Observer & Busness 5 May 2012 - Oman Daily Observer

28 SOCIETY SATURDAY, MAY 5, 2012
World’s longest copy of Quran in the making
By Mohamad Ali Harissi
HUSSEIN al Kharsan
kneels, bent over a giant
sheet of paper, laboriously
writing the words of
Islam’s holy book, the Quran,
in beautiful Arabic script with
a traditional wood and feather
pen.
Calligrapher Hussein writes a verse from the Holy Quran in Najaf. — AFP
The 25-year-old Iraqi
aims to take an unusual path
to fame: writing the longest
copy of the Quran in the
world. Kharsan says the scroll
is to be between 5,500 and
6,000 metres long, or 3.4 and
3.7 miles.
His aim, he says, is to set a
Guinness World Record.
The copy of the Quran
was supposed to be shown
this year, when Najaf was to
be the Islamic Capital of Culture,
but that project has been
postponed indefinitely amid
several delays.
It has not however stopped
Kharsan, who graduated from
Baghdad University’s college
of fine arts, from continuing
his work inside a religious
school in Najaf, despite pains
in his neck and back from long
hours of carefully writing out
one verse after another.
“At the beginning, the
agreement was to finish the
work in six months, on the
basis of writing three pages
Hand-hygiene helps to reduce
healthcare-acquired infections REGULAR
May 5 is observed as
World Hand Hygiene Day
THE World Health Organisation
(WHO) yesterday
said the number
of infections acquired during
medical or surgical procedures
can be brought down by 50 per
cent if good hand hygiene is
followed. May 5 is observed as
‘World Hand Hygiene Day’.
“There is clear evidence
By Azera Parveen Rahman
SO your friend told you
about this tiny, hidden
away shop in a busy
market that sells well-known
international branded clothes,
shoes and accessories at dirt
cheap prices? Beware. What
is being offered could be a
well imitated, fake product.
In the thriving billiondollar
market, fake branded
goods are often passed off as
genuine products in disguise
of export surplus. They have
the tags of popular brands,
and it’s difficult to actually
tell the genuine from the imitation.
“Most of the goods in
the so-called export surplus
shops are fake. They are very
well imitated and only an
adept eye can tell the difference,”
Sanjiv Jain, CEO of
G Plus-Franchise of brands
like US Polo, Arrow and En
Route, said.
Aarti Mittal of Bloom, a
multi-brand, high-end fashion
store in Delhi, agrees.
She goes on to add that it’s
that hundreds of millions of
patients are infected every
year worldwide by healthcareassociated
infections. Low
and middle-income countries
bear a huge burden of these
infections,” said Samlee Plianbangchang,
WHO Regional
Director for Southeast Asia.
“There is an urgent need
because of demand — both
from the customers who may
be fooled into believing that
the products are genuine, and
those who knowingly buy the
fake product to show off the
label — that the market is
growing.
“The fake industry is a
billion-dollar market. People
who buy these (fake) products
want the branded tag but
are not ready to pay the actual
price. Hence the market
thrives,” Mittal said.
According to a study, the
chunk of consumers, around
31 percent, of the fake branded
market are students. The
reasons are obvious. Living
on a shoe-string budget and
desperate to keep in tune with
the latest trends, they are the
most vulnerable of the lot.
“I recently bought a pair
of shoes of a well-known
brand for just Rs.500. The
shopkeeper told me that since
it was an export-surplus product,
the price was a quarter of
the original price! It was a
real steal,” gushed Arunima,
a student.
to establish reliable systems
for surveillance of such infections
to assess the actual burden.
This must be treated as a
priority patient safety issue,”
Plianbangchang added.
Healthcare-associated infections
are infections caused
by a variety of organisms during
the course of receiving
medical care. The infections
can result in prolonged hospital
stay, long-term disability,
increased resistance to antibiotics
and sometimes, death,
the WHO said.
The global health body, in
its initiative ‘Save lives: Clean
your hands’, will focus on the
importance of hand hygiene
in hospitals and health care
facilities to reduce healthcareassociated
infections.
India’s 572 hospitals have
joined the initiative where emphasis
is laid on clean hands in
healthcare.
The WHO said these infections
put newborns as a highrisk
population in developing
countries while neonatal infec-
tion rates are three to 20 times
higher than in industrialised
countries.
“Low and middle-income
countries bear an additional
burden due to poverty, lack
of basic hygiene, limited resources,
malnutrition, patient
age under 1 year and low birth
weight,” the WHO said.
“General barriers to infection
control practices are
lack of financial support, inadequate
numbers of trained
personnel working in infection
control, understaffed hospital
units, and insufficient equipment
and supplies,” it added.
The campaign was
launched by WHO in 2009
to create awareness about the
benefits of an improved hand
hygiene.
This year’s theme ‘Save
lives — clean your hands’ is
aimed at improving hand hygiene
in the health care sector,
where the cleanliness of hands
is often credited with saving
more lives than most medical
breakthroughs.
out of 503 pages of the Quran
every day,” Kharsan said.
“I succeeded at the beginning
and worked for 16 hours
a day for more than two weeks
until I started suffering pains,”
he said.
“The doctor asked me
to stop working for about a
month but I refused and told
him that I work with the blessings
of the Quran. Now I take
pain-killing pills and work for
five hours a day, which means
I need about a year to finish.”
Kharsan, who began participating
in Arabic calligraphy
competitions when he was
just nine years old, writes on
four pieces of white paper that
are each 1,500 metres long.
He has succeeded in copying
13 pages of the Quran
since he started his work about
a month ago.
Arabic calligraphy is one
of the most prominent forms
of Arab and Islamic art.
“We are the people of Arabic
calligraphy,” said Sheikh
Ali Merza, the principal of
the school where Kharsan is
working on the Quran.
“Kufi calligraphy (named
after Najaf’s twin city of
Kufa) is well-known, and
when we want to do calligraphy,
it is not something new
for us because we practised
this kind of art historically,”
Merza said.
He added that Kharsan’s
work will be displayed in Na-
Sharma’s friend too bought
a branded hand bag for a few
hundreds, when the actual
price could easily be around
Rs.3,000.
Are they really sure that
the products are genuine?
“The shopkeeper said it
was genuine...and I really
don’t know the difference.
In any case, it was a good
deal, and we couldn’t have
afforded the original price,”
Sharma said.
According to experts, the
prices of goods are slashed
by as much as 40-45 per cent
in such shops, as compared to
their original prices.
Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai
and other metros are among
the hot spots where such
shops thrive. The fake product
market has led to a huge
economic burden on manufacturers
of original products.
Not surprisingly, most of
those who run such stores
selling branded goods at
cheap prices, claim that they
sell original products.
Brand managers, however,
jaf, even if the Capital of Islamic
Culture project does not
go ahead.
Guinness World Records
does not have any entries for
the longest Quran, but the
largest printed copy measures
two metres (6.5 feet) high and
1.52 metres (4 feet, 11 inches)
wide, and was unveiled in
Russia last November.
The smallest copy, printed
in Cairo in 1982 and owned
by a Pakistani man, is 1.7
by 1.3 centimetres (0.66 by
0.5 of an inch), but still 571
pages long.
The biggest book in the
world, meanwhile, measures
five by 8.06 metres (16.4 by
26.44 feet) and weighs some
1,500 kilogrammes (3,306
pounds). It is on the life and
achievements of the Prophet
Muhammad, and was unveiled
in Dubai in February.
“It is very nice to do work
that is related to the Quran or
(holy) shrines,” Kharsan said.
“This is a blessed work. But at
the same time, my name will
be part of history, because we
compete on an international
level.”
“I do not take any salary
for my work, although there is
an agreement that I get a percentage
of the budget of the
project, which is about 100
million dinars ($83,300).”
“I feel proud of what I am
accomplishing, and all I want
is to leave my mark.” — AFP
Regular jogging may increase longevity
jogging
can add up more than
six years to male life
expectancy and 5.6 years to
women’s longevity, reveals
the latest data from the Copenhagen
City Heart Study
(CCHS).
According to chief cardiologist
of the CCHS, Peter
Schnohr, the study’s most recent
analysis shows that between
one to two-and-a-half
hours of jogging per week at
a “slow or average” pace delivers
optimum benefits for
longevity.
“We can say with certainty
that regular jogging increases
longevity. The good news is
that you don’t actually need to
do that much to reap the benefits,”
said Schnohr, based at
Bispebjerg University Hospital,
Copenhagen.
The debate over jogging
first kicked off in the 1970s
when middle aged men took
an interest in the past-time.
“After a few men died while
out on a run, various newspapers
suggested that jogging
might be too strenuous for ordinary
middle aged people,”
recalled Schnohr, according to
a university statement.
The CCHS, started in 1976,
is a cardiovascular population
study of 20,000 men and
women aged between 20 and
93 years. Since then the study,
which has prompted in publication
of over 750 papers,
has expanded to include other
diseases such as heart failure,
pulmonary diseases, allergy,
epilepsy, dementia, sleep-apnea
and genetics.
For the jogging sub study,
the mortality of 1,116 male
joggers and 762 female jog-
Brand hungry? Beware of counterfeits R ESEARCHERS have
disagree, and maintain that
they conduct raids on such
“counterfeit” stores.
“Brands keep conducting
raids, but in India it is difficult
to take help from the
authorities to completely stop
them (counterfeiters). Until
and unless strict action is taken
against such stores selling
fake products and duping the
customer, the problem will
persist,” Jain said.
The only, and most effective,
way to fight the counterfeiters,
therefore, is by discouraging
consumers.
“If a customer is looking
for a genuine product,
he or she should check with
the store and make sure that
the product has the correct
brand tag, labels et al,”
Mittal said.
Jain said: “Quality of a
product is very important,
and more often than not you
can make out the difference
between a genuine and a fake
one by the look and feel of
the product. One can always
cross check with the store to
confirm.” — IANS
gers was compared to the non
joggers in the main study population.
All participants were
asked to answer questions
about the amount of time they
spent jogging each week, and
to rate their own perceptions
of pace (defined as slow, average,
and fast).
The first data was collected
between 1976 to 1978, the
second from 1981 to 1983, the
third from 1991 to 1994, and
the fourth from 2001 to 2003.
isolated a compound
in garlic that is a 100 times
more potent than popular
antibiotics in combating
Campylobacter bacteria, one
of the commonest causes of
intestinal illness.
Some 2.4 million Americans
alone are affected by
Campylobacter every year,
according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention,
with symptoms including
diarrhoea, cramping, abdominal
pain and fever.
“This work is very exciting
to me because it shows that
this compound (diallyl sulphide)
has the potential to reduce
disease-causing bacteria
in the environment and in our
Chief Executive Officer DR IBRAHIM BIN AHMED AL KINDI. Editor-in-Chief FAHMI BIN KHALID AL HARTHY
Printers and Publishers OMAN ESTABLISHMENT FOR PRESS, PUBLICATION AND ADVERTISING
Results show that in the
follow-up period involving a
maximum of 35 years, 10,158
deaths were registered among
the non-joggers and 122 deaths
among the joggers.
Analysis showed that risk
of death was reduced by 44
percent for male joggers and
44 percent for female joggers.
Besides, the data showed jogging
produced an age adjusted
survival benefit of 6.2 years in
men and 5.6 years in women.
Garlic beats antibiotics in
quelling food-borne illness
food supply,” says Xiaonan
Lu, postdoctoral researcher at
the Washington State University,
who led the study. Lu and
colleagues looked at the ability
of the garlic compound,
diallyl sulphide, to kill the
bacteria when it is protected
by a slimy biofilm that makes
it 1,000 times more resistant
to antibiotics, the Journal of
Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
reports.
They found the compound
can easily penetrate the protective
biofilm and kill bacterial
cells by combining with a
sulphur-containing enzyme,
changing the enzyme’s function
and effectively shutting
down cell metabolism, according
to a statement.
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