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Cholera outbreak in Uzbekistan. Is it for real or it's just another rumor?
The government denyes the Cholera epidemy. But may that cost the health of their nation?
Uznews - Through its media service, Jahon, the Uzbek foreign ministry appears to be denying claims that Uzbekistan is experiencing an outbreak of cholera. The ministry of health in Uzbekistan and the state epidemiological surveillance unit are also refuting reports of a cholera outbreak and are doing nothing to prevent the spread of the disease.
“If we announce a cholera diagnosis, then we immediately have to organise quarantine, and nobody wants that” said one doctor in the Tinchlik village hospital in Yangiyul district, Tashkent. "Quarantine", he says, "means that villages and towns where cholera has been identified have to be ‘shut down’, and clean drinking water has to be supplied, which is an extremely costly operation for the district authorities, especially in villages like Tinchlik."
Hardly surprising to find cholera.
“We haven’t had clean water for 20 years. The old water pipes have crumbled but nobody has ever replaced them” said Akramkhodzh Mukhiddinov, member of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan (PAU) and also a resident of Tinchlik.
Mukhiddinov claims that many people who have their own transport bring drinking water from Yangiyul or Tashkent, but most people take water from waterways running through the area.
“People take water from the irrigation channels, then boil it and drink it. There is no alternative when there is no clean mains water” says Mukhiddinov. He claims that people most at risk of contracting cholera are those who take water from the Boz-Su river. “A 45-year-old man, who drank water from this river, died recently in our village” Mukhiddinov says.
The human rights campaigner believes that, given the living conditions in Tinchlik and its neighbouring settlements, it would be amazing if an outbreak of cholera did not happen here.
Health ministry denies the outbreak.
Meanwhile, Uzbekistan’s health ministry and foreign affairs ministry are categorically denying reports of a cholera outbreak.
“When you present them with concrete facts about people dying from an illness, the symptoms of which are extremely similar to those of cholera, ministry of health civil servants don’t respond, claiming that they have heard of no such instances.” One Tashkent journalist remarked.
Uzbekistan’s state epidemiological service also denies the outbreak of cholera.
“We are currently running a campaign to vaccinate children against measles and German measles, but have heard nothing about cholera. If there were cases, we would have made statements about this” said one employee of the state epidemiological surveillance service in Chilanzar district, Tashkent.
“The symptoms of cholera – vomiting and diarrhoea – are similar to those of other intestinal illnesses, and it is possible that people are mistaken about what is actually wrong” an employee of the epidemiological surveillance unit speculated. When asked about cholera, the source asked us not to use his name.
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So, what is really happening in Uzbekistan?
Despite official denials, many doctors are saying confidentially that there are cases of cholera now in Uzbekistan. They do not hide the fact that people have died from an intestinal illness, the name of which doctors will not spell out to their relatives.
“I am convinced my husband died of cholera after he swam in the Boz-Su river” says Mukhabbat, a 30-year-old Tashkent resident.
The outbreak of cholera would appear to be confirmed, at least, by events in Yangiyul district and in Yangiyul hospital, where, in mid-August, dozens of people arrived each day with symptoms of this disease – not only vomiting and diarrhoea but also severe dehydration. Previously, the Almazarsk district of Tashkent had experienced cholera-like illness, also linked to water from the Boz-Su river.
“It is very easy to explain why information about a cholera outbreak is being hushed up, and you can see this in the text of the foreign ministry’s statement” said one Tashkent doctor, who also asked to not to be named.
“As a member of the World Health Organisation, Uzbekistan has to update the European regional office of this body round-the-clock, but if it did inform WHO about these circumstances, WHO would send out a special commission which would see for itself the terrible living conditions of those people who have contracted cholera” he said.
“Will our government allow that to happen?” an Uznews source asks, adding that as winter approaches, the cholera bacteria will become less active, and the cover-up may therefore outlast the outbreak.
What's Grave's disease? Ask Missy Elliot. Her fans've been waiting six years for a new album and now they know why.
Missy, the 39-year-old rapper, producer and songwriter announced that she's been suffering from the autoimmune thyroid disease (Grave's Disease) since 2008. The hitmaker found out that she had Grave's disease after experiencing tremors, a common symptom of the disease.
Missy Elliot felt bad, because the illness had made even simple day-to-day tasks difficult for her.
She almost crashed: "I was driving and trying to put my foot on the brake, but my leg was jumping. I couldn't keep the brake down and almost crashed," the rap star said.
Elliot said that her nervous system was so badly affected by the disease that she couldn't even write. "I couldn't write because my nervous system was so bad - I couldn't even use a pen."
Unfortunately, there is no cure for Graves' disease, but Missy has improved her condition through radiation treatments and exercise. "I'm 30 pounds lighter because I've been exercising," she said. "My thyroid is functioning, so I haven't had to take medication in about nine months. But you live with it for the rest of your life."
Despite her challenges, Missy also announced that she's working on new music with long-time friend and collaborator Timbaland. She’ll also be featured on VH1's "Behind the Music" on June 29, further discussing her battle with Graves' disease, weight issues and being sexually molested as a child.
For more information about Grave's disease visit the "Grave's Disease Foundation" website.
A company is testing whether stem cells from fat could help prevent long-term damage after a heart attack.
Too much fat around the waist may be bad for your health, but the stem cells it contains might one day save your life. Starting this month, a new European trial aims to determine whether stem cells harvested from a person's own fat, delivered shortly after a heart attack, could prevent some of the cardiac muscle damage that results from blocked arteries.
During a heart attack, blood vessels that deliver blood to the heart muscle are blocked, and the lack of oxygen slowly kills the tissue. San Diego-based Cytoryi Therapeutics has developed a treatment that aims to prevent much of that muscle damage before it starts. It works by injecting a concentrated slurry of stem cells and other regenerative cells isolated from the patient's body directly into the heart's main artery within 24 hours after an attack. "Time is muscle. The quicker you get in, the better," says Christopher Calhoun, Cytori's chief executive officer. "You can't do anything about dead tissue, but tissue that's bruised and damaged—that's revitalizable. If you can get new blood flow in there, that tissue comes back to life."
Adult stem cells, which exist in small populations throughout the body, can differentiate to form specific tissue types and are responsible for repairing injuries and replacing dying cells. The prospect of using them to heal damaged heart muscle has tantalized biomedical researchers for more than two decades. If the stem cells come from a patient's own body, there is no risk of rejection. A number of clinical trials in recent years have focused on using stem cells collected from bone marrow, since this potent population can differentiate into both cardiac muscle cells and blood vessel cells, among other types. But marrow stem cells are difficult to collect and somewhat scarce; they must be isolated and then grown in culture before they're injected back into an injured heart. The process can take weeks.
Cytori has created a portable machine that, in less than an hour, can reduce a sample of fat "about the size of a can of Coke," Calhoun says, to less than a teaspoon of concentrated slurry that Cytori believes contains its most vital elements: stem cells, smooth muscle cells, cells that line blood vessels, and a number of other regenerative cells that can promote growth healing.
Cytori began a large-scale trial this month and hopes to test the procedure on 360 patients. The company aims to start large-scale clinical trials on heart attack patients in the United States by 2014 and on patients with chronic heart failure even earlier than that.
But it's still early. Clinical trials of stem cells derived from bone marrow have shown mixed results in treating heart disease, and it's unclear whether fat-derived cells will fare better. "If it works, it would be wonderful to have a ready-made source of autologous stem cells," says Richard Schatz, research director of cardiovascular interventions at Scripps Health in San Diego, one of the inventors of the coronary stent. But he and others note that it will take many more trials to determine how effective Cytori's methods are compared with treatments based on marrow stem cells.
