Poliomyelitis is a deadly disease which may affect the central nervous system leading to irreversible flaccid paralysis of the legs. Since it strikes children at a very young age, affected children are paralyzed for their entire life.
Google’s philanthropic arm - Google.org is about to release a movie titled “The Final Inch” to document the historic effort to eradicate this disease from the planet. Once we succeed this will be second disease after small pox to be found only in history books (and/or some covert lab, somewhere in the world).
The Final Inchis a 38-minute film about the historic global effort to eradicate polio. Here, the story told is as much about the messengers as the message. You’ll meet Munzareen Fatima, one of the thousands of community “foot soldiers” across India working to sway reluctant families to vaccinate their children, and Dr. Ashfaq Bhat, who travels into the backwaters of India’s Ganges Basin by boat and foot to detect emerging cases of polio. Martha Mason and Mikail Davenport bring us into their lives and describe the paralyzing challenges of childhood polio, reminding us how endemic polio once was in the United States.
Filmed in high-definition (HD) in cinematic style — wide open shots to give a strong sense of place — The Final Inch captures their stories, and we hope it is both a tribute and an inspiration of hope. With a final push, this is a disease that can, and should, be eradicated finally.
Cholesterol is a normal constituent of the human body. However excess cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia or sometimes called dyslipidemia) is one of the most important risk factors for developing heart attack and stroke.
Here are a couple of videos on cholesterol explaining why is cholesterol important to the body, how it causes disease and what lifestyle changes are required to decrease excess cholesterol.
What does high cholesterol do? (Time 4:11 min)
Lifestyle changes for high cholesterol (Time 7:40 min)
Animated video explaining how coronary angioplasty with stent insertion is performed. Also called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), it is the procedure of choice for most cases of heart attack.
Coronary artery bypass grafting is performed for severe disease as in involvement of all 3 coronary vessels or left main coronary artery.
Acquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is potentially fatal disease caused by HIV virus. AIDS renders our body defenseless against any and every infection in the world by killing the immune system.
The currently available treatment - highly active anti-retroviral treatment (HAART) is very effective in giving people a few more decades to live. However, HAART has 2 major problems:
It is not a cure and the medications have to be taken lifelong
The side effects of treatment at times may be as bad as cancer chemotherapy
Therefore, it is of imperative importance that we find a cure for this deadly disease which is safer (ideally without side effects) and does not need to be taken over a protracted period of time.
Mortality data of HIV/AIDS in the world and US:
Video: “Heartrending pictures of AIDS” in Zimbabwe, Africa presented by Kristen Ashburn at TED.
(Choose flash player version)
Video:BLOODLINE: AIDS and Family is a short documentary movie by Kristen Ashburn and takes an intimate look at the harsh reality of the AIDS pandemic in Africa (available for online viewing on Mediastorm Project website). Video: HIV 101 - This is a 10 minute video explaining HIV and AIDS (YouTube Link)
Tuberculosis is treatable and preventable. Inadequate treatment in many countries is leading to the emergence of extremely drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) for which there is no effective treatment available. XDR-TB in most cases leads to death within weeks of diagnosis making it deadlier than any cancer (in which survival is measured in months and not weeks).
This photoessay by James Nachtwey captures the horrors of this deadly disease.
More research is needed for prevention of TB. We need better vaccines to prevent transmission. BCG vaccine is minimally effective in preventing pulmonary infection and moderately effective against disseminated infection.
Sadly the best drugs for treatment of TB are the ones we have been using for many decades. We may have made enormous advances in all other fields of medicine but in the last several decades we have added very little to our clinical armamentarium to fight tuberculosis.
If the current situation continues XDR-TB may be the next pandemic.
