Featured Articles

Motivating youth to stay tobacco free

[PHP Nepal Vol 3 Issue 6 June 2013] | According to World Health Organization (WHO) report on the global tobacco epidemic 2011, tobacco use continues to be the leading global cause of preventable death. It kills nearly six million people and causes hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage worldwide each year. Most of these deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and this disparity is expected to widen further over the next several decades. It is also stated in the report that if current trends continue, by 2030 tobacco will kill more than 8 million people worldwide each year, with 80% of these premature deaths among people living in low- and middle-income countries.

Bovine tuberculosis: a potential public health risk in Nepal

[PHP Nepal Vol 3 Issue 3 Mar 2013] | According to the 2012 Global Tuberculosis Report of World Health Organization (WHO), there were an estimated 8.7 million new cases of Tuberculosis (TB) and 1.4 million deaths in the world in 2011. Geographically, the burden of TB is highest in Asia and Africa and almost 60% of cases are in the South East Asia and Western Pacific regions. As per the annual report (2010/11) of National Tuberculosis Control Program (NTP), in Nepal, 35,964 cases of tuberculosis were registered from mid July 2010 to mid July 2011.

The new superbug

[PHP Nepal Vol 3 Issue 1 Jan 2013] | “What exactly is this Clostridium difficile (C. difficile)?” Given the amount of media sensation this super-bug has created, it is not surprising that as an Internal Medicine specialist, I get asked this question a lot. With all justified press coverage this topic is getting, this is a reasonable and, in fact, a very important question to ask. To take a step back, there are several billion bacteria that reside in our colons, called gastrointestinal “microbiome”. These bacteria talk to each other and to our colon and our immune system in very complicated ways to create a mutually dependent relationship.

An overview of cervical cancer

[PHP Nepal Vol 3 Issue 2 Feb 2013] | Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in the world. It was responsible for 2, 75,000 deaths, about 88% of which occurred in developing countries in 2008, says International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Nepal Cervical Cancer Prevention Situation Analysis, 2008 estimated that there were about 10,020 new cases of invasive cervical cancer and about 26,000- 45,000 pre-cancerous lesion. In addition, World Health Organization (2010) ranked cervical cancer as the most frequent cancer among women age 15 to 44 years of age in Nepal.

HIV and Millennium Development Goal Six

[PHP Nepal Vol 2 Issue 11 Dec 2012] | To combat HIV is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — Goal six. MDGs are an international commitment and a developmental agenda which all member countries should abide by 2015. Nepal is on track to achieve number of goals such as those related to child mortality, maternal health and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases.