Obesity may cause inflammation that damages the thyroid, which secretes hormones to regulate metabolism and other important functions, Dr. Giorgio Radetti of the Regional Hospital of Bolzano in Italy and colleagues said.

They evaluated 186 overweight and obese children for about three years, testing thyroid hormone levels and thyroid antibodies and imaging the thyroid gland using ultrasound.

“Our study shows that alterations in thyroid function and structure are common in obese children and we may have uncovered the link,” Radetti said in a statement.

“We found an association between body mass index and thyroid hormone levels which suggests that fat excess may have a role in thyroid tissue modification.”

Writing in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, they said 73 of the children had inflamed-looking thyroids, but apparently not a condition called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease in which T-cells mistakenly attack the thyroid.

But the children lacked antibodies that are also involved in the disease.”The ultrasound findings are a bit mysterious,” Radetti said. “However, the findings do suggest the existence of a low-grade inflammation state, which has been known to characterize obesity.”

More study is needed to show whether losing weight would normalize the thyroid and return the children to health, he said.
Low thyroid function can be linked to weight gain, although stimulating the thyroid does not automatically cause weight loss. Losing weight, however, has been shown to restore thyroid function in some cases.

Zimbabwe has declared a national emergency over a cholera epidemic and health care system collapse, and is seeking more international help to pay for food, drugs and hospital equipment, the state-run newspaper said yesterday.

“Our central hospitals are literally not functioning,” Minister of Health David Parirenyatwa said on Wednesday at a meeting of government and international aid officials, according to The Herald newspaper.

The health minister declared the state of emergency at the meeting, and appealed for money to pay for food, drugs, hospital equipment and salaries for doctors and nurses. “Our staff is de-motivated and we need your support to ensure that they start coming to work and our health system is revived,” he was quoted as saying.

A cholera epidemic blamed on lack of water treatment and broken sewage pipes has killed more than 500 people across the country, the United Nations said.

Without help, the situation could get much worse, said Walter Mzembi, the deputy water minister. He said the ministry has only enough chemicals to treat water nationally for 12 more weeks.

UN agencies, embassies and aid groups at the meeting pledged to help, according to The Herald.

The European Commission said it would provide more than US$12 million for drugs and clean water, and the International Red Cross said it would release more funds to help deal with cholera.

“We need to pool our resources together and see how best we can respond to this emergency,” Agostinho Zacarias, the UN Development Program director in Zimbabwe, was quoted as saying.

Zimbabwe is suffering from the world’s highest inflation, and Zimbabweans face daily shortages of food and other basic goods. The government, meanwhile, has been paralyzed since disputed March elections, with President Robert Mugabe and the opposition wrangling over a power-sharing deal.

The massive capital injection was a way to boost internal demand and increase the chances of stable economic growth amid the global financial turmoil, the city’s construction and transport authority announced yesterday.

The Shanghai Construction and Transport Commission, overseer of the city’s infrastructure development, said it would focus on promoting the planned and ongoing projects in five major areas.

These are:

Building budget houses for low-income families and revamping old complexes

Improving traffic, waste-water treatment and village facilities in the suburbs

Extending rail and highway connections to other provinces in the Yangtze River Delta region

Expanding the city’s mass-transit system, including Metros, vehicle tunnels and bike-only roadways

Focusing on projects aimed at reducing energy consumption and waste discharge, including waste-water treatment and garbage-burning factories.

These projects, with a total investment of 500 billion yuan, are due for completion before 2010.

The city’s other major infrastructure projects, with a total investment of 122.4 billion yuan, are scheduled to be finished before the end of this year.

Price increases in construction material, financing difficulties and other fallouts from the global financial crisis have put great pressure on the projects.

City officials said yesterday construction had already started or been completed on projects involving 97 billion yuan worth of investment as of the end of last month. Most outstanding projects were on schedule, they said.

These infrastructure projects are mostly related to traffic improvements and the construction of new Metro routes, tunnels and transport hubs in readiness for the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

Shanghai Construction (Group) General said yesterday it had already started laying foundations for a budget-housing complex in the No.6 Block of Nanhui District.
At least 4 million square meters of budget-housing complexes will be under construction before the end of this year, according to a government plan.

Low-income households are eligible to apply to purchase these cheap apartments.The threshold for a budget house purchase requires that a family’s present housing area is less than 14 square meters per person and an average member should earn less than 2,100 yuan a month. The family must have total financial assets of less than 200,000 yuan.

The parental attitudes were revealed yesterday as the Shanghai Population and Family Planning Commission briefed representatives of local consulates on the city’s population situation.

Shanghai is facing enormous pressure from a growing population that exceeds an ideal size, commission officials said.

There were 18.58 million registered residents in Shanghai last year, and the city plans to control the number to within 19.5 million by 2010.

“Shanghai is taking various steps to improve population management, and sex education is one of the most important issues in enhancing safe sex and reproductive health,” said Xie Lingli, the commission’s director.

The commission surveyed 19,000 local parents in May about their attitudes toward sex education for their children.Only 2,893 mothers and fathers said their children have initiated discussions on the topic.

“People with higher education backgrounds are more likely to treat the questions calmly,” Xie said. “About 60 percent of mothers with primary school or lower education expressed a willingness to answer such questions, while the figure rose to 81 percent if the mother held a bachelor’s degree.”Most families believed education is very important in helping children adopt healthy attitudes toward sex.

More than 80 percent of the respondents agreed that parents should tell their children about contraception before they marry, and said sex education can help children become more responsible about sex. Over 75 percent did not believe that sex education would necessarily lead to sexual activity.

Most parents agreed they should be their child’s first teachers about sex but that parents should also take more responsibility for school courses on the subject.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: Sport and HIV & AIDS

Participation in sport benefits people living with HIV: moderate exercise indeed strengthens the
Immune system better equips the body to fight HIV and may delay the onset of AIDS. Sport also provides an arena for social inclusion and support. Involving HIV-positive sportsmen and women proves extremely valuable in normalizing HIV and fighting stigma. Sportsmen, and in particular successful athletes, are role models - their voice is hence another way to drive home prevention and care messages. The sports community in China is involved in the prevention of HIV through advocacy work for healthy lifestyles during major competitions of popular sports. Sports icons, such Yao Ming, are actively working as ambassadors of the HIV & AIDS cause to promote awareness among the public and children.

Beijing Olympic Game and Women Participation

Four years after the first Olympic Games of the modern era in Athens, women took part in their first Olympic Games, in Paris in 1900. Despite the reticence of the reviver of the Games, Pierre de Coubertin, 22 women out of a total of 997 athletes competed in five sports: tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian and golf. With the 1970s, and the growing awareness of the role of women in the world, female participation in sports competitions and in the Olympic Games became higher. At 29th Beijing Olympic game, women’s participation was even more and proved the sense of sex equality.

“Rape is designed not just to injure and dehumanize the women but impact their families and communities,” Keele says.
The City of Joy is designed to change that attitude. It is the product of a partnership with UNICEF and V-Day, a global movement Ensler launched to end violence against women and girls. The city, which Ensler hopes to open in September 2009, will offer counseling, education and entrepreneurial training to rape victims.

Ensler says she’s met plenty of Congolese women who are primed to “turn their pain into power.” Some are already risking their lives to report their rape and stand up to men, she says.”These are the strongest and most incredible women on the planet,” Ensler says.

They are women like Lumo Furaha who recently told V-Day why she decided to talk publicly about the time scores of armed men raped her repeatedly.”They wanted to destroy me; destroy my body and kill my spirit,” she recalled. “I am speaking out because I don’t want any child of the next generation to have to live through what I have lived through.”It may be too late, however, for Furaha’s wish to come true. Congo’s next generation is already being twisted, Ensler says.

She says many boys have been forced to watch their mothers and sisters raped. She wonders what kind of men these boys will become if no one helps them sort through what they’ve seen.
“There is no place in the culture for a boy to say, ‘I feel powerless and broken,’ ” she says. “He becomes violent.”

Ensler says she saw a frightening example of that ripple effect during her last trip to Congo. She was in a hospital when nurses brought in a 3-year-old girl who had been raped — by two 10-year-old boys.

Congo’s future, she says, may look even more frightening than its past.

Dr Ram Baran Yadav from Nepali Congress (NC), the elected first Nepali president, will take oath on Tuesday, the Constituent Assembly (CA) speaker declared on Monday afternoon. Consequently, Dr Yadav has made another history by also becoming the first person outside the royal family to be the head of the state of the new republic, breaking the century old tradition which reserved the coveted title to the eldest son of the Shah Dynasty, who held a demi god status of a incarnation of Lord Bishnu, all of which ended with it eventual demise through a historic proclamation of the Constituent Assembly that declared the country a republic.

But like most person of stature, Dr Yadav, too, had a very humble beginning. Born to a simple farmer family in Dhanusha district in the Terai plains of Nepal, Dr Yadav was the fourth son of Dhan Yadav and Ram Rati Yadav.
Although a doctor by profession, Dr Yadav could never distance himself from active politics despite his busy schedule. This zest for politics was planted young as even during his university days Dr Yadav used to be very active in student politics.

Dr Yadav started getting actively engaged in politics when in 2017 B.S Late king Mahendra dissolved the first democratically elected government of Nepal led by B.P Koirala and seized absolute powers. He then vowed to devote his life to politics and since then he has been at the forefront of every struggle to restore democracy in the country.

Rates of maternal mortality are directly associated with attendance of skilled birth attendants. Countries with the lowest maternal mortality report over 98% attendance by a skilled birth attendant. Those with the highest rates of maternal mortality report less than 60% attendance.
Lack of access to essential health care services (especially for pregnant adolescents) for safe pregnancy and childbirth is the single most important factor that contributes to maternal deaths. This is exacerbated by poverty and illiteracy, inequalities in the human rights enjoyed by women and men, marriage at a young age and unwanted fertility.

Deaths in newborns during the first week of life are largely the result of inadequate, or inappropriate, care during pregnancy, childbirth, or the first critical hours after birth. Violence against women (including rape) is also considered an underlying and predisposing factor for maternal ill-health.

So this is the time for number of countries especially developing countries to prepare enough birth attendants so that they can provide care from home to hospital or birth center.

It is estimated that tobacco causes 8.8 percent of deaths globally. That is the equivalent to roughly 5 million people per year or 13,500 per day. The World Health Organization estimates that someone dies from tobacco use every 6.5 seconds.
In recent years tobacco use has been declining in many countries in North America and Western Europe but increasing in many others, especially in Asia. Over 25 percent of the world’s smokers live in China. Over 300 million men in China — equal to the entire U.S. population - are smokers.

Breakdown products of tobacco smoke have been found in the human fetus. Children are particularly susceptible to the effects of passive smoking and are more likely to suffer from a variety of respiratory complaints. Research done by British Asthma Campaign has shown that babies whose mothers continue to smoke during pregnancy have almost a 50 percent increased risk of being wheezy or having breathing problems.Passive smoking has been found to be an independent risk factor foe a number of conditional and diseases in adults. These are Heart disease, Lung cancer, Stroke, Nasal cancer, Asthma Exacerbation, Reduced fertility, and Decreased lung function. There must be some effective rules and laws to secure non-smoking systems:

1. Employers should have a specific policy on smoking in the workplace.
2. Employers should take action to reduce the risk to the health and safety of their employees from second hand smoke to as low a level as is reasonably practicable.
3. Smoking policy should give priority to the needs of non-smokers who do not wish to breathe tobacco smoke.
4. Employers should consult their employees and their representatives on the appropriate smoking policy to suit their particular workplace.

To sum up, Restricting smoking in the workplace does not necessarily turn smokers into non-smokers, but it does increase the likelihood that smokers will try to quit, and that they will succeed.