Seoul, June 29 (IANS) Medical school professors and community doctors in South Korea decided on Saturday to convene a one-day nationwide debate next month on the government’s medical reform, a decision that will apparently result in a collective one-day walkout.

A doctors’ consultative group, known as the “special committee for upright medical care”, resolved to hold the debate on July 26 with participation from doctors of every discipline, including medical school professors, reports Yonhap News Agency.

Represented by medical professors as well as trainee and community doctors, the committee was launched earlier this month as the representative body to negotiate with the government over medical reform.

Committee officials said the debate will inevitably lead to a one-day suspension of medical services by participants, who are likely to be mostly medical professors at general university hospitals.

Committee members also reiterated their call for the government to abandon its medical school quota hike, which they said was decided without scientific justification.

The decision came amid the continuing standoff between the government and the doctors’ community over the government’s decision to increase admission quotas across medical schools nationwide by about 1,500 seats for next year in an effort to address a shortage of doctors.

Medical professors at three major hospitals of Yonsei University have been on an indefinite walkout since Thursday, demanding “tangible measures” from the government to resolve the ongoing health care crisis.

Since late February, trainee doctors nationwide have also been staying off their duties at general hospitals in protest, significantly reducing medical service capacities at the hospitals.

–IANS

shs/pgh

New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Having meaningful social interactions with peers is associated with lower loneliness and greater affective well-being, a new study has shown.

To conduct the study, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the researchers followed three cohorts of university students over three years, collecting data on their social interactions and momentary well-being.

“Our research indicates that engaging in meaningful social interactions has net positive outcomes for affective well-being, stress, and loneliness,” said lead author Mahnaz Roshanaei, of Stanford University.

“Spending more time in substantive and deep conversations with anyone with either strong or weak ties, results in benefits for the average person’s well-being outcomes,” she added.

The study found greater benefits for well-being when meaningful social interactions happened in person (or face-to-face), compared to other communication channels like direct messaging and texting.

Meaningful social interactions while resting resulted in higher well-being than those occurring during activities such as studying or dining.

The researchers acknowledged that their study had limitations, including the fact that it focused on university students and may not be generalisable to the general population or outside of the US.

“In the future, the results of this study can be used in designing personalised intervention-oriented strategies for encouraging healthy social lives, such as personalised recommendations for maintaining social support and connections,” said Roshanaei.

–IANS

shs/svn

New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) A short-term, low-salt diet along with less body fluids may help repair and even regenerate certain cells in kidneys, scientists in the US have reported after showing promising results in animal studies.

A loss of salt and body fluid can stimulate kidney regeneration and repair in mice, according to a study led by stem cell scientist Janos Peti-Peterdi from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California.

This regenerative response relies on a small population of kidney cells in a region known as the macula densa (MD), which senses salt and exerts control over filtration, hormone secretion, and other key functions of this vital organ, according to the study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Currently, there is no cure for this silent disease. By the time kidney disease is diagnosed, the kidneys are irreversibly damaged and ultimately need replacement therapies, such as dialysis or transplantation.

To address this growing epidemic, Peti-Peterdi, first author Georgina Gyarmati, and their colleagues took a highly non-traditional approach.

As opposed to studying how diseased kidneys fail to regenerate, the scientists focused on how healthy kidneys originally evolved.

The team fed lab mice a very low salt diet, along with a commonly prescribed drug called an ACE inhibitor that further lowered salt and fluid levels.

The mice followed this regimen for up to two weeks, since extremely low salt diets can trigger serious health problems if continued long term.

In the region of the MD, the scientists observed regenerative activity, which they could block by administering drugs that interfere with signals sent by the MD.

When the scientists further analysed mouse MD cells, they identified both genetic and structural characteristics that were surprisingly similar to nerve cells.

In the mouse MD cells, the scientists also identified specific signals from certain genes, which could be enhanced by a low-salt diet to regenerate kidney structure and function.

“We feel very strongly about the importance of this new way of thinking about kidney repair and regeneration,” said Peti-Peterdi. “And we are fully convinced that this will hopefully end up soon in a very powerful and new therapeutic approach.”

–IANS

na/svn

New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) In another bid to ensure healthcare for all, the government has unveiled three new initiatives which will play a major role in improving the quality of healthcare services in the country.

These initiatives include virtual National Quality Assurance Standards (NQAS) assessment for Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (AAM); a new dashboard which will help health institutions in quickly monitoring compliance with respect to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS); and a spot food licence and registration initiative for food vendors.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Prataprao Ganpatrao Jadhav, said the government has established over 1.73 lakh AAMs, doubled the number of medical colleges since 2014, increased the number of AIIMS from seven to 23 and more than doubled the number of PG and MBBS seats since 2014.

“The government is committed to strengthening the healthcare system with more skilled human resources and quality infrastructure that can tackle both present and future medical challenges”, the minister noted.

Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Anupriya Patel, said that the launch of the virtual NQAS assessment and dashboard “will lead to improvement in providing quality of healthcare in public health facilities while the launch of the spot food licence will enhance the Ease of Doing Business in India”.

NQAS for Integrated Public Health Laboratories (IPHL) will improve the quality and competence of management and testing systems, which will positively impact the reliability of test results.

The launch of the spot food licence initiative is a ground-breaking new functionality for the instant issuance of licences and registrations through the Food Safety and Compliance System (FoSCoS).

FoSCoS is a pan-India IT platform designed to address all food safety regulatory needs.

Minister Patel said the government is working hard on building a robust and quality healthcare infrastructure by 2047, in accordance with Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s vision.

–IANS

na/rad

Hyderabad, June 28 (IANS) ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) has developed Nutrition Atlas, an online virtual, interactive web application that helps access nutrition data from different national surveys from different time points and geographies on a single platform.

NIN Director Dr R. Hemalatha launched the application available at www.nutritionatlasindia.in or www.nurtritionatlasindia.com.

The interactive tool has brought together vast nutrition-related data from different authentic national surveys from the past and present in one place. This web application has been developed by a team led by Dr Subba Rao M. Gavaravarapu, head of the Nutrition Communication Division as a one-stop ready-reckoner that enables users to access nutrition data on one platform from different time points by age, gender, physiological groups, and geographies and visualise them in an easily understandable manner.

“Nutrition Atlas 2.0 is designed to be a state-of-the-art standard web-based dashboard application with an interactive user interface made using advanced technologies. It allows users to geo-visualise and compare a given nutrition indicator from multiple surveys and timepoints simultaneously. All data is accompanied by a succinct description of data sources, links, references, methods of data collection,” said Dr Hemalatha, who is also co-ordinator of the project.

“The Nutrition Atlas concept was initially launched as a very rudimentary web application in 2017, but now with all the new data available this stands as a platform that provides complex statistical data on the nutrition and health profile of the population of India from diverse sources on a single web application,” said Dr Vishnu Vardhana Rao, former director of ICMR-National Institute of Medical Statistics (NIMS), New Delhi who coordinated the project along with NIN team.

The data available on Nutrition Atlas 2.0 are sourced from various national-level databases like National Family Health Surveys, District Level Household and Facility Surveys, Annual Health Surveys, National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau Surveys, Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey, and Longitudinal Aging Study in India.

“Time trends of nutrition status and diet-related NCDs are provided along with a comparison between different timepoints and databases. The charts, geo-maps, and tabular data visualised on the dashboard can be downloaded in multiple file formats like PDF, PNG, JPEG, SVG and PPTX for use in academics, research, media and education. The portal’s ‘nutri-education’ component serves as a nutrition education resource for visitors with ready-reckoner-like information on dietary recommendations, nutrient functions, sources, and values of important nutrients of raw foods,” said Dr Subba Rao.

–IANS

ms/vd