China

China says child deaths not linked to hepatitis vaccine

Chinese health authorities said they have found no link between a hepatitis B vaccine and the deaths of nine children who had received those shots, state media said on Friday.

China has been investigating 17 deaths following inoculation with a hepatitis B vaccine, made by Shenzhen-based BioKangtai, from Dec. 13 and 31. The news alarmed many Chinese Internet users, who called on the government to make more information public.

Many Chinese people are suspicious that the government tries to cover up bad news about health problems, despite assurances of transparency. In 2003, the government initially tried to cover-up the outbreak of the SARS virus.

Nine of the cases have nothing to do with the vaccines, state news agency Xinhua cited the director of the disease control bureau of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, Yu Jingjin, as saying at a press conference.

A preliminary analysis of the eight other cases have also found no link between the deaths and the vaccines, but the cause of the deaths will be confirmed only after autopsies, Yu said.

Li Guoqing of the China Food and Drug Administration said at a press conference that no problems had been found with BioKangtai vaccines in production practices or product quality, according to Xinhua.

BioKangtai said in a statement in December that it rigorously followed safety rules but that they were testing the batches suspected of causing the deaths.

China has been beset by a series of product safety scandals over the past few years.

At least six children died in 2008 after drinking milk contaminated by the industrial chemical melamine, and there have also been reports of children dying or becoming seriously ill from faulty encephalitis, hepatitis B and rabies vaccines.

Source: Reuters

Shocking – 2 year old gives birth to own twin

boy gives birth

A two-year-old Chinese boy named Xiao Feng was admitted to hospital to undergo an operation to “give birth” to his twin. The boy was suffering from breathing difficulties and his stomach was extremely swollen.

Following X-rays and MRI scans, doctors at the hospital confirmed that Feng was in fact carrying the undeveloped fetus of his twin inside his stomach. He was rushed to the operating room for emergency surgery to remove it.

The case known as cryptodidymus, or conjoined twins, is extremely rare, if not unprecedented in the world of medicine. the unborn fetus measured around 10 inches in width and was fully formed in terms of its spine and limbs.

It is just as well that the boy was admitted to the hospital. The parasitic twin growing inside him took up as much as two thirds of Feng’s stomach and if left untreated could have lead to his death.

Twins are formed when an egg splits following fertilization. Conjoined twins are formed when the egg itself fails to fully separate.

The foetus was 20cm wide and had developed a spine, fingers and toes. It had grown so much that it was taking up almost two-thirds of the boy’s stomach, doctors said.

The rare case of conjoined twins, known as cryptodidymus, is the case is extremely rare and possibly unprecedented in medicine, the Inquisitr reports. Conjoined twins form when the fertilised egg fails to separate completely.

Source: hi5 buzz

60-year-old woman in China gives birth to twin girls

A woman in China who gave birth to twin girls after an IVF treatment at the age of 60 in 2010 following the death of her only child has commented to the media on the birth. She may be the oldest person in the country to give birth.

Fox News reported that because of China’s the birth is extremely unusual in the country because of the country’s one child policy. She gave birth after the death of her only child.

Clinics and countries throughout the world impose limits on IVF treatment. The treatment is less effective with age. Such treatments also cause concerns for the welfare of children who are born after the treatment.

Sheng Hailin, is now 63. She lost her first daughter after an accidental gas poisoning case in 2009, according to the China Herald.

“To survive and free myself of the loneliness, I decided to have another child in my old age,” the newspaper quoted Hailin as saying.

The Daily Mail reported she and her husband gave birth to survive and be “free from loneliness.” Because of the births, Mrs. Hailin has not been able to retire and instead has had to increase her work schedule.  She said she is sorry she is not able to spend as much time with her children as she would like.

“‘For the baby girls, I have given out all I have,” she explained to the China Daily.
The Chinese government in November granted couples the right to have children if one parent is an only child.

According to an estimate, one million families in the country have lost their sole descendant after the beginning of the one child policy in the late 1970s. Another estimate calculates that four to seven million more are expected to do so in the next thirty years.

A portion of the couple’s earnings and pension is used to pay two babysitters, the Christian Post
reported.

Mrs. Hailin works as a health lecturer said some of her “lectures may only last one day, but sometimes I
have to stay three or four days in one place.”

Source: Digital Journal

Nineteen students sick in China from poisoned yoghurt

Nineteen primary school children in China have been hospitalised after drinking yoghurt said to be laced with rat poison and herbicide, the Xinhua state news said.

A 34-year-old woman from Loudi city in the central province of Hunan confessed to poisoning the yoghurt drink before delivering to the students, Xinhua said on Saturday. It said the woman was suspected to be suffering from a mental disorder.

Three children were in serious condition but their lives were not in danger, Xinhua said. Investigations were going on.

There have been several attacks on schools in China in recent years while at the same time, food safety has become a contentious issue with a rising number of food-poisoning cases due in part to lax safety standards at small factories.

Source: South China Morning Post

70,000 HIV cases detected in China since January

Around 70,000 new HIV cases were reported in China in the first nine months of the year, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS to 434,000.

From January to September, 80.7 million people received tests for HIV, an increase of 8.9 percent from the same period last year, reported Xinhua citing a National Health and Family Planning Commission statement.

A total of 3,413 treatment organisations were set up in 31 provincial-level regions.

China tested 7.43 million pregnant women for HIV/AIDS in the first nine months of the year to prevent possible mother-to-child transmission, the statement said.

Source: Two circles

 

Diabetes rises in China, reaching ‘alert’ level

The disease was more common in China than in the United States even though the population was slimmer

Almost 12 percent of adults in China had diabetes in 2010, with economic prosperity driving the disease to slightly higher proportions than in the United States, researchers said Tuesday.

The overall prevalence of diabetes in China in 2010 was found to be 11.6 percent of adults — 12.1 percent in men, and 11 percent in women, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

In the United States, about 11.3 percent of people over 20 have diabetes according to 2011 data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The disease was more common in China than in the United States even though the population was slimmer — average body mass index, a ratio of height and body weight, was just 23.7 in China compared to 28.7 in the United States.

“The prevalence of diabetes has increased significantly in recent decades,” said the JAMA study.

“These data suggest that diabetes may have reached an alert level in the Chinese general population, with the potential for a major epidemic of diabetes-related complications, including cardiovascular disease, stroke, and chronic kidney disease in China in the near future without an effective national intervention.”

Only 30 percent of Chinese with diabetes were aware of their condition, it said.

Further, about half of the population has high blood sugar, or a condition known as pre-diabetes, according to a nationally representative sample of Chinese adults.

Diabetes has been rising in China along with the nation`s economic growth. In 1980, the prevalence of diabetes was less than one percent of the population.

The latest findings mark a more than two percentage point increase over 2007, when a national survey found a 9.7 percent prevalence of diabetes, or about 92.5 million adults.

The current data puts the total number of cases of diabetes in China at 113.9 million.

Worldwide, diabetes affects about 8.3 percent of the global population, or 371 million people.

“China is now among the countries with the highest diabetes prevalence in Asia and has the largest absolute disease burden of diabetes in the world,” said the study.

The Chinese survey included more than 98,650 people and was led by Guang Ning, head of the Shanghai Institute of Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases and colleagues with the 2010 China Non-communicable Disease Surveillance Group.

Diabetes was more common in urban areas and among young and middle aged people who were overweight or obese, and was found to be increasing along with economic development.

The research suggested that one cause for the growing trend could be poor nutrition among pregnant women and young babies, combined with overeating later in life.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the disease, and can be managed with improved nutrition and exercise, as well as medication if needed.

According to an accompanying editorial in JAMA by Juliana Chan of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, “rapid modernization” has fuelled an environment that encourages diabetes “characterized by food abundance, physical inactivity, and psychosocial stress.”

The CDC says that diabetes is a top cause of blindness, kidney failure and amputations of the legs and feet, and was the seventh leading cause of death in the US in 2007.

One in three US adults will have diabetes by 2050 if current trends continue, according to the CDC.

The disease is characterized by the body`s shortage of insulin, or an inability to use the hormone efficiently for converting glucose into energy.

Source: http://zeenews.india.com/news/health/health-news/diabetes-rises-in-china-reaching-alert-level_23744.html