Aman Foundation launches second health initiative.

KARACHI: At least 40% of deaths in Pakistan are preventable, said the chief executive officer for Aman Foundation, Ahsan Jamil at the launch of the organisation’s latest initiative Aman Telehealth. “Most of these deaths occur due to three major factors – lack of transport to a healthcare facility, affordability and lack of decision makers being present at time of the emergency.”

In a previously conducted study, Dr Sadiqua N Jafery concluded that the most common of the three reasons was the lack of decision maker ie husband, mother-in-law, father or mother being present. according to Jamil, the launch of a system whereby you can receive an initial diagnosis and prescription for non-chronic symptoms on the telephone is therefore most opportune. the telehealth project has been in the works for several months now with ongoing training for the 26-strong staff to attend to a caller’s medical queries. the service will be in operation 24 hours, seven days a week on 111-113-737.

“At present we have the capacity to attend to 1,000 to 1,200 calls a day, with 10 attendants in the morning, 10 in the evening and six overnight,” said Dr Zahid Ali Faheem who is heading Aman Telehealth.

The call is answered by a registration officer who notes the caller’s name, address, gender and age. the call is then transferred to a health advice officer ie nurse or doctor where a list of your symptoms are noted in a system. if the programme is unable to generate a suitable response the call is then passed on to a medical officer who further questions the caller about their symptoms.

In case of emergency, the call is routed to the ambulance service.

According to Faheem, among other objectives they hope to achieve greater empowerment for women, early-stage intervention and reduce incidence of medical emergency through this initiative. “In three to five years we hope to increase our attendants to 150.” but the process of increasing staff as well as advertising the service needs to be gradual for a sustainable setup cautions executive director for Aman Health Dr Junaid Razzak.

“The most important thing is to fill the void of missed opportunity,” Razzak said. the most difficult part for a medical professional is not the medical life saving procedures they give but delivering the news to loved ones of the patient’s condition or demise, he added. “It is with the hope to decrease these conversations by early intervention and diagnosis that Aman Telehealth has been launched.”

The service also provides a medical directory to hospitals, laboratories and other medical facilities in the city. While the service is available to people calling from all over the country the medical directory has thus far only been compiled for Karachi.

Published in the Express Tribune, January 2nd,  2012.

Perimenopause is an unavoidable event that influences center aged women. In this article we’ll be making a look at what perimenopause is, as well as the prevalent symptoms that happen as obtaining a end result of perimenopause.

The initial thing we ought to accomplish is solution the question, what is perimenopause? Well it is a process that will be known as pre-menopause. as the latter title suggests it is a process that precedes menopause. Perimenopause starts anywhere involving two to 10 years ahead of the woman’s menstrual cycle appear to an end.

The perimenopause phase lasts for an common of about half-dozen years, but in some instances it could likely last for 10 years. Women launch to visit through menopause when pre-menopause occurs to an end.

Perimenopause is prevalent in center aged women, despite the truth that some women get it even earlier, one example is on the age group of 35. as perimenopause occurs to an accomplish the oestrogen amounts in a woman’s body starts to drop rapidly. Many women worry about perimenopause and menopause, nonetheless it shouldn’t be this way, premenonpause is a standard process, and as long as you protect yourself clued up about it, it shouldn’t grant you too a good deal trouble.

A female typically realizes she is certainly going through perimenopause by its symptoms. you can get rather a few symptoms that could likely happen as obtaining a end result of the process, some of these are outlined below.

Hot flashes, chilly flashes, night sweats, weakened finger nails, tinnitus, anxiety, apprehension, confusion, disorientation, problems concentrating, sleep problems, thinning hair, or frizzy hair loss, elevated cosmetic hair, decline of balance, dizziness, feelings swings, brightness headedness, nausea, indigestion, flatulence, loss tongue, bad taste in mouth, loss feeling on the roof of mouth, gastrointestinal distress, change in breath odor, itchy skin, crawly feeling on skin, gum problems, aches and pains in muscle and joints, tingling extremities, and head aches, among other symptoms.

As you can see these symptoms can lead to awesome discomfort, however they don’t all appear on a similar time. the degree to which a female is affected by these symptoms also is dependent on the individual, some women tend to suffer from many whilst some luckier women suffer from rather few.These symptoms are considered to be brought on by the unstable amounts estrogens which were a characteristic of the process.

If you are getting through perimenopause it is strongly proposed that you look at out your physician, that way you’ll get a appropriate diagnosis. what is more your medical professional could include the potential to recommend the best kind of therapy for the symptoms. Many women will teach you that going through perimenopause is a hard period of time of their life, to create factors even worse the symptoms of the process can lead to other problems, one example is night sweats can lead to sleeplessness which in turn can weaken your immune system, as you’ll not include the potential to get enough chill out to protect it running at it’s optimum. this can be a key rationale why you should see your medical professional as soon as you have the chance.

This article included perimenopause symptoms and the rationale why they occur.

Canada’s doctors are preparing to launch a full-court press to urge pregnant women in Canada to get the H1N1 flu vaccine, Canwest News Service has learned.

Special posters, fact sheets and mail outs will be sent to all maternity health-care providers across Canada, including hospitals, clinics and doctors’ offices, promoting immunization of pregnant women and advance prescriptions for the antiviral drug Tamiflu that could be filled at the first sign of symptoms.

"The message is very clear: first and foremost, immunization," said Dr. Vyta Senikas, a vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada.

A special task force involving 15 partnering organizations met in Toronto this week to discuss a national effort to advise pregnant women about the risks of H1N1.

Senikas said the posters will feature the logos of the country’s major maternity-care organizations to show the public they are working together to address the high-risk nature of pregnant women catching the flu.

Meanwhile, the president of the society has written to doctors across the country, recommending they immunize women coming for regular prenatal visits wherever possible.

Dr. Michel Fortier said pregnant women in the third trimester or at term are one of the groups most at risk to be affected by H1N1.

"a number of women across Canada have died as a result of H1N1 thus far," Fortier said in his letter to members of the Ottawa-based group. Pregnant women are not more likely to get the flu, but "the effects of H1N1 are more devastating in this group."

Pregnant women who catch the virus are more likely to face complications such as pneumonia and severe respiratory distress. Severe complications can lead to early delivery or miscarriage, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

But Fortier said there is "great concern" about the historically low level of flu shots among the demographic. It’s estimated that fewer than 20 per cent of pregnant women get a seasonal flu shot.

"Pregnant women are reluctant to use any medication or take any immunizations," Senikas said. "They’re always worried about side effects" the unborn children might encounter.

But, Senikas added, "We know it’s a flu that particularly affects the younger age group, and it’s that younger age group which is also pregnant."

She pointed to the case of a young Montreal mother who died of swine flu in August. Her baby was delivered by an emergency cesarean section.

H1N1 particularly affects the lungs, "and if there are oxygenation issues for the mother, the fetus sometimes has to compensate for that," Senikas said.

The virus doesn’t cross the placenta, so the fetus doesn’t get H1N1. but the complications caused by H1N1 in the mother can be detrimental to the infant’s health, Senikas said.

"Supposing (the mother) gets so sick that her lungs are not able to function anymore, so she has to go on a respirator. When there are oxygenation issues, that can affect the fetus also."

Canada’s public health officials last week recommended pregnant women be among the first to be vaccinated when the H1N1 vaccine becomes available in November. but the rapid development of the H1N1 vaccine and the push to get it out ahead of a second wave of infection have raised concerns about safety.

"If there are things I can do to avoid exposure, absolutely I’ll do it, and at the first sign of any symptoms, I’m at my doctor’s office," said Erika Shaker, who is at the end of her second trimester of pregnancy.

"but when it comes to actually being vaccinated using a substance that I don’t think has received adequate testing, I’m concerned. and I suspect a lot of women in my position are as well."

As of Sept. 12, a total of 1,459 hospitalized cases — 288 of whom were admitted to an intensive care unit — and 76 deaths had been reported in Canada since the beginning of the H1N1 pandemic.

Senikas said pregnant women will be encouraged to talk to their doctor about getting a prescription for Tamiflu in advance. Early treatment, within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, can reduce the risk of complications.

"If early symptoms develop, she cashes in the prescription, and she lets the health-care provider know for followup," Senikas said. "She doesn’t have to go to the doctor’s office and infect every other pregnant woman there. She doesn’t have to go to the emergency department and sit for six hours with mild symptoms to get an antiviral prescription."

But if severe symptoms develop, "we want her going to an emergency department."

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ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2011) — Family doctors can take more than a month to record ovarian cancer, once diagnosed by a specialist, in one in 10 cases, indicates research published in the launch issue of the new online journal BMJ Open.

Ovarian cancer was also incorrectly or prematurely classified in 11% of cases, the data show.

The authors base their findings on the "free text" data available in patient records, which are submitted to the General Practice Research Database (GPRD).

The GPRD contains long term anonymised medical data on more than four million patients on the lists of a representative 500 primary care practices across the UK.

The information, which is created during the course of GP consultations or correspondence relating to specialist referrals and diagnostic tests, is widely used for studies on aspects of disease and drug safety.

The authors focused on the Read codes relating to a diagnosis of ovarian cancer in women aged 40 to 80, between 2002 and 2007.

Read codes are used to code symptoms and diagnoses electronically in primary care in the UK. They provide the option to enter free text for each code, such as a letter from the specialist and a date when the ‘event’ occurred.

The authors also looked at this free text information to establish the time lag between when the specialist notified the GP of the diagnosis and the date it was officially coded as such in the patient’s record.

There is a good deal of free text in the database, but it is not always coded by GPs nor accessed by researchers, say the authors.

During the study period, 344 women were given one of three Read codes indicating a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

Most cases (90%) had free text relating to ovarian disease, and in almost two thirds (64%) this confirmed a diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

But in one in five cases (22%) free text information confirmed this diagnosis before it was officially coded as such in the patient’s record. in one in 10 cases more than four weeks had elapsed.

The free text information also showed that mistakes been made in 11% of the records.

Four cases coded for ovarian cancer did not have the disease at all; in another six cases the cancer was a recurrence which was not evident in the coding. and in 35 cases, patients had been coded before a definitive diagnosis had been made

"for diseases which rely on hospital consultants for diagnosis, free text (particularly letters) is invaluable for accurate dating of diagnosis and referrals and also for identifying misclassified cases," conclude the authors.

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The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

1. A Rosemary Tate, Alexander G R Martin, Aishath Ali, Jackie Cassell. Using free text information to explore how and when GPs code a diagnosis of ovarian cancer: an observational study using primary care records of patients with ovarian cancer. BMJ Open, 23 February 2011 DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2010-000025

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.