Tag: WHO

To drink or not to drink: Israeli startup ‘Lishtot’ has the answer

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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You are out trekking, your water bottle is empty and you can upon a stream and think – drink or not to drink?

An Israeli startup, ‘Lishtot’, has the answer!

Netanel Raisch is a four time startup founder, has four patents to his name and for the last four years, he’s been building his latest startup, Lishtot.

Lishtot in Hebrew means to drink, said Raisch, co-founder and chief executive officer.

“Water is the most essential thing that we drink, we consume, we pay for it and we do it for air. But we don’t know anything about the water that we consume. Based on the Indian statistics, 30 percent of the bottled water in India is fake. You need to know what you are paying for. So, what we want is to give people a tool to decide to drink or not to drink that’s why the company name is Lishtot,” Raisch said.

Raisch’s partner Dr Allen Bavor found that water actually has interactions with materials that generate electric field.

For instance, water with arsenic will have a different electric field than the water with biological residue e-coli and salmonella.

Bavor said, “What we do with this device is we actually program it with in algorithm to detect good water. If it detects good water like drinkable water it will show you blue otherwise it will show you red.”

“So I decided to test the ‘Test Drop’. Bottled water – good to drink. Pour some into a glass and take a sip. Then on testing the water in the glass the Test Drop indicates red. That’s because the water now has traces of my saliva – making it unfit for others to consume. He claims the startup is the first to detect the water contamination without transmitting anything. Since the team is merely collecting data, they manage keep cost low.”

“We don’t need any transmitter or to shoot any beam into water, we don’t need. We have two types of competitors. First, water labs that charge you a lot to give you higher resolution. Second, are water testing kits that pack in contents like kind of chemicals and other thing that you need to mix, you need to be like a scientist to use that. Hence, we want to give users a tool that anyone can use,” said Bavor.

How It Works?

The test drop transmits data to the Lishtot app where one can set their geography and the sensitivity of the test drop.

Over time, the team believes their water safety map and database will become the go-to solution for citizens and travelers to detect abnormalities and find clean water and for government bodies and companies to watch out for negative trends and fix them.

Presently, all of the manufacturing takes place in Israel and they have capacity to produce up to 100,000 units per month.

Lishtot is one of the startups recognised under the Israel-India Innovation Bridge and Netanel and his team have already started working in India which they see as their biggest market.

Presently, Lishtot’s core technology can detect over 20 different contaminants at World Health Organization (WHO) standards and the team is also building tools that citizens can use to directly to report problems to their water utility companies.

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Israeli innovation converts air to water to give you clean hands

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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According to a World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report, more than 1 in 3 health facilities in low and middle-income countries do not have any access to water.

When the reliability, safety and distance of the water supply is taken into account, that ratio increases to 1 in 2.

So lack of water is clearly a key challenge, the others being access to soap and functioning toilets.

Solving this problem of access to water and soap is Israel-based Max Simonovsky, founder and chief executive officer, Soapy.

A scientist with a degree in medical sciences and he has spent many years in the development and sales of scientific equipment decided to experiment with existing technology that converts humidity in the air to water to create an all-in-one hygiene micro-station that’s not dependent on ground water or municipal water supply.

The solution Simonovsky and his team have built is called ‘Soapy’.

He said, “99.9% of companies around the around the globe are trying to do the same. They are generating water only for drinking while they are forgetting about people that need to wash themselves because you can drink as you need two liters a day. But, you still need to wash yourself, wash your face, wash your hands, wash your vegetables, brush your teeth and take a shower in order to continue to be healthy.”

How Does Soapy Work?

The Soapy hygiene station is a modular device that converts humidity in the air to water using solar energy.

Each device is triggered by a sensor to dispense the adequate amount of water and a proprietary soap formulation to ensure a full wash as prescribed by the WHO.

In India, the first Soapy IOT or internet of things enabled station has been setup at a school in Bagepalli in Karnataka in partnership with non-profit, Swasti Health Catalysts.

He further explains, “Each system is triggered without any buttons or paddles or valves. There is a smart bracelet each user has. On this bracelet, we have a unique ID linked to the user. We have gender and age which we can use to monitor who used the unit when and how it affects their lives. We can generate insights and the links between hygiene to health and hygiene to attendance to school and then to education.”

Each device can create up to 100 liters of water a day and provides more than 600 washing cycles, while conventional hand washing systems provide between 50 and 200 cycles.

The team at Soapy claims this leads to 95 percent savings in water consumption, an important metric to consider in dry or arid regions that have limited natural water supply.

Soapy is also working with partners like Swasti to move beyond schools and set up these stations at healthcare centres and at the village community level too.

Simonovsky said, “The cheapest unit is $500 and the most expensive right now is 2,000. The price for the user is Rs 125-130 for a year. So imagine yourself if you are dilated to 220 or 365 days, it means that you are paying less than half a rupee for each day.”

Each station has a life of 5-6 years and all the research and development (R&D) and manufacturing presently takes place in Israel itself.

But over time, Simonovsky is open to moving some part of the manufacturing and assembly to India to ensure lower costs for his distribution and channel partners.

After all, Simonovsky is clear, he wants to build a for-profit business that’s scalable.

Shedding light on company’s future plans, Simonovsky said, “We are for profit organisation and the reason for that is that we wanted to expand and not to rely on outsourcing of funds. We want to rely on those who can be our customer. We are now developing a unit that is going to be placed within food services environment. We will reduce the price of water because we are saving 95 percent of water units and we will increase a lot of hygiene products.”

Soapy is one of the Israeli companies recognised under the India-Israel Innovation Bridge and is working with the teams at the global Pears Challenge, iCreate in Ahmedabad and Livpure to expand its network in India.

By next year, we can expect Soapy installations across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Delhi.

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Ebola survivors suffer severe mental and neurological problems

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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People who survive the deadly Ebola virus can continue to suffer severe psychiatric and neurological problems including depression, debilitating migraines, nerve pain and stroke, according to a study published on Wednesday.

Researchers who analysed patients infected during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa found that some survivors had such severe health conditions that they were left unable to care for themselves.

“We knew that a disease as severe as Ebola would leave survivors with major problems – however, it took me aback to see young and previously active people who had survived but were now unable to move half their bodies, or talk, or pick up their children,” said Janet Scott of Britain’s University of Liverpool, who co-led the research.

She said the findings show a need for larger and more detailed studies of Ebola survivors compared to matched controls who did not get virus.

Published in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal, the study looked at patient notes from of more than 300 Ebola survivors in Sierra Leone, one of the countries worst hit in the 2014-2016 epidemic.

Thirty-four selected patients were then asked to attend a joint neuro-psychiatric clinic in 2016 where they underwent a full neurological examination, psychiatric screening and specialist investigations including brain scan imaging.

Patrick Howlett of King’s College London, who co-led the research, said its results showed that Ebola survivors can suffer with “post-Ebola syndrome” or PES – a wide range of disorders “from minor to extremely severe and disabling”.

Neurological problems included stroke, debilitating migraine-type headaches and nerve pain, while the most frequent psychiatric diagnoses among the survivors studied were depression and anxiety.

The 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola epidemic killed more than 11,300 people and infected around 28,000 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. World Health Organization (WHO) estimates suggest there are well over 10,000 people who survived the disease.

The researchers said the findings pointed to an urgent need for specialist medical professionals trained in the needs of Ebola survivors and how best to treat PES.

“Post-Ebola syndrome is not going away, and those with the condition deserve better treatment,” said Scott.

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Compulsive video-game playing could be mental health problem

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Obsessive video gamers know how to anticipate dangers in virtual worlds. The World Health Organization says they now should be on guard for a danger in the real world: spending too much time playing.

In its latest revision to a disease classification manual, the UN health agency said Monday that compulsively playing video games now qualifies as a mental health condition. The statement confirmed the fears of some parents but led critics to warn that it may risk stigmatizing too many young video players.

WHO said classifying “gaming disorder” as a separate addiction will help governments, families and health care workers be more vigilant and prepared to identify the risks. The agency and other experts were quick to note that cases of the condition are still very rare, with no more than up to 3 percent of all gamers believed to be affected.

Dr. Shekhar Saxena, director of WHO’s department for mental health and substance abuse, said the agency accepted the proposal that gaming disorder should be listed as a new problem based on scientific evidence, in addition to “the need and the demand for treatment in many parts of the world.”

Dr. Joan Harvey, a spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society, warned that the new designation might cause unnecessary concern among parents.

“People need to understand this doesn’t mean every child who spends hours in their room playing games is an addict, otherwise medics are going to be flooded with requests for help,” she said.

Others welcomed WHO’s new classification, saying it was critical to identify people hooked on video games quickly because they are usually teenagers or young adults who don’t seek help themselves.

“We come across parents who are distraught, not only because they’re seeing their child drop out of school, but because they’re seeing an entire family structure fall apart,” said Dr. Henrietta Bowden-Jones, a spokeswoman for behavioral addictions at Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists. She was not connected to WHO’s decision.

Bowden-Jones said gaming addictions were usually best treated with psychological therapies but that some medicines might also work.

The American Psychiatric Association has not yet deemed gaming disorder to be a new mental health problem. In a 2013 statement, the association said it’s “a condition warranting more clinical research and experience before it might be considered for inclusion” in its own diagnostic manual.

The group noted that much of the scientific literature about compulsive gamers is based on evidence from young men in Asia.

“The studies suggest that when these individuals are engrossed in Internet games, certain pathways in their brains are triggered in the same direct and intense way that a drug addict’s brain is affected by a particular substance,” the association said in that statement. “The gaming prompts a neurological response that influences feelings of pleasure and reward, and the result, in the extreme, is manifested as addictive behavior.”

Dr. Mark Griffiths, who has been researching the concept of video gaming disorder for 30 years, said the new classification would help legitimize the problem and strengthen treatment strategies.

“Video gaming is like a non-financial kind of gambling from a psychological point of view,” said Griffiths, a distinguished professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University. “Gamblers use money as a way of keeping score whereas gamers use points.”

He guessed that the percentage of video game players with a compulsive problem was likely to be extremely small — much less than 1 percent — and that many such people would likely have other underlying problems, like depression, bipolar disorder or autism.

WHO’s Saxena, however, estimated that 2 to 3 percent of gamers might be affected.

Griffiths said playing video games, for the vast majority of people, is more about entertainment and novelty, citing the overwhelming popularity of games like “Pokemon Go.”

“You have these short, obsessive bursts and yes, people are playing a lot, but it’s not an addiction,” he said.

Saxena said parents and friends of video game enthusiasts should still be mindful of a potentially harmful problem.

“Be on the lookout,” he said, noting that concerns should be raised if the gaming habit appears to be taking over.

“If (video games) are interfering with the expected functions of the person — whether it is studies, whether it’s socialization, whether it’s work — then you need to be cautious and perhaps seek help,” he said.

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Gaming addiction classified as mental health disorder by WHO

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Many parents will have thought it for a long time, but they now have a new argument to limit their children’s ‘screen time’ – addiction to video games has been recognised by World Health Organization as a mental health disorder.

The WHO’s latest reference bible of recognised and diagnosable diseases describes addiction to digital and video gaming as “a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour” that becomes so extensive that it “takes precedence over other life interests”.

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which has been updated over the past 10 years, now covers 55,000 injuries, diseases and causes of death. It forms a basis for the WHO and other experts to see and respond to trends in health.

“It enables us to understand so much about what makes people get sick and die, and to take action to prevent suffering and save lives,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement as the ICD was published.

The ICD is also used by health insurers whose reimbursements depend on ICD classifications.

This latest version – known as ICD-11 – is completely electronic for the first time, in an effort to make it more accessible to doctors and other health workers around the world.

ICD-11 also includes changes to sexual health classifications. Previous editions had categorised sexual dysfunction and gender incongruence, for example, under mental health conditions, while in ICD-11 these move to the sexual health section. The latest edition also has a new chapter on traditional medicine.

The updated ICD is scheduled to be presented to WHO member states at their annual World Health Assembly in May 2019 for adoption in January 2022, the WHO said in a statement.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

How India is beating pollution with proactive steps

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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India has been getting a lot of bad press in last few years, when it comes to environment and pollution.

The country has 14 cities in the list of most polluted 15 cities, according to World Health Organization (WHO).

Two of India’s largest rivers are among most polluted rivers in the world.

It also features towards the bottom of the list in the Environment Performance Index data released earlier in this year.

So, as the World Environment Day 2018 celebrations begins in Mumbai, let us take a look at the state of India’s environment.

India’s power generation since many decades was highly dependent of coal-fired power plants.

As of now, more than half of India’s installed power generation capacity is coal based, which contributes a lot in impacting country’s air quality.

But the good news is, government is targeting 175 gigawatt of installed renewable energy by 2022 and has made substantial progress in order to achieve this target in last few years.

Another major factor, behind India’s bad air quality is the use of biomass such as cowdung, wood as fuel. It is estimated that around 780 million people in India are still using biomass for cooking.

However, the government has made significant progress to overcome this. The national average of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) coverage in India has gone up to 82% in 2017-18 from 62% in 2014-15.

The government has also been successful in cutting down the usage of diesel vehicles in the country.

Diesel is considered more polluting than any other fuel. Government has taken various steps such as implementing stricter emission norms, banning diesel vehicles over ten years of age.

The government also has ambitious plans to go all electric by 2030, in terms of new car sales across India.

Having said that, there is still a lot of ground to cover in terms of curbing pollution.

The country generates tonnes of plastic and e-waste on a daily basis, but don’t have enough capacity to dispose or recycle it.

India generates around 62,000 litres of sewage water every day and 70% out of it, is still left untreated and flow in to our rivers and making them polluted.

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China overtakes US for healthy lifespan, says WHO data

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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China has overtaken the United States in healthy life expectancy at birth for the first time, according to World Health Organization data.

Chinese newborns can look forward to 68.7 years of healthy life ahead of them, compared with 68.5 years for American babies, the data – which relates to 2016 – showed.

American newborns can still expect to live longer overall – 78.5 years compared to China’s 76.4 – but the last 10 years of American lives are not expected to be healthy.

“The lost years of good health that are a factor in calculating healthy life expectancy at birth are lower for China, Japan, Korea and some other high income Asian countries than for high income ‘Western’ countries,” said WHO spokeswoman Alison Clements-Hunt.

The United States was one of only five countries, along with Somalia, Afghanistan, Georgia and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, where healthy life expectancy at birth fell in 2016, according to a Reuters analysis of the WHO data, which was published without year-on-year comparisons in mid-May.

The best outlook was for Singaporean babies, who can count on 76.2 years of health on average, followed by those in Japan, Spain and Switzerland. The United States came 40th in the global rankings, while China was 37th.

In terms of overall life expectancy China is also catching up with the United States, which Reuters calculations suggest it is on course to overtake around 2027.

“Chinese life expectancy has increased substantially and is now higher than for some high-income countries,” said Clements-Hunt.

Meanwhile US life expectancy is falling, having peaked at 79 years in 2014, the first such reversal for many years, Clements-Hunt said.

That reflected increasing rates of drug overdose deaths, mainly from opioids, suicides, and some other major causes among younger middle-aged Americans, particularly in less affluent areas, she said.

The world’s longest life expectancy is in Japan, at 84.2 years, meaning that babies born there in 2016 were the first to be able to look forward to seeing the next century.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Ebola preparedness much better now than for 2014 outbreak, says WHO

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The spread of Ebola to a major city in Democratic Republic of Congo is worrying but the outlook is much more optimistic than when a major outbreak was reported in West Africa in 2014, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday.

Cases of the deadly virus have been confirmed in Mbandaka, a port city on the Congo river, raising concerns that Ebola could spread downstream to the capital Kinshasa, which has a population of 10 million.

“It’s concerning that we now have cases of Ebola in an urban centre, but we are much better placed to deal with this outbreak than we were in 2014,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom told health ministers at the start of the WHO’s annual assembly.

The WHO’s previous leadership was heavily criticised for its slow response to the outbreak that was declared in March 2014 and continued until January 2016, killing over 11,300 people. It was later found to have begun in late 2013, but WHO did not call an emergency meeting until August 2014.

This time the WHO has moved rapidly to mobilise the response, convening an Emergency Committee and sending a vaccine to ring-fence the outbreak and stop it spreading further.

“I’m pleased to say that vaccination is starting as we speak today,” Tedros said.

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WHO says Congo faces ‘very high’ risk from Ebola outbreak

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Democratic Republic of Congo faces a “very high” public health risk from Ebola because the disease has been confirmed in a patient in a big city, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, raising its assessment from “high” previously.

The risk to countries in the region was now “high”, raised from “moderate”, but the global risk remained “low”, the WHO said.

The reassessment came after the first confirmed case in Mbandaka, a city of around 1.5 million in the northwest. Previous reports of the disease had all been in remote areas where Ebola might spread be more easily contained.

“The confirmed case in Mbandaka, a large urban centre located on major national and international river, road and domestic air routes, increases the risk of spread within the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to neighbouring countries,” the WHO said.

WHO Deputy Director-General for Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama had told reporters on Thursday that the risk assessment was being reviewed.

“We’re certainly not trying to cause any panic in the national or international community,” he said.

“What we’re saying though is that urban Ebola is very different phenomenon to rural Ebola because we know that people in urban areas can have far more contacts so that means that urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do.”

Later on Friday, the WHO will convene an Emergency Committee of experts to advise on the international response to the outbreak, and decide whether it constitutes a “public health emergency of international concern”.

The nightmare scenario is an outbreak in Kinshasa, a crowded city where millions live in unsanitary slums not connected to a sewer system.

Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert and director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity, said the outbreak had “all the features of something that could turn really nasty”.

“As more evidence comes in of the separation of cases in space and time, and healthcare workers getting infected, and people attending funerals and then travelling quite big distances – it’s got everything we would worry about,” he told Reuters.

The WHO statement said there had been 21 suspected, 20 probable and 3 confirmed cases of Ebola between April 4 and May 15, a total of 44 cases, including 15 deaths. Mbandaka had three suspected cases in addition to the confirmed case.

The WHO is sending 7,540 doses of an experimental vaccine to try to stop the outbreak in its tracks, and 4,300 doses have already arrived in Kinshasa. It will be used to protect healthworkers and “rings” of contacts around each case.

The vaccine supplies will be enough to vaccinate 50 rings of 150 people, the WHO said. As of 15 May, 527 contacts had been identified and were being followed up and monitored.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow