The government will shortly launch a scheme to make male and female contraceptives available at people's doorsteps in a major bid to boost population control efforts, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said Friday.…
Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) volunteers would promote the use of contraceptives - both male and female - at the household level in targeted districts, he said.
'Under the scheme, the centre will make available contraceptives free of cost at the block level, from where ASHA volunteers will pick up their supplies,' Azad said, addressing the 53rd Convocation of the International Institute of Population Sciences (IIPS) here.

Azad said the 2011 Census shows that efforts towards population stabilisation have yielded results.

'We have succeeded in reducing both fertility and mortality rates substantially and increasing the average life expectancy of the Indian population,' he said but expressed concern at the large regional disparities in demographic outcomes across different Indian states.

For instance, he said the Empowered Action Group (EAG) States, like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgrah - where 45 percent of India's population resides - lag behind the rest of the country in both fertility and mortality rate decline.

Azad emphasised that the government was committed to providing quality and universal health care to the rural population through the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).

'The funding to the health sector is going to be increased from the present level of less than 1 percent of GDP to 2-3 percent of GDP during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-17),' he said.

He also said that under the newly-launched Janani-Shishu Suraksha Karyakram (JSSK), the government has made child deliveries at government health institutions completely free.

Launched June 1 this year, the scheme provides for free diagnostic tests including ultrasound, free medicine, free provision of blood, free diet up to three days for normal delivery and up to seven days in case of caesarean births and even free to and fro transport from home to hospital to all pregnant women, Azad said.

The IIPS is a premier academic institution in the field of population studies.

It has trained over 3,000 students and professionals in the field from India and several Asian countries including China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and others.

It is renowned for its expertise in conducting large scale surveys, the results of which help the policy makers in formulating appropriate responses.

Read more »

Children who see their parents drunk are twice as likely to regularly get drunk themselves, a survey of young teenagers has suggested.

Poor parental supervision also raises the likelihood of teenage drinking, said the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The Ipsos MORI survey found the behaviour of friends is also a powerful factor in predicting drinking habits.
The more time teenagers spend with friends, the more likely they are to drink alcohol, it suggested.
In a survey of 5,700 children aged 13 to 16, carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, researchers found one in five claimed to have been drunk by the time they were 14.
By the age of 16, half of those questioned said they had been drunk.



Influences 
But the study also looked at what influences excessive teen drinking - and the habits of parents seem to be particularly powerful.
The odds of a teenager getting drunk repeatedly is twice as great if they have seen their parents under the influence, even if only a few times.
And the authors say that parental supervision is also important - if parents don't know where their children are on a Saturday night, or let them watch 18 certificate films unsupervised, they are more likely to have had an alcoholic drink.

Teenagers' friends also have a significant impact on drinking behaviour.

The odds of a teenager drinking to excess more than double if they spend more than two evenings a week with friends.
Spending every evening with friends multiplies the odds of excessive drinking more than four times.
Pamela Bremner from Ipsos MORI, the lead author of the report, said: "For the first time in the UK, this study ranks what most influences young people's drinking behaviour.
"It found that the behaviour of friends and family is the most common influential factor in determining how likely and how often a young person will drink alcohol."
Conflicting evidence
But there is conflicting evidence on how to introduce young people to alcohol - leaving parents with some difficult questions unanswered.
Researchers found mixed messages about the ideal age and ways of introducing teenagers to alcohol.
Generally, those introduced to alcohol at a very young age had greater odds of being a regular drinker and of having been drunk multiple times.
But there were differences in the pattern for young people of different ages.
"This research shows that parents can have more influence on their teenagers' behaviour than perhaps many assumed," said Claire Turner, Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
"Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers' drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess.
"Being introduced to alcohol at a very young age - for example, under 10 years old - makes it more likely that they will drink and drink to excess as teenagers.
"But there are differences in patterns across the group. So for the older teenagers, if they are introduced to alcohol later in life via friends, away from adult supervision, they are also more likely to drink to excess."
Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern, said the report confirms that from the beginning of a child's life parents have a strong influence on their children's future drinking patterns.
"Parents have to realise and accept that whether intended or not, their own attitudes towards drinking, their own rate of drinking and any drunkenness are clear signals to children that this is acceptable and standard behaviour.
"In addition, parents must accept that allowing children to drink unsupervised can increase the risk of their children being drunk and this can have harmful consequences.
"Government ministers must also look at some of the causes of why it is so easy for children to obtain alcohol, usually from the home.
"Government should look to see if they've done everything they can to stop the large supermarkets from continuing to heavily promote cheap alcohol which incentivises more alcohol purchases and therefore results in more alcohol being stored in the home."

Read more »

A massive study of human genes has uncovered three that are directly linked to the mysterious migraine headache, including one gene found exclusively in women.
“We were surprised and excited to find these associations,” Dr. Markus Schürks of Harvard Medical School told the Star on Wednesday.
“They are two more pieces in a big puzzle, but we can go from here to understand many things.”
Women are hit with excruciating, debilitating migraines up to four times more often than men, but other than being common and hereditary, they are not well understood by science.

Using the genomes of 23,000 women in the Women’s Health Institute study, the Harvard team studied and compared results with more than a dozen scientists from leading institutes in Europe.
It is, explained Schürks, a bit like “looking for a needle in a haystack.” There are at least 330,000 variants, and sometimes up to 2 million, in a single point along a gene.
What they found was a connection to genes responsible for how neuropathic pain forms and for a protein receptor also linked to high cholesterol.
“We understand now that migraine is related to other pain forms, which has been debated by people in the past.”
But because genes do many things in the body, the trick is separating what piece of a gene is connected to a particular function and how that cascades through the system to create a blinding headache.
From here, said Schürks, scientists can further investigate how migraines are connected to glutamate homeostatics, which produce a profound effect on the central nervous system.
Only when science can dissect how genes act at the molecular level, he said, can they work on new therapies for treatment.

Read more »