Title: The Long Fight Against TB
(To outsmart the disease, India must intercept infection,
progression and transmission)
ü
The incidence rate of tuberculosis (TB) in
India is estimated at 200-300 cases per 100,000 population per year. As a
comparison, in western Europe it is five per 100,000 per year.
ü
“Control” in public health is “deliberate
reduction of incidence to a desired and defined level by specific
interventions”.
ü Without
monitoring incidence and defining the desired target, the Revised National TB
Control Programme (RNTCP) is not a valid control programme, but a great
humanitarian programme of free diagnosis and treatment.
ü India’s
estimated annual TB burden is 28 lakh, 27% of the global total; our population
is only 18%. Every day 1,200 Indians die of TB — 10 every three minutes.
Know the enemy
ü Infection
with TB bacilli is the necessary cause of TB, a disease that mimics other
diseases, confusing doctors and delaying diagnosis. Cough and blood in sputum (बलगम) occur
only in lung TB.
ü For
example, a young man developed headache and began making silly mistakes in
arithmetic. He had brain TB and treatment cured him.
ü Pelvic
TB is the commonest cause of female infertility in India.
ü TB
can affect the lungs, brain, bones, joints, the liver, intestines or for that
matter any organ and can progress slowly or kill in weeks.
ü For
TB control, three processes must be understood: infection, progression,
transmission.
ü Infection
occurs when TB bacilli are inhaled. Bacilli may stay in the lungs or travel to
other organs. Infection is lifelong, with bacilli lying dormant(inactive). This
phase is “latent TB”, 40% to 70% of us are living with latent TB. A few
progress to TB disease, one by one, 5-30 years, average 20 years, later.
ü Progression
occurs when bacilli become active, multiply and cause pathology; now we have
“active TB”. Only when active TB affects the lungs do bacilli find an exit
route to the atmosphere, necessary for transmission.
Principles of control
ü Beginning
with schools, public education on TB and its prevention must replace ignorance
and misconceptions.
ü If
no one spits in public places and if everyone practises cough and sneeze
etiquette, the TB affected will also fall in line.
ü To
block transmission, treatment should begin as soon as a symptom shows up.
Principles of control
ü Partnership
with the private sector is essential for early diagnosis of TB. Delay in
diagnosis, for which we are notorious, is a fallout of the lack of efficient
primary health care.
Final Words:
ü Any
further delay may convert a controllable disease into an uncontrollable one,
because of increasing frequency of resistance to drugs against TB.
SWIFT
(Society for Worldwide
Interbank Financial Telecommunication)
Established = 1973
Headquarters = La Hulpe, Belgium
• It is the world’s largest and secured
electronic payment messaging system.
• It doesn’t do any of the funds transfers
itself. In fact, it doesn’t even touch money.
•Basically it is just a Bank-to-Bank messaging
system, used to communicate payment instructions and other info. to each other.
• SWIFT messages are programmed in a language
known as FIN.
• SWIFT assigns each financial organization a
unique code that has either eight characters or 11 characters.
Letter of undertaking (LoU)
ü This
is a bank guarantee that enables a bank’s customer to raise
short-term credit from another Indian bank’s foreign branch. It has to be
another Indian bank.
ü When
an importer goes to a bank to ask for such a guarantee, one of two things
happens. One, the bank asks him for collateral before it gives a
guarantee. Second, the bank sanctions a credit limit.
Letter of Comfort
ü A
letter from a company that tells a bank that it supports a request for a loan
made by one of its subsidiary companies ( one of the companies that it owns).
Letter of credit
ü A
letter of credit is a document from a bank that guarantees payment.
ü A letter
of credit (LC) also known as a Documentary Credit, is a written
commitment by a bank on behalf of a buyer that payment be made to a seller
provided that the terms and conditions stated therein have been met.
ü "A
letter of credit is more secure because it has the details of the purchase by
the importer, date of issue, expiry date, the material purchase and other
transaction details.
Vocabulary words:
- Outsmart (verb) = To defeat (मात देना)
- Intercept (verb) = Obstruct (अवरोधन करना)
- Parlance (noun) = A particular way of using words (बोल-चाल)
- Quantifiable (adj) = Able to be measured as a quantity (मात्रात्मक)
- Intervention (noun) = Involvement (हस्तक्षेप)
- Magnitude (noun) = Volume, quantity (परिमाण)
- Sputum (noun) = A mixture of saliva and mucus
- coughed up from the respiratory tract (बलगम)
- Infertility (noun) = Inability to conceive children (बांझपन)
- Dormant (adj) = Inactive, passive (निष्क्रिय)
- Etiquette (noun) = The customary code of polite behaviour in society (शिष्टाचार)
- Notorious (adj) = inf3amous, ill-famed (कुख्यात)
