Plug loopholes in infant food Act, says doctor
Our Correspondent

Ludhiana, July 31
Exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and continued breastfeeding for two years or even beyond, along with adequate and appropriate complementary feeding starting after six months provides ideal nutrition to infants. It forms the basis for their sound development, health as well as survival.

Making these observations, Dr Rajinder Gulati, Head, Pediatrics Department, ESIC Model Hospital, here said for establishing adequate breastfeeding it was important to have an early start within one hour of birth and to have breast milk alone as the first feed.

Recent research on accelerating child survival has established that exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months is the single most effective child survival intervention. When practiced universally, it reduced the under five child deaths by 16 per cent in India.

He pointed out that delaying and restricting breastfeeding and giving other products before six months were still common practice that increased the risk of infection, allergy, long-term disease and death. Other factors that contributed to these problems were ignorance, beliefs and cultural practices, inadequate training, knowledge and skills of health and child-care field workers and neglect of women’s rights to access accurate information.

Dr Gulati said improper marketing practices of companies, especially through advertisements of infant milk substitute formula and infant foods, undermined breastfeeding leading to increased infant malnutrition, morbidity and mortality.

Recognising this to be a major public health problem, the Government of India enacted the Infant Milk Substitutes, Feeding Bottles and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, 1992.

This legislation sought to regulate the production, supply and the distribution of infant milk substitutes, feeding bottles and infant foods. It laid down provisions for requirements such as labeling of containers of these products and providing information on infant feeding.

However, in spite of enactment of the Act, baby food manufacturers continued to find loopholes to market their products by influencing health professionals and by directly approaching breastfeeding mothers. This reduced women’s confidence in breastfeeding and natural homemade foods. It thus became necessary to plug the loopholes in order to stop these improper marketing practices and to protect the survival, growth and the development of infants.

Unit for epilepsy monitoring at DMCH
Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, July 31
Epilepsy-monitoring units (EMUs) are in abundance in the western countries. But, these are by far and few in India - the only operational ones are in the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and SCTIMST, Trivandrum.

Taking a big lead in this direction, the Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) here has commissioned the first dedicated EMU in the region, said Dr Gagandeep Singh, Professor of Neurology at DMCH. He said the epilepsy-monitoring unit was a key piece of equipment in the diagnostic work-up of epilepsy.

Epilepsy is a disorder that affects 1 to 2 per cent of the general population. Of these, nearly 70 per cent are well controlled with medication. The EMU is useful for diagnostic evaluation of the remainder 30 per cent cases that do not respond to medicinal treatment. For such patients, the only option is surgery, which is now being performed regularly at DMCH. The EMU is used in the pre-surgical evaluation of epilepsy that is not controlled with medications.

According to Dr Singh, long-term epilepsy monitoring is useful for differentiating between true epileptic seizures and non-epileptic seizures. A variety of conditions produced epilepsy-like symptoms. Often, such patients were given the wrong diagnosis of epilepsy and given anti-epileptic medications for years at a tremendous cost to the patients and their families. Long-term monitoring, therefore, was extremely useful in characterising these turns, fits and faints.

The test costs Rs 5,000.

The EMU is manned round the clock by qualified technicians and trained nurses, along with resident doctors, added Dr Singh.

Lions Club to organise blood donation camps
Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, July 31
The first cabinet meeting of Lions Clubs International District 321-F was held at hotel Golden Grain on the Mandi Gobindgarh- Khanna highway on Sunday.

The meeting was presided over by Mr R.K Rana, District Governor. He educated the members about the projects to be undertaken throughout the district by the club. Emphasis was laid on organising blood donation camps where 15,000 units of blood would be collected. Under the Sight First Campaign 10,000 cataract operations will be performed. Under the Child Care programme, education, food and dresses will be distributed to at least 1.5 to 2 lakh children.

TB awareness and AIDs Awareness rallies, seminars and camps will be organised by different clubs of the district and more than 1.5 lakh persons will benefit from these. He informed that eight new clubs had already joined the Lions organisation. Members from Ludhiana, Patiala, Bathinda, Ferozepore, Fazilka, Gidderbaha, Batala, Chandigarh, Ropar and Kharar, attended the meeting.

School athletics results
Our Sports Reporter

Ludhiana, July 31
An inter-class athletics competition was organised at New Senior Secondary School, Sarabha Nagar, in association with Bharat Vikas Parishad, Shaheed Sukhdev branch, today. Mr J.S. Grewal, DPE of the school, supervised the event.

Mr H.C. Gupta, Principal of the school, gave away prizes to the winners. Certificates were given to all the participants.

Results: boys: 100 m race- Ashish 1, Roopesh 2 and Anuj 3; 200 m race: Gaganpreet 1, Himanshu 2 and Himmat 3; long jump: Ashish 1, Roopesh 2 and Himanshu 3; shot put: Karanbir Singh 1, Gaganpreet Singh 2 and Manikaran 3.

Girls: 100 m. Jasmine 1, Sakshi 2 and Sukhpreet 3; shot put: Priya 1, Megha 2 and Prachi 3.