH2 genotype and alcohol drinking. We found there was synergetic interaction with polymorphisms of CYP2E1, ALDH2 genotype and heavy alcohol drinking. Individuals with combined ALDH2 (1/2) and CYP2E1 (c1/c1) genotype showed a dramatically increased risk of ESCC, which is higher than that due to the respective genotypes.

The susceptibility of alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenase genotypes on ESCC became evident in 2003 when it became widely accepted that alcoholic beverages are causally related to cancer of the esophagus. A review of case-control studies of the effects of ALDH2 and ADH2 genotypes shows consistently positive associations between inactive heterozygous ALDH2 and the risk for esophageal cancer in East Asian heavy drinkers. Only the ALDH2 genotype has been demonstrated to have a critical role in the development of ESCC.

Using an elegant study design, including 80 male patients with esophageal cancer and 480 controls (age and sex matched), the consumption of alcohol and the genetic polymorphism of enzymes involved in the metabolism of ethanol was examined. This research was performed by doctors from the Laboratory of Gansu College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Lanzhou, China and from the Laboratory of First hospital of Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China.

Bhubaneswar, March 13 - An incomplete foetus was surgically removed from the abdomen of a child who is less than three months old in Orrisa\'s Cuttack city, one of the doctors who conducted the surgery said Thursday.

The boy, Bibek Gouda, had a swelling on the left side of his abdomen since his birth Dec 23 last year.

A 10 member medical team including three surgeons led by the head of the department of Urology Datteswar Hota operated upon the boy Wednesday at the Sriram Chandra Bhanja - Medical college hospital for about four hours and removed the foetus.

\'It was a case of retroperitoneal teratoma which occurs in children and young adults,\' Hota told IANS.

The foetus weighed about 800 grams. \'It was an incomplete foetus with bones, limbs, fingers and hairs. However it was headless,\' he said. \'The child is stable and out of danger. We will release him from the hospital after a week,\' he added.

\'Bibek was born a normal child,\' said his father Khirod Gouda, who hails from the southern district of Kalahandi.

\'Although his behaviour was normal, he had a swelling on the left side of the abdomen. We took him to the local hospital where doctors suspected tumour in his kidney,\' he said.

\'They told us to consult doctors at SCB medical college hospital. We admitted him about 12 days ago.\'

New Delhi, Jan 2 - The new year began on a positive note for AIDS patients from poor families. The National AIDS Control Organization will now provide free second line treatment for the disease, urgently needed by those who have developed resistance to the first set of medicines.


Initially only patients in Mumbai and Chennai will have access to the free treatment. But the government is planning to reach out to more people by April 1 when it launches 10 more centres in the country.

Keeping with their promise of providing free of cost the extremely expensive second line treatment, which involves a combination of drugs, to an estimated 3,000 people, doctors in Mumbai and Chennai will first screen those who really fit the criteria.

\'We will first screen and test those who really need the second line treatment,\' said Damodar Bachani, joint director in-charge of anti-retroviral - therapy in NACO, which is the apex government body to monitor and curb HIV/AIDS in India.

\'The treatment is free for people below poverty line, but others can also buy from us,\' he told IANS.

The second line treatment will be provided at Mumbai\'s J.J. Hospital and Chennai\'s Tambaram ART centre.

According to estimates revised in 2007, India has an estimated 2.5 million people living with HIV. Over 100,000 people are taking the first line treatment from 137 centres in the country free of cost.

The second line treatment will cost NACO Rs.40-50,000 per year per patient.

Bachani said NACO is negotiating with drug manufacturers to lower the prices of ARV drugs. \'We are hopeful that our talks will make manufacturers bring down the cost,\' he said.

The Clinton Foundation helped NACO to procure the drugs. \'They will procure for us this year,\' Bachani said.

NACO has also received aid from the Global Fund, a Switzerland-headquartered international charity, to the tune of $336 million for a period of five years to fight HIV/AIDS.

Bachani said NACO has already identified the 10 centres in the country where free second line treatment will be extended and is planning to train doctors too. \'We are confident we will be able to extend the treatment in the rest of the country by April 1,\' he said.

Four doctors and two microbiologists had last month gone to Thailand for training on providing second line treatment in Mumbai and Chennai.

They were trained on operational issues related to second-line therapy, taught the treatment protocols and how to roll out and monitor the treatment lest patients become resistant.