As Of 2008 Heart Patients Need Not Wait Long

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 29 (Bernama) -- Heart patients who currently have to wait anything from six months to a year to receive treatment or undergo an operation at the National Heart Institute (IJN) need not wait long by 2008.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said that under the expansion plans for a new block of the IJN building, estimated to cost RM209 million, heart patients will only have to wait three to six months.

"Ten years ago, IJN only received 50,000 outpatients a year and 8,000 warded patients. Now, IJN has 122,000 outpatients a year and 12,000 patients in the wards," he said at the agreement signing ceremony for the appointment of the project contractor, here Monday.

IJN was represented by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mohd Radzif Mohd Yunus and Medical Director Datuk Seri Dr Robaayah Zambahari, whereas the construction companies, UEM Construction Sdn Bhd and Intria Bina Sdn Berhad Joint Venture, were represented by Datuk Mohd Nor Idrus and Abdul Hamid Abdul Rahim, respectively.

Speaking to reporters later, Dr Chua said that the government had subsidised RM144 million last year to cover the medical expenses of civil servants and the needy, compared to only RM35 million in 1992.

"When the expansion project is completed, IJN will have an additional 158 beds, 12 in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). After this IJN should receive more outstation patients, with health tourism being a source of income," he said.

He also complimented the IJN for its decision to obtain funding by creating what is called Islamic Bonds (Sukuk Musyarakah), rated by the Malaysian Rating Corporation Berhad (MARC) as "AAA", for RM100 million to mature in seven years or less.

Dr Chua also denied claims that in the last three years a large number of IJN staff had resigned because only three consultants and eight clinical specialists had resigned during that period.

-- BERNAMA

It maybe true that by 2008, the long wait maybe over but will things at IJN prove to be beyond the reach of many financially. Already many patients are finding it difficult to pay for their treatment there. This is what happens when corporatisation comes into the picture.

Malaysian Haze Fighters in Indonesia Sick

12 Malaysian Firemen Fall Sick In Riau, One Admitted To Hospital

By Mohd Nasir Yusoff

PEKANBARU (Riau, Indonesia), Aug 18 (Bernama) -- Twelve Malaysian firemen who are members of a team sent here to help douse forest fires in the Rokan Hilir district, have fallen ill with one of them in serious condition and admitted to the hospital in Kota Dumai.

Riau Environment Management Agency head Khairul Zainal told reporters here today that three other firemen were treated at a clinic in Simpang Bangko and the remaining eight at the clinic in the Malaysian camp.

"They fell sick two days ago but I don't know the nature of the illness, whether it is a common cold or fever," he said.

The 128-member Malaysian team, comprising men of the Fire and Rescue Department and the Special Malaysian Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team (Smart), arrived here on Aug 15 to assist Indonesia to put out the forest and peat soil fires which have blanketed the region, including Malaysia, with a thick haze.

They are assisting about 300 Indonesian firefighters made up of firemen and volunteers.

Riau land and forest fire management centre head Wan Abu Bakar said at least 20,000 hectares of peatland in seven out of the 11 districts in Riau province were burning.

Abu Bakar, who is also the vice governor of Riau, said it was difficult to put out the fires because they were fanned by strong winds and the fires had penetrated deep into the peat soil.

"The fires on the surface have been doused but the soil underneath is still burning," he said.

He said many new fires had started in different districts, such as in Kota Dumai where there were still no firefighters.

Meanwhile, a 54-member Singapore civil defence corps team arrived at the Sultan Sharif Kasim II airport this afternoon to join the firefighting effort.

Khairul Zainal said the Singaporeans would be sent to Rokan Hilir where many fires were still burning.

-- BERNAMA

Poser Hospital Kulat

Poser Over When Sultan Ismail Hospital aka Hospital KulatWill Reopen

JOHOR BAHRU, Aug 18 (Bernama) -- No one knows when the Sultan Ismail Hospital will reopen after it was closed almost a year ago following a fungus attack.

Deputy Health Minister Datuk Dr Abdul Latif Ahmad visited the hospital, Thursday, and the press were invited but he had nothing to say to the reporters and photographers who had waited for more than three hours.

Dr Latif, who emerged from a room where he had apparently listened to a briefing, just gestured at the waiting newsmen and left.

None of the hospital management staff attended to the journalists, who were left wondering why they were invited when it was supposed to have been a closed-door function.

Last September, the hospital was forced to close just two months after it had opened because of a fungus attack that was deemed hazardous to health.

Subsequently, the Works Ministry directed the contractor to undertake the necessary repairs.

In June this year, Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek was reported to have said that the repairs were expected to be completed this month.

-- BERNAMA

To Snore or Not to Snore

To snore or not to snore, that is the RM3000 to RM4000 question. For many of our spouses who complain of snoring spouses, the cure is at hand. A 15 minute operation is all that is required. But like most things these days with rising fuel prices and toll hikes, the cure does not come cheap even though the procedure is short. HUKM is proud to announce that Malaysia is the second country in Southeast Asia to start this innovative "pillar procedure" for the treatment of snoring. HUKM in Cheras is also the first hospital in BolehLand to adopt the technique.
So all you snorers out there, are you or your sleeping partner(s) ready to cough up that amount for peace and quiet and better sleep? Before deciding you might want to view this and this[requires WMP].

Read the BERNAMA report for more details ::

HUKM's Breakthrough In Snoring Treatment

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 18 (Bernama) -- Though there is no data on snoring, it can cause discomfort to one's sleeping partner and sometimes it can be more embarrassing if celebrities and VIPs snored in public.

However, the phenomenon common in all age groups, both male and female, can now be overcome by a new technique called "pillar procedure".

The technique has been introduced in Malaysia by a leading provider of medical devices to treat sleep disordered breathing, Restore Asia Pte Ltd, through its company in Singapore.

The Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Hospital (HUKM) in Cheras is the first to adopt the technique.

Disclosing the technique Thursday, HUKM's Head of Ear, Nose and Throat Department, Prof Dr Abdullah Sani Mohamed, said snoring was divided into habitual snoring (without sleep apnoea) and snoring with sleep apnoea.

He said snoring was a sign of obstruction of the upper airway during sleep and sleep apnoea occurred when the obstruction was completed.

Sleep apnoea might be graded as mild, moderate and severe, he said.

Dr Abdullah Sani said HUKM offered and had performed the full range of surgery from aggressive uvulo palato pharyngo plasty and laser uvuloplasty to the newer radio frequency ablation techniques.

He said the ideal cure for snoring caused by floppiness of the soft palate was to stiffen it without doing any cutting of the tissue.

These could be done with the pillar procedure, he said.

The procedure was designed to reduce airway obstruction where three inserts made from multiple polyester materials woven together about 18mm in length and 2mm in diameter, embedded in the soft palate using a specially designed preload delivery tool, he said, adding the palate was neither cut nor removed.

"It can be done in less than 15 minutes in the clinic with minimal pain. The patient can go home with normal diet and daily activities almost immediately," he said.

The pillar procedure, first introduced in the United States in April 2003, is now available in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, South Korea, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa and Turkey.

Malaysia is the second country in Southeast Asia to start this innovative treatment.

Dr Abdullah Sani, who performed the technique on five patients this year, said the complication risk was very low.

He said the therapy costs between RM3,000 and RM4,000 at HUKM.

He performed the technique on his fifth patient today, Syaiful Izam Jabar, 26, a secondary school teacher in Melaka.

After the implant procedure, Syaiful Izam, who has been snoring since Standard Four, said he did not feel any pain and was glad for the RM2,200 treatment he underwent.

-- BERNAMA

An Effective Avian Flu Vaccine

American government scientists say they have successfully tested in people a vaccine that they believe can protect against the strain of avian influenza that is spreading in birds through Asia and Russia.
Present worry is that the avian flu virus could mutate and combine with a human influenza virus to create a new virus, such a virus could spread rapidly through the world with humnan-to-human transmission.
Tens of millions of birds have died from infection with the virus and culling to prevent the spread of the virus. About 100 people have been infected, and about 50 have died from this strain of the avian influenza virus, called A(H5N1). So far there has been no sustained human-to-human transmission, but that is what health officials fear, because it could cause a pandemic. And that fear has driven the intense research to develop a vaccine.
Tests so far had shown that the new vaccine produced a strong immune response among the small group of healthy adults under age 65 who volunteered to receive it, although the doses needed were higher than in the standard influenza vaccine offered each year. The vaccine, developed with genetic engineering techniques, is intended to protect against infection, not to treat those who are sick. Further tests are required for groups over 65 years of age and children.
Additional tests are needed in part to determine the optimal dose of vaccine; the number of shots people will need for protection; and whether adding another ingredient called an adjuvant to the vaccine could raise the potency of lower doses, stretching the number of people that could be protected.
Though the vaccine needs further testing before it can be approved for general use, it could be released for use if a pandemic should occur.
See a graphic presentation of how the vaccine was developed here

.

Health: New thalassaemia treatment gives hope

Health: New thalassaemia treatment gives hope
Aug 7:
The treatment can seem almost as bad as the disease but a new therapy in trials offers relief, writes MEERA MURUGESAN.

PAIN and inconvenience are often associated with treatment for thalassaemia, a genetic disorder that affects the body’s production of haemoglobin – the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. This inherited disorder can cause severe anaemia and can be fatal without ongoing treatment.

With no cure, the only options for thalassaemia patients are regular blood transfusions and nightly injections through a slow infusion pump. These infusions, lasting up to 12 hours a day, five to seven days a week, limit social activities and interfere with patients’ intimate relationships.

Desferal infusions therapy, as it’s known, is also difficult for children who dislike needles and fear pain, says Professor Dr Chan Lee Lee, paediatric haematologist/oncologist at the University Malaya Medical Centre. Even older teens and young adults find these infusions extremely burdensome, he adds, and often will not comply with therapy even though they see first-hand the risks of not doing so.

But this painful procedure could soon be a thing of the past as Malaysian thalassaemia patients and their caregivers are looking forward to a clinical trial which offers an oral treatment for this condition.

Dr Chan is among three Malaysian investigators who will spearhead the trials to determine the safety and tolerability of the world’s first and only once-a-day iron chelator, ICL 670 (deferasirox).

The others include Dr Hishamshah Ibrahim, senior consultant in the paediatric department of the Kuala Lumpur Hospital and Professor Rahman Jamal, director of molecular biology at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

An easy-to-administer oral iron chelator in tablet form, ICL 670 is taken once daily after dissolving the tablet in a glass of water.

The drug was developed by pharmaceutical giant Novartis to extend the benefits of iron chelation to a greater number of patients receiving blood transfusions, and to address the needs of thousands of adult and paediatric patients who have been using Desferal (deferoxamine).

The three-centre, one-year study will cover 100 Malaysian patients. Besides Malaysia, trials are also being carried out in 12 countries across five continents ranging from the USA, Germany, Greece and Italy, to China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Taiwan.

The preliminary results of studies on paediatric patients treated with the oral chelator presented at the latest annual meeting of the American Society of Haematology, have been very promising, especially in terms of safety and tolerability, says Dr Chan.

“Oral therapy offers welcome relief and the Malaysian thalassaemic community and their professional caregivers are looking forward to the trial,” says Dr Chan.

ICL 670 would also redefine the clinical management of patients frustrated by years of inconvenience, bruising and scarring as a result of daily insertion of the deferoxamine infusion needle, says Dr Hishamshah.

“Their quality of life will drastically improve and this should impact positively on the overall treatment regime,” he says.

The Government, has also announced its intention to invest approximately RM40 million annually in the Thalassaemia Control and Prevention Programme, he adds, a move will which directly benefit the few thousand thalassaemia patients nationwide and the estimated 600,000 to one million Malaysians who are carriers of the thalassaemia gene.

---Malay Mail

Other related links::

• ICL 670- The New Oral Chelator being developed by Novartis
  
• IMPACT Children Foundation
  
• Study of Deferasirox for Treatment of Transfusional Iron Overload
  
• Thalassaemia drug trial in Malaysia
  
• Advances in Management of Thalassemia
  
• Thalassaemia Association Malaysia (TAM)
  
• Sarawak Thalassaemia Online::Links

An HMO Manager at the Pearly Gates

Two doctors and an HMO manager died and lined up at the pearly gates for admission to heaven. St. Peter asked them to identify themselves.
One doctor stepped forward and said, "I was a pediatric spine surgeon and helped kids overcome their deformities." St. Peter said, "You can enter."
The second doctor said, "I was a psychiatrist. I helped people rehabilitate themselves." St. Peter also invited him in.
The third applicant stepped forward and said, "I was an HMO manager. I helped people get cost-effective health care." St. Peter said, "You can come in, too."
But as the HMO manager walked by, St. Peter added, "You can stay three days............"

Now what more did St. Peter said to the HMO manager, find out, here.