MARCH 22

Inside March 22, 2018 .qxp_Layout 1 3/21/18 9:12 PM Page 6
Immediate first aid for burns
Heat burns
Smother any flames by covering
them with a blanket or water. If your
clothing catches fire, do not run; stop,
drop, and roll on the ground to
smother the flames.
Cold temperature burns
Try first aid measures to warm the
areas. Small areas of your body (ears,
face, nose, fingers, toes) that are really
cold or frozen can be warmed by
blowing warm air on them, tucking
them inside your clothing or putting
them in warm water.
Liquid scald burns
Run cool tap water over the burn
for 10 to 20 minutes. Do not use ice.
Electrical burns
After the person has been separated
from the electrical source, check
for breathing and a heartbeat. If the
person is not breathing or does not
have a heartbeat, call.
Chemical burns
Natural foods such as chili peppers,
which contain a substance irritating to
the skin, can cause a burning sensation.
When a chemical burn occurs, find out
what chemical caused the burn.
WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH
DAILY HERITAGE THURSDAY, MARCH 22, 2018
&Env.
Expert hails drug stopping
childbirth bleeding
MS MILKA
Dinev, Representative
of the
Reproductive
Health Supplies
Coalition
(RHSC), has insisted that all actors
in the reproductive and maternal
health commodity supplies
chain should accord the same attention
and quality assurance bestowed
on beverage beer to
Oxytocin to save lives.
Oxytocin is a first line drug
used to curtail post-partum haemorrhage
(PPH -Bleeding) during
birth. Misoprostol, Ergometrine
and Magnesium sulphate are
other drugs used to stop excessive
bleeding during childbirth.
Ms Dinev, also Technical
Leader of Maternal Health Supplies
Caucus, said this at the training
section of selected members
of the African Health Journalists
Association participating in the
18th General Membership Meeting
of the RHSC in Brussels, Belgium.
She said “Like we cherish our
beer fresh, Oxytocin is like beer,
keep it safe at that preferred temperature
so it does not lose its
taste, which means a human life
will be at stake, when the vaccine
Globally, she said, maternal mortality rates
have dropped by 43 per cent since 1990
but in 2015 alone 300,000 women still
died due to complications of pregnancy
and childbirth or trying to give life.
flats.”
Globally, she said, maternal
mortality rates have dropped by
43 per cent since 1990 but in
2015 alone 300,000 women still
died due to complications of
pregnancy and childbirth or trying
to give life.
Ms Dinev said 99 per cent of
those deaths occurred due to developing
business and most of
those deaths were preventable.
She said supply and cold-chain
deficiencies like unavailable stock
and counterfeit products whose
quality had been compromised
exposed pregnant women to unwarranted
and needless deaths.
According to the World Health
Organisation, the standard temperature
level at which Oxytocin
should be stored, which is two to
eight degree Celsius, had largely
been violated, rendering the drug
impotent at the point of use.
She therefore called for quality
life-saving medicines, policies, systems
and programmes to ensure
that quality essential maternal
health medicines were available
for every birth wherever that took
place.
Studies in 2015 have shown
the ineffectiveness of the application
of oxytocin in six regions by
the Centre for Pharmaceutical
Advancement and Training,
which suggested stringent measures
to reverse the trend.
Ms Elizabeth Westley, Representative
of International Consortium
for Emergency
Contraception said tender issues
and supply chain failures had rendered
medical products for reproductive
and maternal health
delivery ineffective.
She urged the public sector
and duty bearers to reprioritize
the safety of reproductive and
maternal health commodities to
stop the many unwarranted
deaths involving women and children.
Ms Westley said since pharmacy
shops and stores were the
frontline facilities for the purchase
of drugs and contraceptives,
it behoved state apparatus
to come to the protection of the
people, stating, “Quality issues are
explosive matters but must be
dealt with”.
She noted that counterfeit
brands, including emergency contraceptive
commodities, ostensibly
from India and China, were
flooding the markets without certification
and had suspected inefficiency
levels.
Several studies are being undertaken,
others on trial, for the
efficient way of dealing with excessive
bleeding by pregnant
women while giving life and these
were expected to ameliorate the
situation globally, Ms Westley
stated.
Ghana ended the 2017 year
with a maternal mortality rate of
319 per 100,000 live births, according
to the Ghana Health
Service. GNA
Fight against malaria
New antibody to result in better prevention measures
SCIENTISTS HAVE found a
human antibody that prevented
malaria infection in mice by binding
a protein found in almost all
the strains of the parasite worldwide.
The human antibody was
isolated from a protected subject
who received an experimental vaccine
containing whole, weakened
malaria parasites (PfSPZ Vaccine-
Sanaria).
The paired findings - of both
the antibody and the site it targets
on the surface protein - could
open new pathways to malaria
prevention, researchers at the National
Institutes of Health in the
US have said.
The study, published in the
journal ‘Nature Medicine’, shows
that the antibody, called CIS43,
protects against malaria better
than any antibody that had been
described before.
If shown to be effective in humans,
the antibody could be given
to people directly and potentially
protect them from malaria for up
to six months, said Marie Pancera
from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center.
Preventive malaria drugs available
now must be taken daily, researchers
said. What especially
interests Pancera is whether researchers
could use the unique
binding site identified in the study,
on the surface protein known as
• Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium parasite and spread to humans
through the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito
circumsporozoite protein, or CSP,
to design a vaccine that could
tickle the immune system to produce
such antibodies.
Malaria kills about 445,000
people a year, mostly young children
in sub-Saharan Africa, and
sickens more than 200 million, researchers
said.
It is caused by the Plasmodium
parasite and spread to humans
through the bite of an infected
Anopheles mosquito. About half
the world’s population lives in
areas that put them at risk of infection
that places a huge social
and economic burden on them.
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