Staying alive

December 1, 2010 - 8:41 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, health, Israeliness, Life, News 

Reminiscent of the joke Woody Allen recounted in Annie Hall about two people complaining about the food in a restaurant with one going, “This food is terrible” and the other responding, “yes, and the portions are so small,” the portions in Israel are apparently getting bigger.

New statistics released by the Health Ministry this week showed that Israelis are living longer than they were 10 years ago. The report – comparing Israel’s health system results with those of the OECD, which Israel recently joined, and those collected in other countries by the World Health Organization – shows that in 2009, local women lived an average of 83.5 years, and men lived 79.7.

According to The Jerusalem Post’s medical correspondent Judy Siegel, this marks an increase of 2.6 years and 3 years, respectively, since 2000, and is better than the OECD figures for men – though it is similar to those for women.

I didn’t use the Woody analogy to suggest that life in Israel is terrible, but with all the problems that elderly people face regarding health and economic hardships, it’s certainly a mixed blessing that we’re sticking around longer.

And how are we dying? Not from terror attacks, as much of the world has been led to believe, but from the ‘normal’ causes.
Cancer became the leading cause of death in 2007 and remains so, with heart disease in second place. Deaths from infectious diseases are more common here than in other OECD countries, while suicide, road accidents, stroke and digestive system diseases are less common.

The report also dealt with the opposite end of the life cycle spectrum – birth. The average Israeli woman is waiting longer to procreate – giving birth to her first baby at 26.5, compared to 25.3 a decade ago.

Infant mortality rates are similar to those in the other OECD countries and declining, the report shows, with 3.8 per 1,000 live births – 2.7 for Jews and 7.6 for Muslims. In 2000, the infant mortality rate among Arabs was four times the current rate.

So, we’re doing a lot to insure that our citizens – whether babies or septuagenarians – are being kept alive. Now we just have to do a better job at making sure those lives are better.

Tags: , , , , , ,

It’s flu, but not as we know it

April 26, 2009 - 1:52 PM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: Environment, General, Life, Medical Breakthroughs 

Well, a few years ago, it looked like avian flu was going to be the great pandemic that would lay waste to the world’s population. Experts debated it, newspapers wrote billions of words on it, and a whole generation of children stopped picking up feathers. As the pandemic failed to materialize, however, gradually the fear subsided.

Is that pig safe?

Is that pig safe?

Now a new flu has suddenly emerged, and it’s spreading fast. There have already been some 80 deaths in Mexico from swine flu, and cases in the US and New Zealand. Now there’s a suspected case in Israel, of an Israeli who has just returned from Mexico.

With the World Health Organization declaring the disease a “public health event of international concern”, with “pandemic potential”, flu is once more the hot disaster story of the season, making rather a nice change from Iran.

Anti-viral drug Tamiflu is being touted as an answer, but Israel also has a possible alternative – Sambucol. This herbal extract has been on the market for years, selling well in the US and in over 17 countries around the world as a remedy for flu.

The herbal remedy, made from elderberry, was developed by Dr. Madeleine Mumcuoglu, a world-renowned Israeli virologist, and is said to cut the duration and severity of flu by up to half.
In 2006, a British medical research institute ran cell culture tests (clinical trials were off the agenda for obvious reasons), and announced that it was 99% effective against the avian flu virus, H5N1.

A year earlier, another study showed that the remedy was not just effective against human and avian flu, but also swine flu as well. Of course at that time no one really cared about flu from pigs.

I interviewed Mumcuoglu after the 2006 tests, and she told me then that it didn’t really matter where the flu originated. “Our research has shown that the antiviral effect of Sambucol is not strain-specific. It was effective against all influenza viruses tested,” she said.

“If you stop the flu virus at the beginning then you stop it going to the lungs, or from creating the additional complications that are normally the cause of death,” she added.

Now we have still to see what actually happens with swine flu. Newspapers love to scare the public, and the public apparently loves to be scared.

In Mexico, the government is recommending that people stop going to public places, kissing friends, or shaking friends with colleagues. Though I’m clearly no expert, if swine flu one day reaches your community, maybe it’s not such a bad idea to also try taking Sambucol as well – just in case.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

 

© 2012 ISRAELITY | Sitemap