Aids Attack Productive Age

The number of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV /AIDS) cases in Denpasar until now recorded 1284 cases from 2829 cases in Bali."From the amount of about 48 percent cases in Denpasar, 51.63 percent of those are the productive age population," said the chairman of the National AIDS Commission (NAC) of Denpasar City, I Gusti Ngurah States on Tuesday.At the

Straws - Just how unhealthy they can get

> Read the accompanying horrid story and you'll think
> twice before using a straw to drink !!
> ...................................................................
> Horrible story!
>
> I ordered a Club Sandwich and a Sprite in a restaurant
> somewhere in
> Malaysia .. When I finished half of the
> sandwich I sipped a sprite. But it didnt taste like
> an ordinary
> sprite I used to drink. So I sipped once more, but
> it still tasted the same. It tasted like a sprite
> mixed with some
> kind of oil.
> I
>called the clerk and asked him if the sprite was
> expired. He said it
> was just delivered today. So I asked him to
> taste it. Then he also found that something was
> wrong with it.
>
> Both of us were
> wondering for a while. Then I got to look inside the
> straw. There were a lot of tiny black round
> things that looked like eggs. So I cut the middle of
> the straw
> lengthwise to have a better look.. Yuck. There were
> a lot of tiny black round things in it.. I suppose
> they were eggs of
> cockroach. About 1000 eggs were there. Then I
> began to check all the other straws in the straws
> case one by one.
> Almost all of them contained black eggs that
> seemed to be either the cockroach eggs or
> excretions..
>
> After the incident I began to check all the straws in the
> restaurants and fast food chains that I had gone to..
> Almost of all the straws contained the same black
> eggs. Especially
> the darker the colors of straws, the more black
> eggs were found.. In black straws, extreme amount of
> black eggs were
> found. It was found out that it's because the
> cockroaches live
> (hatch eggs and excrete) in the dark places.
>
> * 80% or more restaurants in the malls use red or
> black colored
> straws.
>
> SO NEXT TIME.... BE CAUTIOUS... CHECK THE
> STRAW BEFORE
> YOU PLACE IT INSIDE THE DRINKS. BETTER STILL....DO USE
> STRAW

INFLUENZA A(H1N1) ADVISORY

Remember these recommendations;

1. Wear mask if you have the infection or when looking after infected person.

2. Regular washing of hands with soap and water or alcohol based sanitizing lotion.

3. Avoid crowded places

4. Seek medical advice/ treatment when having flu like illness signs and symptoms.

The virus is spread by oral droplets that are sneezed or coughed out by infected person. If another person breathes in these droplets, they will get the virus and may end up getting the flu. Due to gravity, these droplets are limited in the distance of spread and the reason why one will not be infected if one stays beyond 3 feet from the sufferer. This is also the reason why infected person needs to wear face mask or to cover their nose/mouth when sneezing/ coughing; to prevent their oral droplets from reaching others.

Apart from the above, the oral droplets may also contaminate items such as furniture, door-knobs, stationery, etc. This is the rationale for the recommendation to regularly wash our hands with water and soap or where available, the alcohol based sanitizing lotion. We are also recommended not to touch our mouth, nose and eyes with unwashed hands as they may transfer the virus to these unprotected parts of the body.

The virus does not get airborne and spread by the wind or air-condition. As such there is no requirement for healthy person to wear mask except when they need to be close to infected person for long duration such as while taking care of or visiting them.

The oral droplet transmission also explains the need for everyone to avoid crowded places. The exposure will surely be more when one is in a crowd as there could be infected persons among them. It is more important for infected persons to avoid crowds as they can be the source of the virus for others. They should, as recommended impose self quarantine at home until they recover.

What about health declaration and temperature screening?

These measures are only useful during the containment period. Carriers of the virus coming into a country or premise are checked and where appropriate be referred to hospitals. However, the effectiveness of these measures is limited due to false declaration and the ability of the virus to be spread well before one gets the signs and symptoms. As has been seen, the initial measures of health declaration and temperature screening carried out by the authorities did not keep the virus out.

At present, we are well into the mitigation phase. That means we treat and isolate cases rather than trying to stop them from coming into the country/ premise. The virus is already circulating in the country with several `hot-spots'. Potential sources could be any person in the city/ town or kampong we live in. The fact that most cases were mild did not help as they went undetected while spreading the virus.

One may be infected from any of the sources, anytime. As such, it is now more effective to identify and treat infected person as quickly as possible and isolate them so as to minimize exposure to others.

What we need to do to help control the virus spread?


REMEMBER, the most important control measures are listed above. They depend on full understanding and cooperation from everyone. If all of us make conscious effort to protect ourselves and others from the virus, the transmission of the virus can be reduced. These could complement efforts by others such as the healthcare services, media, etc. in the country in controlling the pandemic.

So remember:

1. Always maintain good personal hygiene. Wash our hands regularly.
2. Avoid going to crowded places unless necessary, especially when you have the illness.
3. When you have the illness, seek medical help. Do not self medicate. If required, impose self quarantine at home. Do not come to work even if you feel you are fit to work.
4. When you have the flu or taking care of/ visit infected persons, wear the mask.

Lastly, always seek advice from professionals who know the subject and the related issues. Your nearest advisers should be the Group's or your own OPUs' Health Advisers.

Diet for Gout

For people with uric acid, dietary pattern to be followed is to provide calories your body needs. While carbohydrates should be from complex carbohydrate like rice, cassava, sweet potatoes and bread. Avoid simple carbohydrates such as sugar, syrup or candy. Fructose in a simple carbohydrate can increase serum uric acid levels.Patients with uric acid to low protein diet because the protein can

How to Lower Colesterol

Wrinkles are more obvious on the face may be one sign that you are getting older. But to find out your cholesterol level increase can not recognize by the physical appearance.Although high cholesterol is often a consequence of ageing. But the ups and downs of cholesterol contain do not know you were old or young. In this age, adolescents may also experience serious health risks due to soaring

Veganism as Intersectional Social Justice (part 1)

Introduction
Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday...Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?--Derrick Jensen[*]

[Oppressions are ideologies—]“a set of socially shared beliefs that legitmates an existing or desired social order. Prejudice, on the other hand, is an individual predisposition to devalue a group of others… speciesism is also an ideology—that is, a set of widely held, socially inherited beliefs… When the psychological and moral (or immoral) bases of oppression are accentuated, social structural forces are downplayed or overlooked entirely… they tend to stifle any realization of the need for social change.” –David Nibert[*]

The discourse of vegetarian and vegan advocates is saturated with personal choice. Perhaps more persistently than any other social justice movement in America today other than the pro-choice movement, animal defenders emphasize the individual: the individual animal who suffers, the individual person who chooses three times a day to choose compassion over cruelty, the individuality of the movement, etc.

It is the individual who is responsible for the suffering of each individual animal because of some irrational prejudice. If only these people were just more enlightened about animal sentience, about nutrition, they would leave cruelty-free lives. It is also the individual who is responsible for world hunger because they selfishly feed the world’s grain to livestock. If only each individual chose a vegetarian lifestyle, there would be enough food for everyone.

When the individual person is not totally responsible for the suffering of each individual animal, it is because vegetarianism is too inconvenient and the law is too permissive of cruelty. If only restaurants and grocery stores offered more vegetarian foods (especially faux-meats), people would stop eating meat. If only there were stricter penalties for animal cruelty, less people would harm animals and there would be more justice. Thus the irony of the dominant discourse is that animal liberation is possible so long as humans become more rational and less self-interested; but, so long as people are self-interested, we ought to make vegetarianism as convenient and non-threatening as possible and make animal cruelty as inconvenient and punishable as possible.

In this post I will lay-out the myriad of ways the most popular forms of animal advocacy (at least in the USA) privileges a white, middle-class audience at the expense of including people of color and people of low-income. Drawing on the vast, original works over at The Vegan Ideal [TVI], I wish to demonstrate 1) how focusing on punishing, shaming, and dehumanizing individual animal exploiters a) draws attention away from the institutional oppression (i.e. speciesism) in favor of vice (i.e. cruelty) as well as b) how such punishment is often part of ethnocentric and nationalist projects, and finally, c) how such projects merely seek to substitute human cages for animal cages.

Further, I would like to point out 2) how focus on individual action and lifestyle changes often centers around "voting" with one's dollar, which a) privileges the middle-class at the expense of marginalizing low- and no-income classes, b) privileges non-profit dissemination of literature at the expense of real social organizing and mobilization that empowers people and communities, and c) encourages conservative discourse by said non-profits that target "mainstream" audiences with money that can be used to support said kind of campaigns.
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