Young India Network for Good Health

Patna, April 16 -- Liquor may have been banned in Bihar, but advertisements - surrogate or otherwise - of liquor firms, adorn prime locations in the heart of Patna. This was till about a few hours back. For, it took all of 53 minutes for the Patna district administration to pull down an advertisement of a liquor firm, occupying prime space at an upmarket shopping mall in Patliputra Colony here on Friday evening. This reporter received through WhatsApp a photograph of the ad at the shopping mall from an avid HT reader, Dr Satyajit Sinha. The HT forwarded the photograph to district magistrate Sanjay Kumar Agrawal at 8.15pm, seeking his comments. Busy at the Ramnavami function, the DM did not take the call, but replied through WhatsApp at 9...http://www.htsyndication.com/htsportal/article/Liquor-ad-in-Patna-mall-pulled-down-in-53-minutes/12559191

Patna, April 16 -- The low occupancy at 38 de-addiction centres across as many districts in the state has forced the government to ponder if it should compensate alcohol addicts for wage loss during their stay at the de-addiction centres. The discussion to compensate addicts for wage loss stems from the fact that kala-azar patients receive a similar allowance. The government gives kala-azar patients a cumulative allowance of R 7,100, of which the state government pays R 6,600 and the Centre R 500. If government sources were to be believed, officials have been told to weigh all options, including the prospect of misutilisation of the allowance. Skeptics believe if the government were to fix wage loss allowance, it may even encourage unemp...http://www.htsyndication.com/htsportal/article/Govt-mulls-compensation-for-wage-loss-of-addicts/12554055

Myth busted: Booze offers no net health benefits Bloomberg | Mar 23, 2016, It's an irresistible headline: People who drink alcohol in moderation actually live longer than those who abstain entirely. However, a study has shown the fact suffers from a big flaw: The "abstainers" category includes people who used to drink but have stopped. They may be inherently less healthy, than people who drink in moderation. That doesn't mean that drinking in moderation causes people to live longer. Researchers at University of Victoria in British Columbia examined 87 studies on the relationship between alcohol and mortality that involved nearly four million people. Only 13 of them strictly separated life-long non-drinkers from people who used to drink or those who imbibe occasionally. Analysing the studies that were free from "abstainer bias" showed no significant benefits for moderate drinkers compared to lifetime abstainers. And when they compared moderate drinkers w...

Heady childhood Marijuana addiction is coming out of universities and into schools with children as young as 11 experimenting with it Veenu Sandhu   March 19, 2016  "Doctor, have you tried marijuana?" "No" "Then how do you know it is bad?" Brahmdeep Sindhu, senior psychiatrist at the Civil Hospital in Gurgaon, was stumped when a 14-year-old from a prominent school threw this question at him. "The child then went to great lengths, quoting blogs he had read on the internet, to convince me why he, many of his classmates and some of his juniors, children as young as 12, thought it was harmless, even beneficial, to smoke up." Every month, 15 to 20 new cases of schoolchildren, boys and girls, are brought by their parents to Sindhu for counselling. They are all hooked to cannabis: often marijuana  (the leaf of the plant) and sometimes hashish (extracted from the plant's resin). Far away from Gurgaon, i...

Nada India recommendations as part of National Child Rights Coalition for a National Action Plan (Ministry of Women & Child Development, Government of India) to secure the rights of children in India Consultation held on 30 th & 1 st Oct 2015 in Delhi. By Suneel Vatsyayan Child & Alcohol World Health Organisation (WHO) defines alcohol as a psychoactive substance with dependence-producing properties. A number of studies have shown that the harmful use of alcohol can act as a large disease, social and economic burden in societies. In the year 2010, WHO estimated the average alcohol per capita consumption in India to be 4.3 which included both recorded and unrecorded data and the prevalence of alcohol use disorders and alcohol dependence was found to be 2.6%. In a comparison based study conducted in Ranchi, in parent-child relationship a significant difference was found between the children of alcoholic and non- alcoholic parents mainly in the domains of symbolic...

Nada India team conducted a workshop for World Vision Faridabad on Child Protection & Substance abuse. More than 40 community leaders mostly women and young boys participated. This workshop was part of Nada India campaign "Drug free family & School: A Child right"  They were helped to formulate an action plan by involving women self help groups and child parliament at community level.   

Alcohol Promotion by Celebrities Is Health Hazard! Increasingly celebrities in India seek to make loads of money in a short period of time, and choose collaboration with unethical companies, promoting harmful products. And then there are powerful role models who choose another path… BY   Suneel Vatsyayan The endorsement by celebrities of products can have serious adverse effects on health – for example in the case of MAGGI and school children. Maggi product “2 minute noodle” (that is popular with school kids) was  found to be containing Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG)  and lead higher than the permissible limits. The samples collected by Uttar Pradesh Food Safety and Drug Administration proved that MAGGI’s advertising messages, driven home by Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit – falsely boasted “nutritional value” of the noodles. The common people increasingly feel they are being cheated and I can sense that outrage against stars end...