Health Education Library for People

I had a few hours to stroll around the station, before it was time for my train from Mumbai to Sevagram. And just outside CST station, across the road, I spotted a tempting sign saying ‘the largest collection of medical books’. And that is how I discovered HELP, which is an acronym for Health Education Library for People.

It is a small quiet place, but it houses around 10000 books all on various facets of medicine. I spotted some wonderful titles as I browsed through the organized shelves. I was amazed at the manner in which books ranging from topics as wide as Parenting, Death, Public Health and Gynecology were neatly laid out. The friendly librarian also came forward to show us the amazing audiovisual library of video and audio CDs and DVDs.

This library is the brainchild of Dr Aniruddh and Dr Anjali Malpani. It is a veritable collection of health related resources. And the unique fact is that all of the books are for the layman. None of them are medical jargon. Belonging to the medical field, I for once, wanted some of my favourite textbooks there. But I realized that the target audience was not medical personnel,but the common man. And the small but interested readers in the reading room of the library showed that the idea was working.

I also found that that HELP regularly organizes seminars and health education talks for people on topic related to health, healing, yoga, ayurveda etc.

A marvellous effort indeed. To find out more visit http://www.healthlibrary.com/index.htm where they also have a blog.

The address of HELP is:

Health Education Library,Excelsior Business Center, National Insurance Building, Ground Floor, Near Excelsior Cinema, 206, Dr.D.N Road, CST
Mumbai 400 001.

Timings: Monday – Saturday, 10.00 am – 6.30 pm.

Mobile phones spread infections in hospitals

Mobile phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria — including the drug-resistant MRSA — and may be a
source of hospital-acquired infections, according to a study .

Researchers from the Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey led by Fatma Ulger tested the phones and the dominant hands of 200 doctors and nurses working in hospital operating rooms and intensive care units.

Ninety-five per cent of the mobile phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria, with the potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease.

Nearly 35% carried two types of bacteria, and more than 11% carried three or more different species of bugs, the study found.

Most worrying, one in eight of the handsets showed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has emerged as a major health threat in hospitals around the world.

Only 10% of staff regularly cleaned their phones, even if most followed hygiene guidelines for hand washing, the study noted.

Interestingly,Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has emerged as a major clinical and epidemiological problem in hospitals in India as well. A study published in the National Medical Journal of India, Prabha Desikan et al found that:

MRSA continues to remain a major nosocomial pathogen. Nasal carriage of S. aureus or MRSA has been suggested as a risk factor for the development of nosocomial infections. In healthcare settings, telephones may get contaminated with MRSA from the anterior nares and act as fomites for transmission. Swabs were collected from the surfaces and bases of 100 telephone handsets. MRSA constituted 11.6% of the isolates. Both S. aureus and MRSA were isolated in large numbers mainly from the handsets of telephones. This may be due to repeated contamination of the mouthpiece by aerosols from the nose and mouth while using the phone. Contamination of telephones with S. aureus may indicate a considerable level of nasal carriage among persons using the phone. They may be staff, patients or relatives of patients.

The authors recommend daily cleaning and swabbing of telephones. Obviously, this is not enough, or is not done well enough, which may be due to lack of awareness of the instrument’s potential to act as a fomite. Infection control measures would therefore need to include creation of awareness among personnel regarding the possible role of telephone instruments as fomites in the transmission of nosocomial infections. The instruments need to be disinfected more frequently and thoroughly, with special attention to the mouthpiece.

India mulls growing medicinal plants as alternative to tobacco

India is committed to reduce production of tobacco by 50% in the next decade. The Centre has allocated Rs 1,000 crore for growing medicinal plants as an alternative to tobacco plantation

Union Health and Family Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said

India is committed to reduce tobacco production and manufacturing of its products by 50% by 2020 to comply with the UN Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Growing medicinal plants as an alternative to tobacco plantation is a step in that direction and Rs 1,000 crore have been allocated for the same. A part of it has already been sanctioned.

Currently, 1,00,000 hectares of land is under tobacco cultivation. With food crisis increasing in the country, the government may ask farmers to grow food crops as an alternative to tobacco. The Centre is making all efforts to put this land under cultivation for medicinal plants and other crops so that the farmers do not lose their job. The Health Ministry is jointly working with Commerce and Labour Ministry for growing alternative crops as well as rehabilitate the bidi rollers in the small and cottage industries.

Tobacco use is expected to kill six million people worldwide and drain $500 billion from the global economy each year, reveals the latest edition of the “Tobacco Atlas”. In India and China, over half a billion people consume tobacco.

A whopping 81% of the Indian employees interviewed said that they had found a new place to smoke ever since the ban on smoking at workplaces was implemented on October 2, 2008. On the bright side, the survey showed that 37% of the Indian employees were trying to reduce the number of cigarettes they smoked in a day.

Dr P C Gupta, who is the president of the World Congress on Tobacco or Health and the head of Healis, has time and again underlined the need for an all-round implementation of the ban.

He had said that “By next year, smoking will cause about 9,30,000 adult deaths each year in India, up from about 700,000 deaths per year in 2004.” This, he had felt, was reason enough for local governments and public bodies to implement the law on tobacco control.