World Health Day..

World Health Day – 7 April

World Health Day 2011

Urgent action necessary to safeguard drug treatments

Drug resistance is becoming more severe and many infections are no longer easily cured, leading to prolonged and expensive treatment and greater risk of death, warns the WHO on World Health Day. Under the theme "Combat Drug Resistance", WHO calls for urgent and concerted action by governments, health professionals, industry and civil society and patients to slow down the spread of drug resistance, limit its impact today and preserve medical advances for future generations.

WHO has launched a worldwide campaign to safeguard medicines for future generations. Antimicrobial resistance and its global spread threaten the continued effectiveness of many medicines used today to treat the sick, while at the same time it risks jeopardizing important advances being made against major infectious killers.

Antimicrobial resistance is not a new problem but one that is becoming more dangerous; urgent and consolidated efforts are needed to avoid regressing to the pre-antibiotic era.

For World Health Day 2011, WHO is introducing a six-point policy package to combat the spread of antimicrobial resistance.The policy steps recommended by WHO include:

• develop and implement a comprehensive, financed national plan
• strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity
• ensure uninterrupted access to essential medicines of assured quality
• regulate and promote rational use of medicines
• enhance infection prevention and control
• foster innovation and research and development for new tools.

The discovery and use of antimicrobial drugs to treat diseases such as leprosy, tuberculosis, gonorrhea and syphilis changed the course of medical and human history. Now, those discoveries and the generations of drugs that followed them are at risk, as high levels of drug resistance threaten their effectiveness.

Drug resistance is a natural biological phenomenon, through which microorganisms acquire resistance to the drugs meant to kill them. With each new generation, the microorganism carrying the resistant gene becomes ever more dominant until the drug is completely ineffective. Inappropriate use of infection-fighting drugs (underuse, overuse or misuse) causes resistance to emerge faster.

Club News

Sahara’s elusive stamp of approval

Dipankar De Sarkar, Hindustan Times
London, April 06, 2011

India’s Sahara Group threw a glittering reception in London on Tuesday to showcase British stamps that it said had been issued by Royal Mail to honour group chairman Subrata Roy. But Royal Mail clarified Wednesday the stamps were ‘limited edition business customised sheets’ — items that can be bought off the Internet.

The event was held at the Grosvenor House and was also designed to announce Sahara’s plans to make London its headquarters for global business and generate employment in Britain.

The letter of invitation said, “A postal stamp is being issued in his (Roy’s) name by the Royal Mail of the United Kingdom.”

But Royal Mail said in a statement on Wednesday the stamps were the product of “a range of services which allow individuals or businesses to create a personalised label, which can feature their own image or logo next to a postage stamp.

These stamps, where your face appears alongside standard-issue stamps, can be customised and bought from the Royal Mail website by anyone for as little as just under £15 for a batch of 20. They are not sold by post offices but can be used to send letters and other mail.”

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Sahara-s-elusive-stamp-of-approval/Article1-682137.aspx

The curious case of Subrata Roy's face on Royal Mail stamps

S Kalyana Ramanathan / London April 07, 2011, 0:12 IST

The venue could not have been better. It was the landmark Grosvenor House in Central London that India’s Sahara Group had recently bought over and hoisted the Indian flag at the front entrance. The event on the evening of April 5 was to mark the honour bestowed upon Sahara Group chairman, Subrata Roy with stamps released by Royal Mail, UK’s official postal system. Read more….

1st National Numismatic Exhibition-2011