So a few weeks ago there was the whole swinde flu story where we were getting updates hour by hour of the srpead of the flu. Two things happened that bumped it off the newspapers and TV. First not many people died, and secondly there was no new news about the Swine Flu.

This changed this week but only in the background. There are two new stories. First the World Health Organization announced that the spread of Swine Flu has forced the call of this to be a world wide pandemic. This is big news because many countries will now begin to mobilize their central health organizations to start and combat and tighten restirctions to stop the spread of the flu.

Also, there is as you may imagine a race by all of the pharmaceutical companies to come up with a flu vaccine to be tested and of course make that company big bucks as the vaccine gets rolled out around the world. Novartis is apparently first and is ready to test swine flu vaccine. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant has a swine flu vaccine ready for trial as governments step up precautions following the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic.

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The nation’s epidemic of new H1N1 flu may have peaked except in New York, New Jersey and New England, a leading federal health expert said Tuesday.

“In the country as a whole, influenza is starting to decrease,” says Ann Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency has tallied 6,764 confirmed or probable cases and 10 deaths nationwide, Schuchat says, more than half of the global total of 12,954 cases reported Tuesday by the World Health Organization. Laboratory testing indicates that the new H1N1 virus — commonly referred to as swine flu— accounts for almost all of the flu virus now circulating nationwide.

Federal health officials haven’t dismissed the possibility that the worst is yet to come. Far from it, Schuchat says, noting that the horrific 1918 flu epidemic, which killed 20 million people in the United States alone, was preceded by a mild “herald” wave of cases in the spring, followed by devastating waves of illness in the fall. Read the rest of this entry »

It is said that America tops the obese adult population in the world, which is of course true. However, one seems to overlook the fact that America is also home to the highest population of obese children. If WHO (World Health Organization) is to be believed, our world contains more than twenty million obese kids, most of whom are in the age group of five-eight.

WHO also says that childhood obesity has reached the level of an epidemic in America, so much so that in the past three decades the number of obese American kids has more than tripled. Isn’t your child one of them too? It is time to take control of your kid’s life and help him lead the kind of comfortable and healthy life we would want him to lead. And this is only possible by helping him get rid of the extra pounds.

In fact, if America tops the number of obese kids, even third world countries are not far behind. You would think that an economically backward continent like Africa would have skinny kids because most of their parents are too poor to feed them properly, let alone overfeed them. However, very often our beliefs don’t coincide with reality. Just recently a special task force sent to Africa to gauge the health stats of the people living there encountered more obese kids than malnourished children.

You maybe thinking: why all this hullabaloo about childhood obesity? What is wrong if the belly of your kid if a tad fatter than his peers? The answer is: just like overweight adults, fat kids are also likely to suffer from harmful diseases such as high blood pressure, type 1 diabetes, hypertension, fatigue, heart diseases, and in some cases, even early death.

Believe it or not, the root cause of childhood obesity has little to do with genetics and more with poor lifestyle habits. Often people add two and two and jump to the conclusion that the kid is fat because of his parents. But that is not true at all. Kids emulate the unhealthy habits of their parents and naturally become fat like them. If you and your kids follow healthy lifestyle habits, both of you would be able to get rid of fat very quickly.

Truth to be told, the onus of the rising levels of childhood obesity lies on parents to a great extent. We parents prefer our kids to have junk foods since they can be easily procured from outside and help save the time we would have spent on cooking. A diet rich in fat and sugar could only make your child fatter and fatter. There is really nothing new to be said about it. Unless you are willing to spend a little time and energy in cooking healthy foods at home, don’t expect your kids to become any slimmer.

Apart from making them eat healthy foods such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables, it is also important that you try to reduce their intake of soda and fizzy drinks.

Controlling the food habits of your kids is only half the battle won, the other half being that of encouraging them to become more active. If you are concerned about your child’s future and wish to offer him a healthy life, you would need to take him away from Xbox and PSPs to outdoor sports such as cricket, basketball, tennis, etc. Encouraging them to indulge in cardiovascular activities such as swimming, dancing, rope jumping, etc., would also help them burn fat and lose weight.