Health

Showing posts with label Health. Show all posts. The posts are listed in chronological order. Click the post title to read more.

Saturday, November 2, 2013 in , , , , , ,

THE STATUS OF WOMEN AT A GLANCE




THE STATUS OF WOMEN AT A GLANCE 
  • "Women have not achieved equality with men in any country.
  • Of the world's 1.3 billion poor people, it is estimated that nearly 70% are women.
  • Between 75 and 80% of the world's 27 million refugees are women and children.
  • Women's life expectancy, educational attainment and income are highest in Sweden, Canada, Norway, USA, and Finland.
  • The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, resulted in agreement by 189 delegations on a five-year plan to enhance the social, economic and political empowement of women. Over 100 countries have announced new initiatives to further the advancement of women as a result
  • The 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, often described as a Bill of Rights for Women, has now been ratified by 154 countries.
POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
  • The first country to grant women the right to vote was New Zealand in 1893.
  • Only 24 women have been elected heads of state or government in this century.
  • In early 1995, Sweden formed the world's first cabinet to have equal numbers of men and women.
  • Of the 185 highest-ranking diplomats to the United Nations, seven are women.
  • The percentage of female cabinet ministers worldwide has doubled in the last decade, from 3.4 in 1987 to 6.8% in 1996.
WOMEN AND EDUCATION
  • Of the world's nearly one billion illiterate adults, two-thirds are women.
  • Two-thirds of the 130 million children worldwide who are not in school are girls.
  • During the past two decades the combined primary and secondary enrollment ratio for girls in developing countries increased from 38% to 78%.
WOMEN AND THE ECONOMY
  • The majority of women earn on average about three-fourths of the pay of males for the same work, outside of the agricultural sector, in both developed and developing countries.
  • In most countries, women work approximately twice the unpaid time men do; and women make up 31% of the official labour force in developing countries; 46.7% worldwide.
  • Rural women produce more than 55% of all food grown in developing countries.
  • The value of women's unpaid housework and community work is estimated at between 10-35 percent of GDP worldwide, amounting to $11 trillion in 1993.
  • Women hold 35.1% of professional posts in the UN Secretari, 17.9 % in senior management.
WOMEN AND POPULATION
  • Women outlive men in almost every country; yet there are slightly fewer women than men in the world -- 98.6 women for 100 men.
  • Out-of-marriage births have increased more than 50 percent in the last 20 years in developed countries and one in every four households in the world is now headed by a woman.
  • The life expectancy of women has gone up. In 1992, the average woman lived to be 62.9 years in developing countries up from 53.7 years in 1970. In industrialized countries, women's average life expectancy in 1992 was 79.4 years, up from 74.2 in 1970.
Women and Health
  • An estimated 20 million unsafe abortions are performed worldwide every year, resulting in the deaths of 70,000 women.
  • Approximately 585,000 women die every year, over 1,600 every day, from causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. In sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 13 women will die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes, compared to 1 in 3,300 women in the United States.
  • Globally, 43 % of all women and 51% of pregnant women suffer from iron-deficiency anemia."


SOURCE: Women's International Network News; Autumn98, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p14, 1p

Saturday, July 11, 2009 in , , , ,

Progeria – “accelerated aging disease”

In my previous class, public speaking, we were tasked to make an informative speech...some can make a speech on how to make something, like to make a rose winem by showing the steps..But i decided to give an informative speech about progeria...I got some info here, and others were added by me...

--on the photo: 8 year old Fransie Geringer of South Africa, left, and 9 year old Mickey Hays of the United States—have the premature aging disease, progeria. Mickey Hays is an actor and appeared on the Aurora Encounters. He died when he was 20 years old and is know to be one ofthe longest survivors of progeria.




Progeria – “accelerated aging disease”
Imagine for a second that you are 10 years old. Your friends call you up to go out and play but you can't because you have a painful case of arthritis that hurts with every step you take. Or, your chronic heart disease disables you from being able to breathe easily. These conditions are just a few that a child with Progeria may suffer from. Progeria is also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Syndrome. It is an extremely rare aging disease that causes a child to age up to eight times faster than normal. It is also know as the “accelerated aging diseases. I first became interested in Progeria when I have read it from an article in Nature.The disease affects between 1 in 4 million and 1 in 8 million newborns. Currently, there are 51 known cases in the world. Most people with progeria die at around 13 years of age.
The condition was first identified in 1886 by Jonathan Hutchinson and in 1987 by Hastings Gilford. The condition was later named Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria syndrome (HGPS). However until now scientist have yet found a medicine for this condition. In the beginning, Progeria was studied as a disease that included the process of normal aging, just at an incredible rate. This is no longer be true because Progeria does not affect all of the body's organs. For instance, there is no evidence of aging in the central nervous system. A few are mentally retarded, but most have normal intelligence and may even be advanced. A child with Progeria is just a normal seven-year-old in a 70-year-old body!
The cause of this rare disorder is not yet fully understood. In 2003, researchers announced the discovery of a single gene mutation responsible for Hutchison-Gilford progeria syndrome. The gene is known as lamin A (LMNA), which makes a protein necessary to holding the center (nucleus) of a cell together. Researchers believe the genetic mutation renders cells unstable, which appears to lead to progeria's characteristic aging process. Unlike many genetic mutations, Hutchison-Gilford progeria isn't passed down in families. Rather, the gene change is a chance occurrence that researchers believe affects a single sperm or egg just before conception. Neither parent is a carrier, so the mutations in the children's genes are new (de novo).
          Individuals with Progeria appear normal at birth. It is not until about the age of one that signs become evident. Growth is extremely stunted, and they may only reach the height of a normal two or three-year-old. It is very unlikely that they will grow taller than a normal five-year-old will, even though they have the physical characteristics of a 60-year-old.
According to the Hutchinson-Gilford entry of the Electronic Textbook of Internal Medicine, there are many signs to detect the presence of Progeria. These signs include: (visual aide) baldness, prominent scalp veins, beaked nose, receding chin, prominent eyes, a narrow chest, a protruding abdomen, an enlargement of the spleen, and the absence of eyebrows and lashes. The sex organs also remain small and underdeveloped, and they are not able to reproduce. They often have relatively large heads with small faces and crowded irregular teeth. Individuals with Progeria often develop diseases related to aging, such as arthritis and heart disease. Another common cause of death is angina pectoris, which is a condition in which there is a sudden decrease of blood in the heart muscle. Progeria is extremely rare. In my speech, I have informed you of the extremely rare aging disease known as Progeria.